Our friend and colleague from Chicago, Gary Wilson.
Commentary
By Gary Wilson
“You can’t stay in your house, turn on the water and think everything is alright. It isn’t.”
That was Maureen Taylor speaking at a recent Healing Our Waters coalition meeting in Detroit. The topic was privatization of water and its potential to impact everyone, not just thousands of poor people who have had their water shut off in Detroit.
Taylor chairs the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, a group that fights for the rights of public assistance recipients and low-income workers. Access to water is a key part of their mission.
The Michigan Messenger reported that in 2007 as many as “45,000 Detroit households suffered water shutoffs… many were homes to people who could not afford to pay their water bills.” A consequence is that families with children in a home without water may have their children sent to foster homes.
“Get off the sidelines and engage”
Outsourcing the water service to a private company has been seen as a potential solution to Detroit’s declining water revenues, though this is generally thought to lead to higher prices.
Taylor’s message to the assembled environmentalists: Get off the sidelines and engage.
She said private companies want Great Lakes “gold” (water) for profit and challenged the group to “join more aggressively in the fight against privatization.”
Water privatization is a broad term that refers to the private sector taking responsibility for sales, management and distribution of water, which has been typically the responsibility of government. Historically, the powerful Great Lakes environmental groups — National Wildlife Federation, Alliance for the Great Lakes and others — have not made water privatization a priority.
Why? Good question.
My guess is that they see it as an issue but a low priority. Or they are loathe to publicly challenge corporations. Some may even see privatization as a good thing as long as the water is clean and accessible.
Believe what you see, not what you’re told
Cameron Davis, the EPA’s point man on Great Lakes issues often says that groups in the region know how to talk to each 
other. They use a certain correct communication style that encourages collaboration which can lead to good outcomes. Nothing wrong with that.
But the downside of that style is that the message is self-moderated when at times it shouldn’t be. The tough questions don’t get asked or answered because we’re concerned about being seen as collaborative, which comes at the expense of candor.
With that in mind, Taylor is a breath of fresh air.
She has the requisite politeness when she speaks and is certainly professional. But she dispenses with non-meaning niceties and elitist phrases that sound impressive but don’t mean much. Taylor focuses on results, not process.
She gets to the point: Don’t believe what politicians, corporations or even what Taylor herself tells you. See for yourself what’s going on, then take action.
The result was arguably the most passionate and thought-provoking presentation one will see at a policy-wonkish gathering.
The most powerful and poignant part of Taylor’s talk was when she referenced Nestle’s water venture in Mecosta, Mich. After a years-long legal battle with local citizens, Nestle was allowed to take water that Taylor referred to as “our water” for their bottled water business.
She didn’t stop there, saying ‘this is one of the biggest thefts we’ve ever seen.”
Interestingly, many of the groups in her audience stayed on the sidelines while Mecosta citizens, funded by bake sales, battled Nestle in court.
Maureen Taylor protesting water shutoffs in Detroit. Photo: Michigan Welfare Rights Organization
And worse, these same groups looked the other way as the bottled water loophole was allowed to remain in the Great Lakes Compact. That loophole allows Nestle and others to ship water outside the Great Lakes basin as long as it’s in containers less than 5.7 gallons. The loophole was created for one industry, bottled water.
What remains is that in a state virtually surrounded by water, thousands of poor and low income citizens are at risk to be denied access to it because it isn’t affordable to them.
Yet a corporation is allowed to mine, sell and export water for a substantial profit.
This is wrong and it’s not more complex than that.
Access to clean water is a fundamental human right according to a United Nations resolution passed in 2010.
What will we do to protect those at risk families and kids? Taylor provides a start point.
“You can’t stay in your house, turn on the water and think everything is alright. It isn’t.”
Thanks for the great info.
So saddened ans scared for my children’s future. I am grateful for those fighting the good fight. With the world making EVERYTHING a commodity to be doled out to the richest first is making death a welcome reprieve to me.
very well written
inversion table
Gary, your column above has done a great service by serving clarity for the big picture about water. A couple of things, and then a a few comments on the comments:
Privatization has several faces. The most obvious is the attempted takeover of municipal water from taxpayers who own and pay for cost-based non profit services, and convert to profiteering sales. The other, of course, is allowing bottled water without reserving public ownership and control. At the very least, it should be sold privately for profit when it belongs to the sovereign for citizens.
The less obvious is the subtle shift in common law that allows exports, like the MCWC v Nestle case. In that case, the trial judge Larry Root shut down the wells because they would diminish the stream from 18 to 35% depending on the season or year. Under Michigan law water, including groundwater, can’t be diverted for sale from a watershed if it diminishes a stream or lake. In order to legalize the Nestle diversion and export, the Court of Appeals ignored the law, changed it to a “reasonable use balancing” test: the harm is balanced against the public and private social and economic beneifts: money, jobs, and taxes justifies harm, even substantial harm. The Court put a “lid” on the diversion by sending it back for an injunction that let Nestle take enough water. The Court of Appeals decision, in effect, privatized water by changing the law to give landowners the right to divert and export water for sale by spending enough and making enough that benefits outweigh harm; this erased the protection of flows and levels for every stream and lake, including the Great Lakes. The decision also effectively granted standing to file claims and challenges under trade laws, including NAFTA, to landowners, foreign or domestic, who are prevented from diverting and selling water. So much for bottled water or any other regulations on the subject.
Lastly, Grennetta is flat out wrong. During Compact negotiations, bottled water and industry insisted on an exemption for water as product and bottled water. The Compact did two things. One, it exempted the transfer of any amount of water in any sized container if it is labelled a “product,” meaning “intended for an intermediate or end use consumer” in the words of the Compact. That means export! Two, it allows diversion and sale of water in bottles (5.7 gallons or less); the import is this provision “treats” (i.e. regulates) water in containers as a diversion because of the “product” exemption for exports. Moreover, the states can “regulate” the diversion or export of bottled water, but they cannot prohibit; and the regulation is now subject to NAFTA and international trade law, which requires substantial environmental or conservation justifications. What’s the difference, if Nestle sells 200 million gallons of water out of Michigan in bottles or trucks or ships, if the water is from the same source that is allowed for bottled water? If it can be allowed and justified environmentally under permit for bottled water, how can it be defended if it’s pumped into trucks and hauled to Indianapolis or Louisville or anywhere else?
Flow for Water (www.flowforwater.org) has requested Congress to close the loop holes in the Compact and states to declare water as commons and public trust. This won’t interfere with private or public reasonable use in each state or the Great Lakes, but it will prevent sale and export of water that belongs to the sovereign states for their people.
Grenatta,
Of course I disagree with your statement that the “loophole in the Compact is fiction.” But more importantly there are legal experts
who also disagree.
Writing for Wayne State Law in May 2011 Michigan attorney Jeffrey Dornbos said:
“The “bottled-water loophole” results from the Great Lakes Compact’s ban on diverting water out of the Great Lakes basin in containers that are greater than 5.7 gallons (such as a tanker) but leaving it to individual states to decide whether to ban diverting water out of the basin in smaller containers (such as bottles).”
His full post is at http://www.greatlakeslaw.org. Scroll down to May 11.
Dornbos also referenced a 2008 Washington Post article where University of Chicago law professor Ann Bradford discusses the issue.
Here’s the link.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/28/AR2008092802997.html
While you may disagree that the exception in the Compact for bottled water isn’t a problem, your statement that it is fiction lacks credibility on its face.
Separate from disagreements about bottled water, your comments don’t address the essence of my commentary.
Which is how can a state surrounded by water that allows for export of it in plastic bottles by a corporation, deny access to it to thousands of poor people in Michigan’s urban areas?
And to Maureen Taylor’s comment that Great Lakes environmental groups
need to “join more aggressively in the fight against privatization.”
As mentioned in my commentary, Taylor didn’t mince words in calling out those groups.
Gary Wilson
The supposed “loophole” in the Compact is fiction. The Compact leaves regulation of the bottled water industry up to the states. States can regulate it as strictly as they want to. Michigan implemented a permitting program for the bottled industry when it passed the Compact – the first of the Great Lake states to do so.
The Nestle court case was raging in the background when the Compact was negotiatied. Groups were calling for a ban on bottled water in the Great Lakes, but if we had done that, the Compact would not hold up in international trade court. We could not single out an established industry for restrictions; that would create trade barriers and negate all the good the Compact does. So, rather than jeopordize Compact enforcement, the solution was to leave bottled water regulation up to the states. If you want your state to regulate it better, then call on and work with the legislature to do so.
Interestingly Chris, the Healing Our Waters coalition, to whom Maureen
Taylor was presenting, just gave Patty Birkholz an award.
Gary Wilson
The theft of the Great Lakes water is the pride and joy partnership of the Michigan Republican party and Nestle’ Ice Mountain, which is a foreign nation corporation armed with unlimited secret donations to Michigan’s corrupt political machine. Many of the corrupt Republicans that designed the 5.7 gallon loophole for Nestle’ have been rewarded as political hacks within the Governor Snyder administration. Pattie Burkholtz, Dennis Muchmore, Bill Rustem and the Michigan United Conservation Clubs (MUCC) all supported the Nestle’ Mecosta County case corruption. These folks are also the biggest hypocrites in the Great Lakes that absolutely refuse to support any meanful increase water bottle deposits and certainly not any $4.50 deposits on the 5.7 gallon containers Nestle’ is using to sell the Great Lakes to Arizona. West Michigan Senator Geoff Hansen got elected on his bold face lies supporting Nestle’ just as he lies about the bridge to Canada with Matty’s money. Political corruption is the norm for the Michigan Republicans and the Michigan Supreme Court will back Nestle’ Ice Mountain theft of the Great Lakes. Report: Mich. had nation’s costliest court races http://www.detnews.com/article/20111027/POLITICS02/110270457/1024/POLITICS03/Report–Mich.-had-nation-s-costliest-court-races
Well written, thought provoking and intriguing. AND a warning for the future: big business usually gets it’s way because they can work the system and the little guy doesn’t carry as much weight. I am seeing a lot of “conditioning of the masses” going on in the media for gas exploration, the answer to all our energy problems. This means fracking. Why am I not seeing an equal amount of education of the public (and our representatives!)as to the results of fracking? We need to protect our ground water! And yes, we need meaningful discussions about who owns and who should have access to our precious, primally necessary resources. Water is the new oil to be fought over and fought for. Governments don’t own the air, but they have a responsibility to keep it clean, for everyone. The same should go for water.
Gary Wilson just nailed it!!!