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MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #01-05 Who Owns Our Water?  Profits vs. Public Interest
January 5, 2005

Program description, guest contact information and audio files at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2005/0105.html

POMERLEAU: This week on “Making Contact”...

Barlow: Those who control water--freshwater sources—are going to be both very rich and very powerful. They are taking advantage of an ideology that exists particularly in the United States, but all, increasingly around the world: The private sector should be running everything. I call it the privatization of absolutely everything.

POMERLEAU: Water is essential to survival.  Yet access to fresh, clean water has increasingly come under the control of private corporations, making it less affordable and harder to come by.

On this edition, we’ll take a look at water as a basic human right. We’ll hear about a plan to privatize water services in Nigeria, and how activists in Hawaii are working to recover the island’s water sources for public use.

  I'm Aimee Pomerleau, your host on “Making Contact”, an international radio program creating connections between people, vital ideas, and important information. 

POMERLEAU:    In 1993, a poor rural community on the Hawaiian island of Oahu petitioned the state’s largest landowners over control of the island’s freshwater sources. The case involved the diversion of streams in the Waiahole Valley by the Oahu Sugar Company for its water-thirsty sugar cane crop. When the company shut down its plantation, large-scale agriculture and development interests tried to continue using the diverted waters for golf course irrigation, corporate agriculture, and housing developments. People in Waiahole argued that diverted water should return to the streams to restore native stream life and preserve traditional, small family farming. It was a David vs. Goliath battle. But in August 2000, the Hawaii Supreme Court agreed with the community’s demand that the streams be restored. It seemed a major tide had turned. Stream restoration in Waiahole revitalized the environment. It also inspired people on neighboring islands to fight for the same control over their natural resources. For example, as correspondent Robynn Takayama reports, the people of Maui are using the Hawaii state water code to restore their streams and communities.

Takayama:   [Background sound of wind in sugar cane field] In the mid-1800s, Westerners developed an agricultural economy in Hawaii and planted sugar cane fields in the dry, leeward parts of the islands. To water their fields, they constructed massive irrigation systems to carry water from miles away in the wet, windward side of the islands. [Background sound fades out]

Sproat:   When a lot of these plantation systems were put into place, … they were done without any kind of consideration of the impacts that taking the water out of the streams and communities were going to have, both on the natural and human environments that rely on them.

Takayama:   Kapua Sproat is a lawyer with Earth Justice, a non-profit public interest law firm.  She says for over 100 years, communities in Hawaii have suffered under the mismanagement of their fresh water.

Sproat:   Often times, streams and communities were de-watered with horrific impacts on traditional agriculture and aquaculture, on native stream life, on fisheries and estuary systems, on the ability of the communities to feed themselves and to continue their traditional lifestyles.

[Touristy Hawaiian/beach music and laughter, followed by guitar solo]

When most folks think about Hawaii, they have these stereotypical ideas of paradise. They think that every thing is fine and there are waterfalls everywhere and, you know, the natives are happy, but we’re not.

Takayama:   Sproat says before Westerners arrived, [sounds of running water in background] four streams flowed here on Maui from the mountains on the west side of the island, through central Maui, and into the ocean. This lush valley, called Na Wai Eha, supported farming of Hawaii’s staple food, an edible root called “taro.” Na Wai Eha, or literally “the four great waters,” boasted the largest taro crop in all of the Hawaiian Islands.

But for over a century, a former sugar plantation company called Wailuku Agribusiness has diverted over 65 million gallons of water a day from Na Wai Eha.  In doing so it has transformed the last stretch of each of the four streams into dry riverbeds. [water sound fades out]

  Despite closing their sugar plantation, Wailuku Ag says their primary business is still agricultural related, they’re just not doing the farming themselves. But with the sale of pineapple fields and macadamia nut orchards and the eviction of small farmers from their land, critics are surprised the company continues to divert the same amount of water from the region.

Sproat:   We’re in Iao Valley. We’re right above the intake of Wailuku Agribusiness’ intake. It’s a grate that goes clear across the riverbed and all the waters in the river right now, coming down, it all drops into this grate. And if you were here, you’d see that right below the grate, the stream is dry.

Takayama:   John Duey and his wife Rose Marie, a Native Hawaiian, live 100 yards away from Iao Stream, one of the four streams comprising Na Wai Eha. Alongside the stream, the Dueys grow a patch of taro that requires running water to keep from rotting, as well as fruit trees and other native plants. He says this stretch of stream, which is below the Wailuku Ag diversion grate, ran completely dry several times in the last three years. Duey says it affected his garden, the stream life, and his grandchildren’s favorite playground.

And he says he predicted this tension between preservation and commercial development.

Sproat:   It looks like it might be a fight between those of us who’d like to see water left in the stream and those who want housing. And I’ve said a long time ago when sugar goes out, water’s going to be the dividing factor of how many people are going to live on this island. There’s only so much water.

Takayama:   The Dueys are members of Hui o Na Wai Eha, a community-based organization working to preserve Hawaii’s natural and cultural resources, particularly in the Na Wai Eha region. The Hui, with the support of Earth Justice, have filed a petition to the State Water Commission to force Wailuku Agribusiness to release more of the water it diverts back into the Na Wai Eha streams.

Kapua Sproat of Earth Justice says the plantations have treated water as a commodity. But Hawaii’s Public Trust Doctrine established in 1978, mandates the State Water Commission to protect the health of Hawaii’s natural resources for the benefit of all citizens. The petitioners want enough water to remain in the streams so that they may again flow all the way to the ocean, improving the habitat, the lifecycle for native shrimp and fish, and allow for practicing native traditions like growing taro.

  Isaac Moriwake with Earth Justice says the petition reflects a larger movement throughout Hawaii for environmental justice.

Moriwake:    This was a legal movement that began with the law but then was able to, I think, empower communities that were at the close of the plantation era, were ready to say, “Hey, for 100 years at least, our interests have been totally ignored by these oligarchic economic interests and it’s time—in all kinds of aspects, but also in the water—to see how we can undo the damage or maybe level the playing field and get back to a more fair and balanced organization of society that was, I guess, a little unbalanced during the plantation era.

Chumbly:    But that’s water that’s going to grow sugar cane, pineapple, diversified agricultural crops, that’s creating jobs, that’s feeding people, that’s buying homes in the community!

Takayama:   Avery Chumbly is president of Wailuku Agribusiness.

Chumbly:Are you going to say that that should be stopped and that the waterflow down the stream and the little fish get all the water as opposed to the people that are earning a living from the agricultural crop?

Takayama:   Chumbly says it’s completely legal for his company to take water out of the Na Wai Eha streams.

Chumbly: You have to understand first that the diversions that we do have in place are diversions that have been registered under the state of Hawaii, Hawaii revised statutes, state water code and under the constitution of the state of Hawaii to our company. The second aspect is that …these are systems that were built on our lands with an investment of resources of time, personnel, and money going back 100 and some years. …So until there’s a clear public policy, we will be able to continue to use the water off of our land in whatever means we feel is appropriate for agricultural purposes.

Takayama:   But the water is not used just for agriculture. Maui County is facing a shortage of domestic drinking water because of a dramatically expanding population. To offset the shortage, Maui County purchases up to 3.2 million gallons of Wailuku Ag’s diverted water a day.

  Lucienne deNaie is a member of Maui Tomorrow, who along with the Hui filed the petition to restore the Na Wai Eha streams. She says water from the streams is going toward luxury housing and tourist development in south Maui at the expense of the ecosystem in central Maui.

deNaie:   Central Maui has been the cash cow of the water distribution system for the last 30 years. South Maui, which is the fastest growing area of the state, actually, has many lovely resorts, but it’s a desert. And in order to make the property values blossom and make the public coffers benefit from them, a large water project was launched in the 1970s to bring the water of central Maui to south Maui. … So when you look at the central Maui system and you see all that taking, taking, taking, taking far, far away, and you go, it’s like a bank account. Who’s making a deposit? Who’s putting water back in? Only the rainfall is putting water back in!

Takayama:   Maui County says it supports Earth Justice’s petition and the request to increase the amount of water flowing in the Na Wai Eha streams. John Duey says he’s happy to hear this, but says it’s not consistent with the County’s actions.

Sproat:    It’s hard to join the two together when they’re taking--they just put on line at the end of October a new surface water treatment plant that’s taking water out of Iao/Waikapu ditch, and this is water that we’d like to see left in the stream. ‘Cause that helps the water get to the ocean.

Takayama:   But Duey understands there are competing interests for the water and that’s why he and others filed the petition.

Sproat:   Whose right is it to the water? Is it one company who can sell the water? Is it you because you’re a homeowner because you want to buy a house? Is it me because I want water back in the stream? There’s laws, 174c, Water Code, which states what’s what. So it’s up to the commission to enforce the law. That’s the bottom line.

Takayama:   The State Water Commission and Maui County have enlisted the U.S. Geological Survey for a four-year study, which will reveal the effects that surface water diversion and groundwater pumping have on stream flow and rain levels in central Maui.

In the meantime, the Water Commission will rule on the petition with the limited information they do have.

For Making Contact, I’m Robynn Takayama.

Music/break

Maude Barlow & Anil Naidoo

Barlow: Until very recently almost all water was under public control or no control, it was just a free for all for people depending if you were in a rural community, it wasn’t –you know, you don’t have it delivered, you get it from whatever local water systems you have.

POMERLEAU:    Maude Barlow chairs the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy group with more than 100 thousand members.  Its mission is to support policies that safeguard social programs, promote economic justice, preserve the environment, and advance alternatives to corporate-style free trade. 

Barlow is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on the issue of water privatization and is the author of a book called “Blue Gold:  The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water.” (0.30)

Barlow: It’s only in the last ten to fifteen years that there has been a huge grab for this thing that I now call “blue gold.” Water is now –we’re beginning to understand, it is to this coming century what oil was to the last century.  If it is scarce, which it is, and if it’s becoming more scarce and more polluted and people are more desperate than ever and people need it more than ever--I mean, because there’s a bigger demand on it—it stands to reason that those who control water—fresh water sources are going to be both very rich and very powerful.  So the private sector knew before any of the rest of us that this was going to be an area for phenomenal investment. And so there’s been a move in recent years to —I call it ‘water hunt’—to hunt the fresh sources of water or the money leading to water. 

POMERLEAU:    Three European corporations are leading the effort to privatize the world’s fresh water supplies: Vivendi Environment, Suez Environment, and RWE. Research by the Center for Public Integrity shows the three companies together provide water services to some 285 million people worldwide. That’s equivalent to the entire population of the United States.

Barlow: They’re taking advantage of an ideology that exists particularly in the United States, but all—increasingly around the world, that the private sector should be running everything.  I call it the privatization of absolutely everything. So we’ve privatized one thing after another.  We’ve privatized healthcare, we’ve privatized education, the next thing to do was naturally, to privatize our water. Many of our governments, to date the World Bank, the big—the WTO and so on, refuse to consider water a human right. They say that it’s a human need and that it can be delivered by the private sector.

Naidoo: The problem is, is that a market-based solution requires money, it requires you to be a customer, it requires blindness, basically, to everything but the bottom line.

POMERLEAU:    Anil Naidoo is the director of the Blue Planet Project, an effort by the Council of Canadians to protect the world’s fresh water from private interests. (0.09)

Naidoo: And so where they can increase their profits, they will go in and deliver water. Where they cannot, they will not. Where the greatest crisis is in the globe right now is, is where people cannot afford to pay for water. So the market solution do not—will not work for the vast majority of people that are suffering right now, and the children that are dying. These things have fundamental impacts on—in the societies in these countries. Not so much in the North, at this point—and not to say that we shouldn’t be resisting or that we’re not resisting in the North—but it does come down to life and death when people are not able to buy clean water and have to go to a cholera-infested stream. The problem right now is, is that if you look at the global debate on water, there’s no resources, virtually no resources being put into strengthening public systems. You know, we, we need to create the kind of world that we want, and that means effort has to be put into strengthening the public systems. Right now, 95 percent of the world’s water is publicly managed. You wouldn’t know it by looking at the great debate and the amount of resources that are being put into enticing private water. That’s, that’s the ultimate goal, is to say, “Public dollars are going to guarantee your profits. Invest because if you invest, we’re taking the risk out of it for you. And we’ll guarantee the profits.”

POMERLEAU:    Again, Maude Barlow:

Barlow: And very often if you have a local private water company it’s a subsidiary of one of those big three and they come in and with, for instance in the developing world, with the backing of the World Bank they’re moving into the Third World, and delivering water on a for profit basis to poor people, who consequently cannot pay, who consequently are having their water cut off.  South Africa, for instance, has cut off the water to ten million families in the last two and a half years.  Because they were guaranteed water as a human right, the water was delivered to their door, but it’s delivered by Suez, and if they can’t pay, and I don’t just mean cost, I mean enough so that they can pay huge dividends to their investors, they get their water turned off. 

POMERLEAU:    Barlow says that too often, when residents can pay for their water service, they face higher prices and lower standards when private companies take over.

Barlow: So when they come into a community, whether it’s Felton, California or Johannesburg, South Africa, or Manila in the Philippines or wherever, all over the world, they either, cut corners and cut inspections, cut standards, cut employees, and raise the price of water so that only the wealthy can afford it. Or they cut the standards, very often they literally cut the standards to poorer people so that there will be good clean water for wealthy neighborhoods and different standards for poor neighborhoods or all three together more likely. 

Pomerleau   In 2002 the United Nations Committee for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognized water as a human right. As such, Barlow says, it should not be treated as a commodity to be bought and sold.

Barlow: Water is a common good, it belongs to the earth and all species, it is a human right, it’s a public trust, it belongs to future generations, and it must be guarded by all levels of government from local communities to state, national and international levels so that we will have water for future generations. Because of the way we’re going now, there will not be.  There will be massive deaths in our world over the greed and the cavalier way in which we’ve treated our water.

Music/break

POMERLEAU:    We’ll have more about water privatization in a few moments. You’re listening to “Making Contact,” a production of the National Radio Project. If you’d like more information, or for cassette or CD copies of this program, please call 800-529-5736. That’s 800-529-5736. You can also visit our web site at radioproject.org.

Music/break

POMERLEAU:    Nigeria's commercial capital of Lagos is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. The United Nations projects that over the next 10 years, Lagos will become the world’s third largest city, with more than 24 million residents.

The city’s infrastructure is struggling to cope with the growing population. Providing adequate water services will cost about two billion dollars, which the Lagos state government says it can’t afford.

So the World Bank has encouraged the government to privatize its water services, potentially leaving poor residents in Lagos unable to access the water they need to survive.

Correspondent Sam Olukoya reports from Lagos, Nigeria.

[Background sound of beach in Lagos]

Olukoya: This is a beach overlooking Lagos, Nigeria. Even though there is water all around this coastal city, more than half of the people here lack access to clean water. Many residents like Wole Adeboye, have to make due with water from shallow wells, which is unfit for human consumption.

[Background sound of Wole fetching water from the well.]

Adeboye: This is the well we get out water from. We use it to bath everyday. But we don't use to drink it. It is only for bathing and for washing plates.

Olukoya: So, why don't you drink the water?

Adeboye: It is not good for drinking.

Olukoya: Most families in Lagos are large so the demand for clean water is high. Kehinde Oyida is a Lagos house wife in a family of seven. She says she has to walk long distances in search of water for her family.

Oyida:   Water, water is very very important because there is nothing we can do
without water, how are we going to cope? We are going to drink water, take water cook, bath. I myself I will bath two times in a day, bath in the morning, in the evening with my children and my husband so when there is no water around, we go out to find water.

[Background noise of chaotic downtown Lagos]

Olukoya: A rapidly growing population is the key factor behind the water problem in Lagos. Fifteen million people currently live here, but ten years from now that number will be more than twenty four million. Olumuyiwa Coker, is the group managing director of the Lagos Water Corporation, the Lagos government agency responsible for providing water in the city. He says Lagos is growing faster than its infrastructure can handle.

Coker:   We have to speed up infrastructural development. Because as we increase, so does the population increase. We have a minor problem, or as you say, an institutional problem in the sense that as our infrastructure improves, it also attract more population.

Olukoya: But Coker says the government has worked out a solution by privatizing water supply in the city, under a new law that allows both local and foreign investors to invest in water services.

Coker:   By the year 2015, we need probably between one point eight and two point five billion dollars. And clearly, the state cannot cope with that alone. So it is important that we look for alternative sources to be able to augment what the government is doing. And that is one of the reasons why we are bringing in private sector operators on board. The infrastructural development needs are huge.

Olukoya: Besides the private sector, the World Bank will also provide some of the funds. But critics of the plan say private investors are more interested in profit rather than providing for the majority of the city's residents who need clean water, who are also the poorest. Water expert Dr. Emmanuel Adeyemo is head of the Country Water Partnership, the Nigerian affiliate of the Swedish-based Global Water Partnership.

Adeyemo: The private investor is there to make his own money, it is for profit.

Olukoya: Adeyemo questions the rationale of putting a commercial price tag on water in a place like Lagos with such a large population of poor people.

Adeyemo: The number of people that don't have access to water is equal to the number of people who live on less than one dollar a day. So there is a relationship between the two, between poverty and water. And if poverty is related to water then we need to be careful the way we take water as an economic good.

Olukoya: But Olumuyiwa Coker of the Lagos Water Corporation says water will be provided at an affordable price when the private investors are brought on board.

Coker:   One of the basic tenets of what we are doing essentially is to be able to improve our service delivery within affordable means. So that is the reason why we are trying to structure it the way we are because cost of funds have a direct impact on the tariff levels, so you have to be very very careful how you source your funds and the kind of people you bring on board because we are not in the developed world and tariff is also a crucial issue so we must make sure that we are able to bring people on board and at the same time keep tariff at a reasonable and affordable level.

[Background sound of woman buying water from a commercial borehole operator.]

Woman:  We buy water, to wash, to drink, whatever I want to use with water we have to buy water because we don't have water around except this place. And the water is good, is pure.

 Olukoya: Private investors will have to contend with commercial deep-well operators, who supply water to many Lagos residents. Emmanuel Adeyemo worries the government may make laws to cripple the operations of the deep-well owners in order to make it easier for private companies to do business.  He says this will not only put the well owners at a disadvantage but also raise the price of the water they sell by as much as five times its current level.

Adeyemo:    So its like treating water as an economic good from what government has to derive taxes. Once you do that, then poverty will increase.

Olukoya: For many Lagos residents, especially the poor, how much they pay for
water is important. Little wonder they are waiting anxiously to see what
happens when their water supply is privatized.

For Making Contact, I’m Sam Olukoya in Lagos, Nigeria.

Music/Closing

That's it for this edition of “Making Contact.”  Thanks for listening. Special thanks to Carolyn Crane, Renita Pitts and April Scott.  Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio.

“Making Contact” is an independent production, funded primarily by individual contributors.  We are committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you'd like to support our work, or if you have suggestions for future programs, we'd love to hear from you. For a cassette or CD copy of the program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736.  That's 800-529-5736. You can also visit our website at radioproject.org.

Lisa Rudman is our Executive Director, Justin Beck, Associate Producer, Marguerite Judson, Development Director, Brieshen McKee, Office Manager, Dorian Taylor, Outreach and Distribution, Peggy Law, Founding Director, Norman Solomon, Senior Advisor, David Barsamian, National Advisor. 

And, I'm your host and Production Director, Aimee Pomerleau.