•
Scarcity
• Farming and Water
• Tappedthemovie.com
• Residents of Tulyville are “forced to buy bottled water
because their tap water is toxic and they cannot drink
it”. Susan De Anda of the Community Water Center.
Some of the residents spend up to 330 dollars a month
on bottled water for bathing, washing and drinking.
• “The largest irrigated crop in the United States
happens to be millions of acres of lawn”
• Farmers are the number 1 users of groundwater.
Worldwide we use about 40-50% of water for
agriculture, in the United States its about 70%:
• http://debatepedia.idebate.org/en/index.
php/Argument:_Water_is_not_a_public_r
ight
Water Scarcity
Counterargument
• “It is not really possible for governments
to distinguish accurately between
essential and non-essential uses unless
they put monitors of some kind on
devices in homes, obviously highly
invasive and infeasible. This makes it
difficult to call water a "right" in any
circumstance. At a minimum, water
should not always be considered a right,
making it possible to conclude that there
is certainly some room for private
companies to have an appropriate role in
the supply of water.”
Water Pollution
• There is very little regulation of the pesticides being
used in corporate farming. “As a result, communities
like Tuliville end up with polluted and undrinkable
groundwater.” The nitrates from these pesticides
can cause blue baby syndrome, “if a baby under six
months of age [ingests] this type of water, the body
or the bloodstream is unable to absorb the oxygen,
so the baby can literally die… the reality is, you
don’t want to drink this water, its scary.” There is
clean water in Tulyville that is only allowed to be
used for the industrial farming and irrigation.
• Farmers are the number one users and polluters of
groundwater.
• Nitrogen and phosphorus from industrial farming
cause dead zones like the dead zone in the Gulf of
Mexico, where fish cannot get oxygen from the
water. This causes a huge drain on the economy
because fisheries can no longer operate in that area.
• “The law doesn’t require controls on farmers, so it’s
a voluntary program in the United States to control
farm run off.”
Water Pollution
• “Oil and Water” from tappedthemovie.com
• “We use 18 million barrels of oil to transport water
and its growing every year.”
• “It takes 17 million barrels of oil to produce the bottles
we make just in the United States, each year.”
• “The total amount of energy required for every bottle
of water is equivalent on average to filling a plastic
bottle a quarter of the way full of oil.”
Water Pollution
Counterargument
• “[A study funded by Nestlé Waters]
found that bottled water has the
lightest environmental footprint of all
packaged beverages. This means that
every time people choose bottled
water instead of a packaged beverage
such as soda or a sports drink, they are
choosing a beverage that uses less
water and energy. So banning bottled
water is not only the wrong move for
our health, but also the wrong move
for the environment.”
• http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2
010/10/21/water-bottled-beveragepeople/
“Water: to privatize or not to privatize". The
South Asian. February 27, 2004
Water Privatization
“Cochabamba: In 2000, after seven days of civil
disobedience and angry protest in the streets,
the president of Bolivia was forced to
terminate the 40-year water privatization
contract granted to Aguas del Tunari,
subsidiary of Bechtel Corp. Water rates
increased immediately after the contract
signing - by 100 to 200 percent in some cases.
In a country where the minimum wage is less
than $100 per month, many families were
paying water bills of $20 or higher. Bechtel and
the British-led consortium of investors
invested less than $20,000 of up-front capital
for a water system worth millions.”
Water Privatization
• Residents of Tulyville are “forced to buy
bottled water because their tap water is
toxic and they cannot drink it”. Susan De
Anda of the Community Water Center.
Some of the residents spend up to 330
dollars a month on bottled water for
bathing, washing and drinking.
• “Drinking water will become similar to
health care in this country” Robert
Bullard Environment Justice Resource
Center, “because if you have resources, if
you are affluent, then you can afford not
to use the tap water system, but
everybody can’t afford to buy bottled
water, and so if we don’t invest in our
infrastructure, we will have what’s
equivalent to water apartheid.”
• Tappedthemovie.com
Water Privatization
Counterargument
• “Failing to price water economically is
bad for the environment: Proper pricing
of water would reflect all the costs of
providing it, including the environmental
ones. Water exchanges (such as
Australia's one for the Murray-Darling
basin) can start by taking account of the
needs of the environment and then
trading the remaining water efficiently
through the actions of the market. Pricing
water according to consumption, e.g.
through domestic metering, also
discourages wasteful use and so reduces
the demands on natural water systems
such as rivers and underground aquifers.”
• http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topi
c_details.php?topicID=294