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Are Corporations Creating a Life-Threatening Water Shortage?

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By Brien Pittman

Imagine the swift and fierce public and government response if Al-Qaeda took a precious resource out of a delicate environment, sold it for profit and endangered 40 million people in the process. Now compare that example to the nonexistent government response to American energy companies, and corporations like Nestlé taking 75 percent of the groundwater out of the Colorado River Basin at a time when the American West is facing a record drought.

The Colorado River basin supplies water to about 40 million people and 4 million acres of farmland in seven states — California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming — as well as to people and farms in part of Mexico. As the US Bureau of Reclamation has documented, 22 federally recognized tribes, seven national wildlife refuges, four national recreation areas, and 11 national parks depend on the basin.

All the while, Nestlé, with 29 water-bottling facilities across North America continues to reap huge financial rewards, pocketing $4 billion in revenue from bottled water sales in 2012 alone.

Researchers from NASA and the University of California, Irvine say their study is the first to quantify how much groundwater is being used in the West during the region’s current drought.

Stephanie Castle, water resource specialist at the university said, “Unlike reservoirs and other above-ground water, groundwater sources can become so depleted that they may never refill. For California and other western states, the groundwater depletion is drawing down the reserves that protect consumers, farmers and ecosystems in times of drought.”

Even though the Northwest aquifer system is not tapped out overall, some parts are draining faster than others. For example, in the Columbia Plateau system, deeper aquifers — like the Umatilla Basin Aquifer — have less water than shallow ones, which recharge more easily.

U.S. Geological researcher Leonard Konikow says, “water has been draining from the Columbia Plateau and Snake River Plains aquifers more quickly in the past 40 years. If this trend continues, he said, the aquifer systems could be severely depleted by 2030.”

An “Insurmountable” Water Crisis by 2040

Egregious abuses of limited freshwater supplies have led to panic from some and greed from others. If current drought conditions and water usage patterns persist, it’s estimated that the world will face an “insurmountable” water crisis by 2040. Aarhaus University of Denmark, the Vermont Law School and the nonprofit CNA Corporation recently released a study showing that a global population increase compounded by an exponential increase in water consumption will inevitably lead to drastic drought conditions unless immediate action is taken.

According to the study, 41 percent of American freshwater consumption is from energy production alone. Energy sources like nuclear and coal power were responsible for the bulk of water consumption, through the process of hydraulic fracturing — better known as fracking, where jets of water mixed with chemicals are blasted underground to break up shale formations that produce natural gas — was also high on the list. A prime example is Texas, where the population is expected to skyrocket from 25 million to 55 million in the next 35 years. Texas currently draws 91 percent of its electricity from natural gas, nuclear and coal power. And in the summer of 2011, Texas experienced its worst drought in history.

Constitutionally Protected Corporate Greed

The research community isn’t the only group of people paying attention to the writing on the wall. Corporate executives are quickly making moves to privatize water resources, declaring the resource to be the next oil. Peter Brabeck, chairman and former CEO of Nestlé, has openly said, “access to water is not a public right.” This is in spite of UN Resolution 64/292, which declares that water and sanitation are both basic human rights.

Researchers argue for greater regulation of water usage to prevent future global drought, though that becomes complicated when looking into how such regulations would be implemented and enforced. The US Bureau of Reclamation monitors surface water, but groundwater regulation is up to individual states. And in the Colorado River Basin, for example, California has no regulations on groundwater usage despite the Bay Area implementing strict new penalties for excessive use of water. Even if federal or state agencies wanted to intervene to stop corporate entities like golf courses, power companies or Nestlé from using up precious groundwater resources, corporations and their profits are protected under the constitution, giving them the same rights as actual human beings.

Since the Supreme Court established that corporations are legally people in the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad ruling of 1886, corporations have successfully overridden a slew of regulations citing the equal protection clause under the 14th Amendment. By proving that a certain regulation would unduly infringe on a corporation’s ability to make a profit, well-heeled corporate entities have lawyered up to defy regulatory agencies for over a century. The Buckley v. Valeo ruling in 1976 further ensconced corporate personhood, and the Citizens United v. FEC ruling in January of 2010 established the precedent that because corporations have the same legal rights as a person, their money is considered free speech. So not only can corporations defy any new regulation on their future usage of precious water resources, but they can spend unlimited amounts of money in election cycles to elect politicians who will prioritize their right to make a profit over a citizen’s right to have access to water.

As long as corporations are given the same constitutional protections as people, they’ll always escape regulation and accountability for their actions. Simply “getting money out of politics” is not enough – only a constitutional amendment that explicitly abolishes the concept of corporate personhood and separates money from free speech will guarantee that necessary actions can be taken to prevent a disastrous water shortage.

Will corporations continue to abuse their constitutional protections as legal “persons” until fresh water has become fully privatized, or will corporate constitutional rights be reined in with a constitutional amendment?

Brien Pittman
Brien Pittman
Brien’s articles for FāVS generally revolve around ideas and beliefs that create unhealthy deadlock divisions between groups. He has received (minor) writing awards for his short stories and poetry from the cities of Portland, Oregon and the city of (good beer) Sapporo, Japan. In 2010 he was asked to present several articles for the California Senate Committee “Task Force for Suicide Prevention” and has been published by online magazines and a couple national poetry anthologies in print form.

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