It conducts wide-ranging, carefully researched, and thoroughly cross-checked reports, most recently its June one titled, “Foul Play: Neglect of wastewater treatment in the West Bank.” This article discusses its findings as further evidence of how Israel violates international humanitarian law as an occupying power. Because no global authority holds it accountable, over 2.8 million West Bank Palestinians suffer along with another 1.5 million under siege in Gaza for over two years and counting.

Introduction

Human activity produces wastewater for which treatment is essential “to prevent and reduce sanitation and environmental hazards” that otherwise would result — from dangerous viruses, bacteria, parasites, heavy metals, and other toxic substances that pollute water, farm crops, flora, and fauna, and reduce land fertility.

Israeli West Bank and Jerusalem settlements produce about 91 million cubic meters of wastewater annually, more than double the amount from Palestinian communities. Yet most of it goes untreated. As an occupying power, international humanitarian law requires it be done, yet Israel violates its obligations across the board making Palestinians suffer grievously as a result.

Wastewater from Settlements and Jerusalem

Israel’s Civil Administration environmental protection staff officer, Benny Elbaz, told B’Tselem that (other than outpost wastewater) all of it from settlements gets “adequate” treatment, and raw effluent isn’t allowed to flow freely.

However, an August 2008 study refutes his assertion. Jointly conducted by the Nature and Parks Authority Environment Unit, the Ministry of Environmental Protection’s Water and Streams Department, and the Civil Administration, it showed that in 2007, only 81 of 121 West Bank settlements were connected to wastewater treatment facilities. Also, over half of treatment plants (38 of 74) are small facilities able to service only a few hundred families, way short of what’s needed.

In addition, to operate properly, plants need “round-the-clock maintenance,” but because the per-capita cost is high, “maintenance of most of the facilities is defective.” They experience frequent problems, sometimes shut down entirely, and can’t handle the volume channeled to them. As a result, “raw wastewater from settlements floods West Bank valleys,” Israel’s disclaimer notwithstanding.

In large settlements, built in the 1970s and 1980s, no wastewater is treated or facilities in place “have been neglected for decades.” Among them are:

• Kirat Arba, founded in 1972; its wastewater flows into the Hebron stream that runs into Israel;
• Ofra, founded in 1975; its sewage flows into the Mountain Aquifer and pollutes groundwater; in 2008, Israel began constructing a settlement treatment plant, but it’s being built on Palestinian land without Civil Administration approval;
• Kfar Adumim, founded in 1979; instead of being treated, its wastewater is disposed of in cesspits cut into the ground for effluent disposal; from there, it pollutes land and groundwater; and
• Bat Ayin, founded in 1989; it has a partial collection system, and residents dispose of their wastewater in cesspits.

Other settlements, like those below, experience frequent breakdowns that shut facilities for extended periods:

• Ariel’s treatment plant was defective for a decade, then shut down in 2008; thereafter wastewater flowed into the Shilo stream, a major Yarkon River tributary;
• Elqana’s treatment plant stopped operating; its wastewater flows into the Rava stream, another Yarkon tributary; renovation funding was allocated to make it operable by the end of 2009;
• Qedumim’s two treatment plants ceased functioning in 2007; its wastewater flows into the Abu Jamus stream; in March 2008, one plant resumed operations;
• Beit Ariyeh’s plant stopped functioning in 2008; its effluent flowed into the Shilo stream until renovations let it resume operations in January 2009;
• Qedar, Ma’aleh Amos, Nokdim, Otni’el, Etz Ephraim, and Enav settlements dispose of their wastewater in septic tanks, “from which it seeps into the groundwater and pollutes it;” and
• 25 Jordan Valley settlements’ wastewater is only partially treated in sedimentation basins and oxidation ponds, an outdated method not used inside Israel.

Overall, Israeli and independent studies show that settlements’ waterwater treatment inadequacies are long-standing and serious — confirmed by the Ministry of Environmental Protection saying that many settlements “do not have a proper solution to wastewater.” According to Yael Mason, the Industrial Wastewater and Polluted Lands Department director, some settlement plants “do not meet requisite standards and pollute both the Mountain Aquifer and streams.”

Conditions were as bad in 1998 when a Municipal Environmental Association of Judea survey found half the plants (where over 40,000 settlers lived), polluted the environment “to a great or moderate extent,” and only 13 plants (for 16,000 people) performed “to a reasonable extent.”

A 2002 Municipal Environmental Association of Samaria report (responsible for 100 settlements,) showed 14 left their wastewater untreated. Eleven others either didn’t treat it or only partially did for 25 years until the Kana stream conduit was completed in 2006.

Other reports document the same neglect, citing defective maintenance, no electrical connection, raw sewage seepage into groundwater, “usually primitive” factory wastewater treatment, and pollution caused by “cow pens.”

For over 40 years of occupation, “Israel has not built advanced regional wastewater treatment plants in the settlements to match those inside Israel” even though a 1983 master plan was formulated. After its cost was estimated to be $110 million, budgetary constraints stopped its implementation. The single recent facility addition began operating in 2006, servicing six settlements.

Under still in force Jordanian West Bank building and planning laws, provisions for treatment must be approved before proceeding. However, Israeli authorities ignore the requirement and allow building occupancies and industrial operations anyway. The Modi’in Illit settlement was approved even though raw sewage from 17,000 people flowed into the Modi’im stream, and construction was never completed for a Meitarim industrial area treatment plant.

Blurred authority between the Civil Administration and Ministry of Environmental Protection complicates the problem. The former ensures that building plans include treatment solutions, but enforcement power lies with the latter. From 2000-September 2008, it was used only 53 times for not treating wastewater. Most were warnings. Only four indictments were filed. By comparison, in 2006 alone, 230 enforcement measures were taken inside Israel, mostly warnings on suspected Water Law violations. In Israel, building plans are stopped until proper hook-up to wastewater treatment is in place. “Across the Green Line,” no similar action is taken.

Jerusalem’s Wastewater Channeled East

Since the 1940s, untreated wastewater has been channeled from West and East Jerusalem to the Kidron Basin in the city’s southeast. It flows into an open duct from where it moves over 30 kilometers into the Dead Sea.

A Horqaniya Valley diversion facility treats some of it for Jordan Valley settlements’ irrigation, while the rest flows freely into the Mountain Aquifer, “an area sensitive to pollution.” It creates dangerous sanitation and environmental hazards, including groundwater pollution. Yet it’s used as livestock drinking water and for Palestinian farmland irrigation, “despite the (considerable) health risk.”

Since the 1970s, remediation plans were proposed and rejected – according to Israel’s Jerusalem Municipality because of a lack of Palestinian Authority (PA) cooperation, not gotten because giving it would grant legitimacy to the settlements.

More recently, Jerusalem’s Ministry of Environmental Protection director warned Israeli officials about criminal responsibility for failure to address this growing problem. Only then were various treatment options suggested, including piping it from its origin through Abu Dis and Eizariya to the Og Reservoir facility to be expanded with added capacity. However, PA opposition over the “geopolitical situation” suspended the plan. Jerusalem’s District Planning and Building Committee scheduled discussion of alternative options, but nothing so far has materialized.

Despite inadequate solutions, Jerusalem’s population growth exacerbates the problem. For example, residents moved into the Pisgat Ze’ev settlement before a treatment facility was completed — in violation of by-law provisions that Jerusalem’s District Planning and Building Committee chose to ignore, either there or in other settlements.

Wastewater from Palestinian Communities

Only 20% of Palestinian homes are connected to sewage systems. Yet they’re outdated, often leak, can’t handle the volume, and thus spill into cesspits along with effluent from the other 80% of Palestinians. As a result, groundwater gets seriously contaminated because 90-95% of Palestinian sewage isn’t treated at all, and only one treatment plant for it is functioning.

Israeli neglect is the problem. In the early 1970s, it built four treatment facilities in Jenin, Tulkarm, Hebron and Ramallah, but their effectiveness has been “minimal to poor” and three of them no longer function. The one Ramallah operating one is small with inadequate capacity to handle the city’s wastewater. As a result, it’s barely treated.

The 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim (West Bank and Gaza) Agreement stipulated that both sides cooperate on taking “all necessary measures” to prevent water pollution or contamination. An Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water committee (JWC) was established with unanimity required for all decisions. Yet no dispute resolution mechanism exists so Israel can unilaterally approve or reject all water and wastewater treatment requests and it does. As a result, new facilities haven’t been built despite an urgent need for them.

Besides adequate funding, approval procedures are prolonged and complicated because of environmental and other considerations. In addition, Israel’s approval is needed, and a large land area (away from residential neighborhoods) is required for an initial facility with plenty of room for expansion.

Years elapse with no resolution, so today the Palestinian Water Authority says Israel is currently delaying or obstructing 140 water and wastewater projects. For example:

• in 1996, a Tulkarm plan was submitted; yet it took until 2006 before the JWC agreed on an Area C location – under Israeli control on matters relating to land, planning and building; in December 2008, the Civil Administration’s International Organizations Desk chief recommended that “establishment of the facility in Area A (under Palestinian control) be examined, and that care be taken that it does not extend into Area C;” the project is now in jeopardy;
• in 1997, the JWC received a West Nablus plan; the Civil Administration twice demanded a location change, and it took until May 2008 for construction permits to be issued, yet nothing so far has proceeded; another East Nablus proposal was cancelled because of delays in obtaining approval; and
• in 1999, a West Ramallah proposal was submitted to the JWC; it was approved, but the Civil Administration demanded a location change because it was close to the Separation Wall’s planned route; a final plan has yet to be introduced for approval.

From 1996-1999, Israel required Palestinian facilities to treat settlements’ wastewater, way beyond their proposed capacity and something the PA won’t do because it would grant legitimacy to the settlements in violation of international law.

Israel creates other obstacles as well. In 2002, the Civil Administration required a proposed Hebron plant to meet advanced treatment standards, not demanded for settlement facilities or in Israel until 2005 under a plan for gradual implementation through 2015 because of the cost involved.

Israeli policy exploits the situation to its advantage. It treats some Palestinian wastewater flowing into Israel but charges the PA for doing it. Also ignored is a proper Palestinian water treatment solution and the contamination that results.

Consequences of Neglecting Wastewater Treatment in the West Bank

Settlers rely on Israel’s water supply system with no problems. Palestinians, however, suffer from pollution and a shortage of safe drinking water. Also, using wastewater for irrigation contaminates crops and endangers human health. Over time, land fertility is also diminished.

A 2002 UN Environmental Program report showed that raw sewage polluted West Bank Palestinian water sources. A 1998 Al-Quds University study of the Jordan Valley, Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm found one-third of samples with higher than WHO recommended nitrate levels. A 1999 Bethlehem University investigation showed over 99% of 400 spring water samples with high concentrations of coliform bacteria requiring removal before use. Later studies revealed similar problems — exacerbated because most settlements are on ridges and hilltops so their wastewater flows down to nearby Palestinian communities. The problem is extremely serious.

Three years ago it was exacerbated when the Elon Moreh settlement facility broke down causing wastewater to flow toward nearby Palestinian villages. Elon Moreh processed very toxic effluent from leather and meat-processing plants containing extremely high acidity levels able to cause burns on contact. Lab analysis confirmed “a grave sanitation risk to humans and animals (likely to) cause loss of life (and an) environmental and health disaster.”

The wastewater destroyed crops and olive trees for up to 30 meters on either side of its channel. Azmut farmers couldn’t sell their contaminated crops, and a severe mosquito problem and powerful stench caused allergies, dizziness and headaches among nearby village residents. A woman called life their “terrible…as if we’re living in a swamp. We can’t even eat our food.”

Other villages were also affected the same way. In 2008, B’Tselem demanded that action be taken to stop this. Only then did the Municipal Environmental Association of Samaria take any remediation measures that diminished but didn’t eliminate the problem.

Similar conditions exist throughout West Bank areas, exacerbated by growing settler populations and scant attention to Palestinian needs and welfare. Ariel is one of the largest settlements, yet its facility experiences frequent breakdowns. In 2006, the Ministry of Health reported that it was non-functional, and in 2008, the Civil Administration’s environmental protection officer told B’Tselem that the “facility can’t handle the load.”

It stopped operating the same year, and ever since, raw sewage has flowed into the Shilo stream, a tributary of the Yarkon River, then southwest toward the town of Salfit and west to Brukin and Kafr a-Dik villages. Despite its best efforts, Salfit Local Council member, Dr. Bassam Madi, said infectious diseases occur as well as damaged crops, livestock, and the virtual extinction of deer, rabbits and foxes once common to the area. Natural vegetation like hyssop also disappeared.

Until 2004, the Ministry of Environmental Protection turned a blind eye to the situation. It then merely warned of a Water Law violation. Enforcement measures were frozen after agreement was reached to build a collection pipeline to move Ariel’s wastewater to the Dan Bloc Wastewater Treatment Plant in Israel. Its estimated completion date is 2011, but so far no financing has been arranged, and the pipeline’s planner said the project “would take years” once final approval is gotten.

Wadi Fukin village is gravely harmed by Betar Illit settlement wastewater. About 20 meters above its fields, the Housing Ministry built a facility that directs effluent to the Soreq treatment site. Frequent breakdowns occur because a growing settlement population overtaxes the facility causing spillage into Wadi Fukin fields, including ones near the village center that produce a severe stench.

A Bethlehem University study showed that test samples from nine adjacent springs contained coliform bacteria concentrations and high nitrate levels. It concluded that the water was unfit to drink. Betar Illit settlement assumes no responsibility for the problem, and until mid-2008, did nothing minimally to address it. It remains a major problem

Israeli Breaches of International Law

Israel is a serial offender, including repeated violations of its obligations as an occupying power. Its failure to address wastewater issues is one of many examples, and B’Tselem puts it this way:

Neglect in treating wastewater in the West Bank infringes the rights of Palestinians to (clean) water and sanitation and their right to gain a livelihood from their agricultural crops.

Fourth Geneva’s Article 56 requires an occupier to “ensur(e) and (maintain), with the cooperation of national and local authorities…public and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics.”

Israel is obligated to assure safe water sources to ensure “public order and safety” and protect the population from harm. The High Court of Justice interprets this to mean a duty to take “all means necessary to ensure growth, change and development (and do what’s essential through) investments and carrying out long-term plans for the benefit of the local population (even if they remain in place) after the military government ends.” The Court also held that this duty “applies to the varied living requirements of the inhabitants, including medical needs, sanitation…and other needs that people require in modern society.”

In 1966 for the first time, the UN’s Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) defined clean drinking water as a right, given that it’s essential to life, health and well-being. So do other UN Conventions, including the 1981 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In 2006, the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion of Human Rights adopted CESCR recommendations for safe drinking water and sanitation. They require nations to prevent water pollution and assure that all persons have the “right to access adequate and safe sanitation that protects public health and the environment.” UNICEF also calls access a “basic human right” to assure health and human dignity. The UN 2000 Millennium Declaration affirmed a goal of halving by 2015 the world population without these fundamental essentials, and a UN Human Rights Council 2008 resolution, among others, included the same declaration.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Of the West Bank’s 2.8 million Palestinians, wastewater for over two million of them goes untreated, the result of Israel’s willful neglect in violation of international humanitarian law and its obligation as an occupier. As a result, the Nature and Parks authority warns that “sooner or later, critical damage will be caused to Israeli and Palestinian water sources.”

The Palestinian Applied Research Institute Jerusalem calls neglect “a grave environmental threat,” and a UN Environmental Program delegation said “urgent action” is needed to address the problem. Israel remains unresponsive to a worrisome situation, and its growing settlement population exacerbates it.

It’s essential for a joint Israeli-Palestinian initiative to address it responsibly, but Israel must take the lead. B’Tselem puts it this way:

So long as Israel is an occupying power and its “settlements remain, all their wastewater (and that of Palestinians) must be treated in accordance with treatment standards (applied) inside Israel, and the law must (strictly) be enforced against polluting settlements.” In cooperation with each other, remediation projects must be undertaken to serve both sides, and “ultimately…Palestinians, if the settlements are evacuated,” as international law so states.

Of all our natural resources water has become the most precious. By far the greater part of the earth’s surface is covered by its enveloping seas, yet in the midst of this plenty we are in want. By a strange paradox, most of the earth’s abundant water is not usable for agriculture, industry, or human consumption because of its heavy load of sea salts, and so most of the world’s population is either experiencing or is threatened with critical shortages.

– Rachel Carson

Around the world, scarcity of potable water is becoming a portentous matter. Admonishing phrases like “water is the next oil,” and “wells are running dry” have percolated their way into the collective lexicon of global issues. Rivers and streams are vanishing, and the desiccation and depletion of entire watersheds and aquifers is increasing the world over. Desperately seeking a reason for the withering away of drinkable water and the silencing of gushing streams, it becomes obvious that there is not one sole factor contributing to this dire situation, but many. Global warming and climate change, industrial modes of production, dam construction, and water privatization all conduce to the problem of water scarcity.

The supply of freshwater on this planet is only 2.5 percent of the world’s total water. Considering the amount that is frozen up in ice and snow, roughly one percent is left for human use. Water consumption has grown twice as fast as the world’s population.

We are often told that we’ve exceeded our carrying capacity here on Earth (or are arriving at that calamitous denouement of the story of civilization in no time soon), and water – a finite resource – is being exacerbated at an alarming rate in tandem to population growth. It is very true that we’ve reached our carrying capacity, this planet cannot healthily sustain so many people living in current arrangements; it cannot support our lifestyle. But anyone who has closely studied the conflation of civilization, agriculture, and Capitalism understand well that human population booms are endemic to the aforementioned social formula. And in all honesty, to blame the problem of water scarcity upon an increasing global population is sneaky as hell. Ninety percent of human water use is for industrial purposes – 70 percent being used exclusively for large-scale agriculture and factory farming. If the dominant economic mode were to shift gears, to one that wasn’t defined globally, and predicated upon the funneling of resources to the producer rather than the community, the availability of water would be much different. If community-scale projects and strict environmental protection policies were implemented to define our economic behavior, then I’m pretty sure billions of people would not be facing such dire water related plights. However, in a world where market theory has greatly influenced the dominant praxis of economic intercourse, the privatization of the planet’s water has been pitched as the panacea that will solve our troubles.

Such pernicious tropes like “blue gold” used to describe water have motivated many corporations to privatize water with much alacrity. Here in Vermont I quickly got wind of the contentions surrounding the privatization and commercialization of water. Like sprouting cowslips that push their way through marshy soils in the springtime, private water-bottling operations were popping up left and right along Vermont’s pristine springs. These enterprises have set up shop with the intent to siphon the state’s fresh water from age-old springs and commercialize it.

There was the New Jersey resident, East Montpelier landowner, and chief executive officer of Montpelier Spring Water Company, Daniel Antonovich, who initially pitched forward the Montpelier Spring Water Company in May of 2007 to the East Montpelier Selectboard.

Antonovich envisions constructing a subterranean pipeline that will transport the water over several miles from the East Montpelier site to a bottling factory (yet to be erected) alongside U.S. Highway 2 in Montpelier, where the water will then be bottled, capped – ready for shipment, and consigned to its mercantile fate.

Following the proposal, many citizens became skeptical and concerned that the Montpelier Spring Water Co. could follow suit of other companies and someday sell out to a larger corporation that would aggrandize the water-bottling operation. This had already occurred in Randolph, Vermont with Vermont Pure; ClearSource, being a leviathan in the commercial bottled-water industry, bought them out.

ClearSource has a history of violating their traffic violations, as well as transgressing their sewage discharge limits. According to its permit, ClearSource’s sewage discharge is restricted to 2,960 gallons of sewage on a daily basis. Currently, ClearSource pumps out 8,000 gallons a day – a considerable decrease from 23,000 gallons only a few years ago – but still, ClearSource is over its limit, and well – rightly so, any company that can’t tolerate administrative precepts implemented to carefully manage human ordure scores a big fat zero with concerned citizens.

In accordance with their permit, ClearSource must maintain no more than 120 roundtrips per day for all vehicles into the bottling plant. As a response to the guidelines, ClearSource’s CEO Jay Land stated that if the company were to suddenly follow this requirement “the result would be a mass layoff this morning in the plant,” and that, “I’d have to tell [employees] that if you go home for lunch you have to stay home…But I will not do that to the people in the plant.” Geez Land, ever think about offering incentives for carpooling, or having your employees pack a lunch? Fortunately, ClearSource “has fallen upon difficult economic times” and had to shut down their bottling plant in Randolph, VT in early May ‘09. Good riddance.

In October of 2007, Ice River Springs (aka Aquafarms and Aquafarms 93) one of Canada’s paramount “private label bottled-water companies” announced that it would be opening two new bottling plants in the U.S., one of those plants being constructed on the New Hampshire/Vermont border in Claremont, New Hampshire. The company further announced that 75 percent of its water would be extracted from a Vermont source in Stockbridge, Vermont, while the remainder would be retrieved from Claremont’s municipal water supply, alongside manufacturing the plastic bottles at the plant.

According to an article titled “Ice River Springs/Aquafarms 93 Exposed” at polarisinstitute.org “…the company locates plants in small rural communities that are desperate for economic development and jobs…” and that “…Ice River Springs uses paid lobbyists to put pressure on politicians to push for or against policies that effect [sic] the company’s profit.” I thought of all the other water privatization injustices, sanctioned in tandem by the IMF, World Bank, and transnational corporations like Nestle™, Bechtel™, Suez™ and Coca-Cola™, ad nauseam, that have occurred throughout the world in places such as Belize, Buenos Aires, Atlanta, Georgia, Manila in the Philippines, Cochabamba, Bolivia, Jakarta, Indonesia, Nelspruit, South Africa, and The United Kingdom. The article goes on to expose that Ice River maintains a plant located in Morganton, North Carolina, an area of the state suffering from one of the worst drought conditions ever recorded, and that it hasn’t curtailed its production and has made no indications that it will be doing so.

The precipitating trend of privatizing and commercializing Vermont’s freshwater is a microcosm of a larger corporate zeitgeist to seize control of much of the world’s fresh water.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 1.2 billion people worldwide go without access to clean drinking water, and approximately 2.5 billion people don’t have access to “adequate sanitation services.” Over five million – mostly children in Africa and Asia – die annually from preventable, water-related diseases. The following countries (population provided) consume only contaminated water: Sudan (12.3 million); Venezuela (5 million); Zimbabwe (2.7 million); Tunisia (2.1 million), and Cuba (1.2. million).

Proponents of water privatization argue that privatization of water in developing nations, where millions are subjected to abject poverty, would be a boon, delivering clean water for drinking and sanitation to many who go without. Conversely, many posit that these nations are not equipped to negotiate contracts and the poor bear the brunt of fee increases. The ensuing information will corroborate the latter allegations.

In 1997, the people of Bolivia did not choose to privatize their water – it was forced upon them. Bechtel’s subsidiary, Aguas del Tunari, along with the Abengoa Corporation of Spain, went into Bolivia, enforced a forty-year contract that privatized much of their fresh water, and not soon after, rate increases quickly doubled and tripled for most of the poor water users. The private investment relied stringently on market-rate pricing. According to Jim Shultz, in an article for The Nation on January 28, 2005 titled “The Politics of Water in Brazil,” the cost of water and sewage hookup, in El Alto, was more than half a year’s income for those making minimum wage.

The contract was so draconian that protest broke out in the streets of Cochabamba, the people demanding an immediate rescinding of the water contract. The protest led to martial law to save the companies’ contract, which led to the death of a teenage boy, and the wounding of more than a hundred people. Over the course of five years in Bolivia, there have been two citizen revolts decrying the privatization of their water. Bechtel’s contract was indeed cancelled, but in 2001 Bechtel filed suit against the Bolivian government, claiming they were entitled to $25 million in compensation for the loss of future profits.

By the end of 2000, more than 93 countries worldwide had partially privatized water or wastewater services. The larger the company, the more control. According to research done by Elizabeth Brubaker at the Energy Probe Research Foundation, at the largest scale, private water companies construct, own, and run water systems around the globe, raking in revenues of more than $30 billion – excluding revenue from the sales of bottled water. Most of this money does not make it back into the communities, but is rather transferred to the transnationals.

The largest players in water privatization are two French transnationals: Veolia Environment (owned by media conglomerate Vivendi) and Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux whose water and wastewater businesses are run by its subsidiary Ondeo (I’m sure you can find the CEOs’ names and home addresses if you reconnoiter hard enough on the Internet …to send them letters, silly). These two companies have interests in water projects in over 120 countries and provide to roughly 100 million people. Suez alone is active in more than 100 countries, and has become the second largest overseer of municipal systems in the U.S. – right behind American Water Works.

In 1993, Suez and Buenos Aires consummated a privatization deal (lauded by the World Bank); over the years the results were: drastic increases in consumer water prices; more than 95 percent of the city’s sewage dumped into the Rio del Plata river, to name but a couple. In 1998, Atlanta, Georgia signed a 20-year, $428 million contract with United Water, a Suez subsidiary. The results? Rate increases of sewer bills – 12 percent annually. According to a report procured by Public Citizen, the company also charged “an extra $37.6 million for additional service authorizations, capital repair, and maintenance costs.” The denizens of Atlanta paid about $16 million of these costs, and then an additional $1 million to hire investigators to verify United Water’s reports. Which turned out to be fishy. How’s that for venality – as if selling people water isn’t enough of a depraved iniquity.

As for abroad, the U.K. has used a large private system since the late 80s. A 1994 study purported to show rates of dysentery ascending in a majority of the urban areas. And according to the Public Citizen report, in 1998, “the major water companies in the U.K. were ranked as the second, third, and fourth-worst polluters.” And, “…ten water companies were prosecuted a total of 260 times between 1989 and 1997.”

Other noted effects of water privatization include: Improper protection of water quality; ecological destruction of downstream habitat; failure to protect public ownership of water and water rights; wasted water and neglect of conservation; and the transfer of assets of local communities to transnationals.

Despite corporate claims (which are fallacious beyond a doubt), the privatizing of water heavily increases the price of water. According to foodandwaterwatch.org, “International corporations can easily expect to make a 20 percent to 30 percent margin of profit from investment in water service… In 2006, Veolia made a consolidated net income of €759 million (nearly $1.12 billion), according to its 2006 annual report. In addition, 35 percent of Veolia’s total revenue came from water, with 10 percent from North America,” and “In the same year Suez earned a gross operating income of €7,083 million (nearly $10.38 billion), and RWE had a net income of €3,847 million (almost $5.66 billion). Some €689 million ($1.02 billion) of RWE’s EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) came from its water division, known as U.S. water provider American Water.” All of this money is funneled out of the community and into the pockets of the shareholders. There is virtually no case in which the privatizing of water has benefited everyone in a specific community. Kendra Okonski, editor of The Water Revolution, observed, “In most poor countries today, governments perpetuate water scarcity – which harms both people and the environment. They fail to provide water to the poor, but provide massive subsidies for water use by vested interests, such as big landowners.”

Conflicts over water issues arise as well. Along the Tigris and Euphrates River System, the countries of Iran, Iraq, and Syria face problems. As early as 1974 Iraq mobilized troops along the Syrian border, threatening to destroy Syria’s al Thawra dam along the Euphrates. In India, Arundhati Roy claims, “…over the last fifty years in India alone big dams have displaced more than thirty-three million people.” And according to the World Bank’s “Water Resources Strategy,” the World Bank will continue its policy of funding big dams.

In 1992, Hungary and Czechoslovakia took a dispute over Danube River water divisions and dam construction to the International Court of Justice. Other conflicts include disputes between: North and South Korea, Israel and Palestine, and Egypt and Ethiopia, to name a handful.
Dams, big or small, are deleterious to entire riparian ecosystems, disrupting sediment flow and fish populations, alongside uprooting people from their communities. They must go. There are over 75,000 dams, most inoperable, within the continental U.S. alone. If we were to take down a dam-a-day, it would take over 215 years. Meanwhile, salmon, steelhead, and trout are disappearing at an inexorable rate. For the Coho salmon, the apocalypse has already begun.

As for climate change and the latter’s effect on the world’s water systems, warmer climates will conduce to the desiccation of Himalayan glaciers as soon as 2035, as claimed by many reports. These glaciers are the sources of Asia’s largest river systems, i.e. Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, and the Yellow. Roughly 2.4 billion people live in the drainage basin of the Himalayan Rivers. Much trepidation presides over these folks with the morbid knowledge of likely being inundated by glacial melt, and the subsequent disappearance of their sacred, nascent glaciers.

Australia, too, faces desperate conditions in the near future. As a result of an epic drought, there is severe ecological damage done to the Murray-Darling basin, which provides for 40 percent of the country’s agricultural produce. In the opinion of environmentalist Tim Flannery, unless there are drastic changes, Perth (home of my former bands’ record label – I should give Cam, the owner of Hidden Shoal Records, a call and see how everything is going for him, water-wise) could become the world’s first “ghost metropolis” – virtually no water to support its population.

I recently had a chat with local environmentalist, Annette Smith from Vermonter’s for a Clean Environment (VCE), over the issues of water privatization, and the reprehensible bottled-water industry. She explained to me that “large extractions of water, the size at which commercial bottled-water companies operate, can taper stream channels, alter temperatures fish rely upon for their life cycles, and can expend aquifers and other nearby water sources.

“Furthermore, the impact goes far beyond the actual water extraction.” Smith explained that, “the plastic bottles have their environmental impacts as well. For one, the plastic bottles contain phthalates, which are chemical compounds that are added to plastics to increase their flexibility. Phthalates have been known to be culpable for organ damage, adverse hormonal activity, and birth defects.”

Plastic is a polymer, which is a very complex molecule. When plastic is disposed of in a landfill, it takes thousands upon thousands of years for that polymer to break down. In the U.S. approximately 60-70 million plastic water bottles are discarded every day.

The industrial process of manufacturing plastic bottles is very intensive as well. It uses the equivalent of four pints of water to manufacture one plastic bottle. A quote taken from the Chicago Tribune pretty much sums up a brief but comprehensive analysis of the water-bottle industry’s uses: “The 1.5 million barrels of crude oil used each year to manufacture plastic water bottles in the U.S. could fuel 100,000 cars for a year [or just stay in the ground and mitigate our military involvement in the Middle East]. Thousands of tons of greenhouse gases are emitted transporting bottled water around the world. Just 23 percent of all plastic bottles are recycled, meaning 52 billion end up in landfills or littered.”

Did you know that there is a trash vortex in the Pacific Ocean larger than the continental United States, and that there is now more plastic by weight than plankton?

Phytoplankton populations are in inexorable decline.

Whale populations are in inexorable decline.

This is what I do know: People manufacture plastic while sea otters choke to death on polyethylene rings from beer six-packs. People buy plastic while nylon nets strangle the lives out of great gulls. People discard plastic into the landbases and oceans while plastics get lodged in sea turtles – killing them. Fulmars wash ashore, lifeless, their stomachs distended with plastic. Whales, too, have been found dead along shorelines, autopsies revealing stomachs bloated with plastics.

As we’re all aware global warming is a consequence of green house gas emissions, especially CO2 emissions, and the water-bottling industry clearly isn’t helping the situation. I was curious to hear what Smith had to say about the impact global warming will have on watersheds. Her response was sharp: “Drought is the equalizer, because you can have water extractions that do not seem to be having an impact, but in drought the impacts can turn a neighborhood from barely having enough water to having no water at all.” I was beginning to see some irony here, as the song goes: “You don’t miss your water ‘til your well runs dry.”

Annette was also kind enough to forward me information she had retrieved herself when she attended a symposium at the Omega Institute in upstate New York in 2003, addressing the condition of the planet’s fresh water resources. The conference included some venerable and sagacious thinkers such as John Todd, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ralph Nader, Winona Hauter, Maude Barlow, and the prolific, left of center author, Kirkpatrick Sale. Annette was so impressed by Sale, that she attached a piece he had written following the conference. I have to concur with Annette, it is quite poignant and so I’d like to adduce an excerpt:

Of all the social and natural crises we humans [and nonhumans] face, the water crisis is the one that lies at the heart of our survival and that of our [sic] planet Earth. No region will be spared from the impact of this crisis which touches every facet of life, from the health of children to the ability of nations to secure food for citizens. Water supplies are falling while the demand is dramatically growing at an unsustainable rate.

In an article written last year by John Walters, in Montpelier’s The Bridge, as a response to Montpelier Spring Water Co.’s proposal “…skeptics circulated a petition calling for a three-year moratorium on any large-scale withdrawal of East Montpelier – anything over 10,000 gallons a day.”
The idea of the petition began with the lone voice of East Montpelier resident, Carolyn Shapiro. She became outraged two years back after getting wind of the Montpelier Spring Water Co.’s proposal in a local paper that “covered a request from the fledgling water company for Montpelier City Council’s approval work in the city’s right-of-way.” She had harangued the selectboard for “not informing the public of the company’s application to the town and for not granting an information meeting after she presented the board with a petition signed by 60 East Montpelier residents.”

Eventually, after much public concern, the petition came under Article 15 at East Montpelier’s town meeting on March 4, 2008. Dean Hedges, the town water manager, opposed the moratorium, stating: “permitting by the State Agency of Natural Resources, Act 250 and oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would suffice enough to protect the town’s water.” The idea of leaving this issue exclusively in the hands of the state to be dealt with legally did not seem like the best of ideas, considering how much influence corporate lobbyists have over politicians. Moreso, I recalled Annette stating: “The Clean Water Act required Zero Discharge and we [the state] are not doing that at all. In Vermont, an attorney at ANR told me the other day that in his position it is legal to contaminate the groundwater under your site. I asked another attorney in private practice and he said no it isn’t.”

At the town meeting, Paul Earlbaum proposed an amendment to the moratorium, stating the selectboard and planning commission should “take all steps necessary to realize the intent of…a three-year and three-week prohibition on withdrawing water…for the purpose of allowing citizens adequate time to gather information.” The meeting adjourned and the amendment was passed. The citizens’ voices proved not only to be loud, but effective, and there seemed to be a realization that this was more than just a fight against private industry – it was about preserving Vermont’s pristine watershed.

As a result of East Montpelier’s victory, Vermont Natural Resources Council was inspired to push for legislation that would enact law making it so Vermont’s groundwater be mapped and accounted for; to much success, the initiative received a great response and a write-up in the New York Times.

However, the issues surrounding water access around the world still remains dire and demanding. Mexico City has sunk more than thirty feet into the ground due to their extracting from the underlying aquifer. Routine shutting off of taps has become compulsory as they are over 50 percent below their water table. The same conditions exist in Beijing and Shanghai, China, as well as in many regions of India, Africa and the Global South.

Between 1970 and 2000, virtually all vegetation of Madagascar’s highland plateau had been lost to deforestation for irrigation and agriculture. The endeavor transformed the country’s biomass into a wasteland. The detrimental effects are widespread erosion that produce heavily silted rivers that “run red;” the loss of ecosystems, and species driven to the brink of extinction; as well as the loss of fresh water, and coral reef reformations.

In California farmers are on strike because of drought conditions and lack of adequate water supply for agricultural purposes.

We’re told this is an issue that is commensurate with a growing global population. But the truth is, it is the result of social arrangements. Ninety percent of the use of water is for industrial agriculture and the commodification of nature, viz. for the industrial production of consumables and energies. Population growth is not responsible for the desiccation of fresh water as much as capitalism is, as much as industrial civilization is (it is self-evident that cities do not have a clean source of fresh water – fluoridation does not count, to find out why, go buy some rat poison at your local grocer and read the ingredient – there’s only one: sodium fluoride. Or better yet, see how long it takes for one of your friends to take a swim in the Hudson in the NY Bay area; I’ll give you a hint at how long it’ll take – unless s/he’s fucking bonkers, you’ll get well beyond quadruple-dog-dare).

If we want to preserve our freshwaters, it is imperative that our modes of production change radically, that the dams the world over come down – immediately, and by any means necessary; and that water is not viewed objectively as a catalyst for generating financial wealth, meaning no more commercial bottled water.

Every river, stream, and brook in the continental U.S. is tainted with carcinogenic material. There are approximately 41 million Americans drinking water that has traces of pharmaceuticals in it – in India the waters contain 150 times the highest levels of pharmaceutical contamination than in the U.S. The reasons for this abuse to our watersheds and freshwaters runs deep folks, but if we want to preclude further devastation we must act now, we must engender what the residents in East Montpelier had last year, this time on a global scale.

In April 2000, after weeks of civil disobedience and vehement protest in the streets, the president of Bolivia was forced by the popular upheaval to terminate the 40-year water privatization contract granted to Aguas del Tunari. This victory shows that if we align voices with actions, then community agency can direct what’s in our best interest, and that is to preserve the natural world – especially its freshwaters.

Here’s how The Sierra Club begins its discussion of mountaintop removal mining: “In places like Appalachia, mining companies blow the tops off mountains to reach a thin seam of coal and then, to minimize waste disposal costs, dump millions of tons of waste rock into the valleys below, causing permanent damage to the ecosystem and landscape.” That is a valley fill.

Then comes word—on October 18, 2008—that the Interior Department has “advanced a proposal that would ease restrictions on dumping mountaintop mining waste near rivers and streams, modifying protections that have been in place, though often circumvented, for a quarter-century.” This from a New York Times article, which continues: “The department’s Office of Surface Mining issued a final environmental analysis Friday on the proposed rule change, which has been under consideration for four years. It has been a priority of the surface mining industry … The proposed rule would rewrite a regulation enacted in 1983 that bars mining companies from dumping huge waste piles, known as “valley fills,” within 100 feet of any intermittent or perennial stream if the disposal affects water quality or quantity.”

Like any good American, after subconsciously blocking out the faint sounds of slave chains clinking and bull whips cracking, Uncle Sam’s first chore of the day is to check e-mail. No time for him to contemplate e-waste, now is there?

E-waste (discarded electronics and electrical products) has some potential in supplying secondary raw materials to keep the entire system afloat, when not properly treated properly it becomes a major source of carcinogens and toxins.

“A whole bouquet of heavy metals, semimetals and other chemical compounds lurk inside your seemingly innocent laptop or TV,” adds Jessika Toothman at HowStuffWorks.com. “E-waste dangers stem from ingredients such as lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, copper, beryllium, barium, chromium, nickel, zinc, silver and gold. Many of these elements are used in circuit boards and comprise electrical parts such as computer chips, monitors, and wiring.”

According to the EPA, in 2005, “used or unwanted electronics amounted to approximately 1.9 to 2.2 million tons. Of that, about 1.5 to 1.9 million tons were primarily discarded in landfills, and only 345,000 to 379,000 tons were recycled.”

Uncle Sam decides he wants eggs for breakfast and what Uncle Sam wants, Uncle Sam gets. Not even the din of doomed chickens can slow down this hungry man.

Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns has written a narrative of what a battery hen might say if it could speak human language. The narrative begins: “I am battery hen. I live in a cage so small I cannot stretch my wings. I am forced to stand night and day on a sloping wire mesh floor that painfully cuts into my feet. The cage walls tear my feathers, forming blood blisters that never heal. The air is so full of ammonia that my lungs hurt and my eyes burn and I think I am going blind. As soon as I was born, a man grabbed me and sheared off part of my beak with a hot iron, and my little brothers were thrown into trash bags as useless alive.”

Battery hens produce the vast majority of eggs you’ll find in your market.

With food now in his stomach, Uncle Sam joins the vast majority of Americans who take at least one form of pharmaceutical drug each day. Choosing to ignore the agonized screams of tortured animals, Uncle Sam gulps down his pills.

Aysha Z Akhtar, M.D., M.P.H., is a senior medical advisor and Jarrod Bailey, Ph.D., is a senior research consultant for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. “The more we study the relevance of animal tests, the more apparent their shortcomings become,” Akhtar and Bailey state in a Feb. 9, 2007 letter published in the British Medical Journal. “Even subtle physiological differences between humans and animals can manifest as profound differences in disease physiology and treatment effectiveness and safety. For example, numerous differences in spinal cord physiology and reaction to injury exist between species and even strains within a species. These differences likely contribute to the repeated failure of spinal cord treatments that have tested safe and effective in animals to translate into human benefit.”

“Results from animal tests are not transferable between species, and therefore cannot guarantee product safety for humans,” agrees Herbert Gundersheimer, M.D. “A major shift in our research paradigm is long overdue,” declare Akhtar and Bailey. “The move away from animal experiments toward more accurate methods of studying disease and intervention is scientifically superior and more ethical for humanity, as well as for animals.”

“Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: ’Because the animals are like us,’” writes Professor Charles R. Magel. “Ask the experimenters why it is morally OK to experiment on animals, and the answer is: ’Because the animals are not like us.’ Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.”

Uncle Sam’s medicine is washed down thanks to store-bought water. As he packs his water bottle in his work bag, he could swear a cruise missile has soared past his house but instead nods his head in disbelief.

“Americans buy 30 billion single-use water bottles every year, the majority of which end up in landfills,” writes Dominic Muren at TreeHugger.com. “In fact, 845 bottles end up in the land fill every second. All these water bottles are made from petroleum, and require petroleum to be shipped around the world. All that, and there’s no evidence that bottled water is any cleaner than tap-water.”

Catherine Clarke Fox of National Geographic adds: “But all those plastic bottles use a lot of fossil fuels and pollute the environment. In fact, Americans buy more bottled water than any other nation in the world, adding 29 billion water bottles a year to the problem. In order to make all these bottles, manufacturers use 17 million barrels of crude oil. That’s enough oil to keep a million cars going for twelve months. Imagine a water bottle filled a quarter of the way up with oil. That’s about how much oil was needed to produce the bottle.”

Tired of getting animal blood on his socks, Uncle Sam reaches for his leather shoes…courtesy of the $1.5-billion-and-100-million-animal-skins-per-year U.S. industry.

“Leather is not simply a slaughterhouse byproduct,” says animal issues columnist Carla Bennett. “It’s a booming industry and an important part of the slaughter trade, since skin accounts for approximately 50 percent of the total byproduct value of cattle.” Leather is also made from slaughtered horses, sheep, lambs, goats, and pigs. “When dairy cows’ production declines, for example, their skin is made into leather; the hides of their offspring, ‘veal’ calves, are made into high-priced calfskin,” adds Bennett. “Thus, the economic success of the slaughterhouse (and the factory farm) is directly linked to the sale of leather goods.”

Another tactic for procuring animal skins is hunting. Species such as zebras, bison, water buffaloes, boars, deer, kangaroos, elephants, eels, sharks, dolphins, seals, walruses, frogs, crocodiles, lizards, and snakes are murdered solely for their hides. These animals are often endangered or illegally poached—and death is rarely swift or painless. Alligators are clubbed with axes and hammers and may suffer for hours. Reptiles are skinned alive to achieve suppleness in the leather and may take days to die. Kid goats are boiled alive.

A clever diversionary tactic of leather makers is to label their products “biodegradable” while pointing out that synthetic versions are usually petroleum-based. However, says Sally Clinton in Vegetarian Journal, the tanning process acts to “stabilize the collagen or protein fibers so that they are no longer biodegradable.” In turn, the Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology explains, “On the basis of quantity of energy consumed per unit of product produced, the leather-manufacturing industry would be categorized with the aluminum, paper, steel, cement, and petroleum-manufacturing industries as a gross consumer of energy.” The primary reason for this is that over 95 percent of U.S. leather is chrome tanned. “All wastes containing chromium are considered hazardous by the EPA,” writes Clinton. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the incidence of leukemia among residents in an area surrounding one tannery in Kentucky was five times the national average. According to a study released by the New York State Department of Health, more than half of all testicular cancer victims work in tanneries.

Uncle Sam heads for his beloved SUV, trying his best to not only find his cell phone but also to avoid stepping on the thousands of dying frogs that litter his driveway.

The South American tree frogs’ population is declining and biologists are blaming global warming. These frogs, it seems, have the very un-froglike habit of basking in the hot sun (most frogs normally avoid prolonged exposure to light due to the risk of overheating and dehydration). According to a research team at the University of Manchester, “global warming is leading to more cloud cover in the frogs’ natural habitat. This, in turn, is denying them the opportunity to ’sunbathe’ and kill off fatal Chytrid fungal infections, leading to many species dying out.”

Andrew Gray, Curator of Herpetology at the Manchester Museum, says: “With a third of the world’s amphibians currently under threat it’s vitally important we do our utmost to investigate the reasons why they are dying out at such an alarming rate.”

Uncle Sam starts up the engine and plugs in his cell phone headset, ready for a drive’s worth of important, essential, and utterly crucial business calls…but how can he hear over the sorrowful primate calls echoing off the SUV’s interior?

Here’s how the United Nations describes it: “Columbite-tantalite—coltan for short—is a dull metallic ore found in major quantities in the eastern areas of Congo. When refined, coltan becomes metallic tantalum, a heat-resistant powder that can hold a high electrical charge.” Tantalum from coltan is used in consumer electronics products such as cell phones.

Why would the UN be involved in describing a component of your cell phone? Well, coltan is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an African nation besieged by a brutal civil war. The mining and sale of coltan is used by both sides in the conflict to fund their military mayhem. In addition, the UN explains: “In order to mine for coltan, rebels have overrun Congo’s national parks, clearing out large chunks of the area’s lush forests. In addition, the poverty and starvation caused by the war have driven some miners and rebels to hunt the parks’ endangered elephants and gorillas for food.” Within the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the number of eastern lowland gorillas has declined by 90% over the past 5 years, and only 3,000 now remain.

Uncle Sam (on the phone): “Yeah, I’m on my way. (pause) I’m fine. Just got a headache. So much damn background noise lately. (pause) Ah, stop your worrying. It’s all gonna be fine. What could possibly go wrong now that Obama is in charge?”

(To be continued?)

The liberal approach emphasizes ‘universal responsibility” for the destruction of the environment – rich and poor, mining companies and miners, factory owners and factory workers, auto manufacturers and drivers, governments and citizens, real estate speculators and slum dwellers. The liberal ecologists claim the negative consequences adversely affect everyone: “We all suffer from the destruction of the environment.”

The liberal approach to the development of Indian movements and politics follows a similar approach, using the non-class categories of ‘community’, ‘culture’ and religion, to discuss Indian social structure as a ‘homogeneous’ social phenomenon.

The Marxist approach to ecological destruction and Indian social movements focuses on the inequality of power and control over the means of production and destruction, unequal exposure to contamination in the workplace and neighborhoods, inequality in access to land and use of chemical fertilizers and herbicides and other contaminants and unequal access to state power. Marxists focus on the class structure, class inequalities and the class nature of the environmental disasters which take place. Marxists view ethnic and contemporary Indian movements, policies, leadership and relationships in relationship to the larger class system through the lens of class analysis. Marxists do not accept the liberal rhetoric and indigenous identity or ‘indigenista’ ideological assumption that Indian society is made up of homogeneous ‘communities’ bound together by harmonious undifferentiated ethnic interests without class divisions and conflicting class interests. Today, even more than in the past, the deepening penetration of capitalist expansion and market relations, capitalist and socialist ideology and political parties, imperialist funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) funded by US and European governments and the World Bank, have created class-polarized and divided Indian societies. ‘Communalism’ and communitarian ideology is the ideology of the rising Indian economic and political petit bourgeoisie articulated to subordinate the impoverished Indian peasantry to their struggle to share power with the established ‘European’ or mestizo bourgeoisie.

Case Studies

To demonstrate the validity and relevance of the class analysis approach to ecology and the Indian movements, it is essential to empirically examine concrete contemporary cases of major environmental issues and existing Indian movements.

We have chosen several cases of environmental disasters, which have large-scale, long-term negative impacts, which are familiar to world public opinion. These include: Fish depletion in the waters off Eastern Canada, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the world wide food crises and global warming.

Fish Depletion

Maritime scientists have published numerous studies documenting the catastrophic decline in fish stocks, the destruction of livelihood of millions of small-scale fishermen and the loss of maritime high protein food for tens of millions of poor people. The causes, according to liberal ecologists are ‘over-fishing’, ‘contamination; and state subsidies – without identifying the class character of those responsible.

Over-fishing is the result of the concentration and centralization of the fishing industry in large-scale capitalist enterprises, which operate massive factory ships with 3-mile drag nets that drag the bottom of the sea, indiscriminately destroying fish habitats and pulling in undersize fish thereby undermining the reproductive process.

Contamination of fishing waters is the result of large-scale fish farms, the massive use of chemical fertilizers and the run-off of animal waste which destroy the delicately balanced coastal water ecology, as well as oil spills by big petroleum and shipping companies.

State subsidies financed the growth of large fleets with high technology fishing gear, while state de-regulation policies, favored big fishing companies over the interests of the small local artisan fisherfolk. In summary, the world-wide depletion of fishing stock is the result of environmental conditions induced by the operation of the capitalist system – namely the concentration of fishing industry in a powerful capitalist class, subsidized and promoted the state under capitalist control.

Hurricane Katrina

In August 2006 Hurricane Katrina hurled winds of over 100 miles an hour through the Caribbean, hitting both Cuba and the Southern Gulf Coast of the United States, especially Louisiana and Mississippi. The consequences for the people of Cuba and those of the two southern states were vastly different: Several thousand poor, mostly black, United States citizens were killed, while in Cuba there were fewer than ten deaths. The difference in mortality was a product of the different social systems: Socialist Cuba has a highly organized and effective, centrally planned civil defense system which puts the highest priority in diagnosing, anticipating and mobilizing tens of thousands of civilian and military personnel and sending thousands of public buses and trucks to transport people and their farm animals to safety. The country is mobilized to prevent even a single Cuban death. In contrast, the capitalist United States government placed higher priority in creating a repressive political apparatus (Homeland Security) which failed to anticipate the impact of the storm, abandoned hundreds of thousands of low income residents to the raging storm surge and flood waters and provided inadequate mobilization of transport, water supplies and food for the destitute. The results were catastrophic. In the aftermath of the hurricane, Cuba gave highest priority to rebuilding the homes of the displaced people; whereas in the US, the capitalist state displaced the poor and rebuilt the urban landscape to suit the interests of multi-millionaire real estate speculators, commercial interests and the tourist elite.

While the hurricane was a ‘natural’ disaster, the unprecedented destruction in New Orleans was a consequence of the capitalist priorities in political repression (Homeland Security and the Patriot Act) over basic civil defense, commercial expansion and speculation over environmental safeguards and individual forced to survive on their own over state planning.

Food Crisis

Liberal ecologists argue that natural disasters, excess state intervention in the market and over exploitation of land by peasants and farmers are responsible for the ‘food crisis’, defined as ‘excess demand over supply’ leading to rising prices. Marxists argue that ‘free market’ policies have resulted in the bankruptcy of millions of food producing peasants and farmers, the concentration of landownership in the hands of giant agro-business consortiums which specialize in exports of staples, thus decreasing the production and increasing the price of food for local popular consumption.

Neoliberalism has accelerated the normal capitalist process of concentration and centralization of the means of agricultural production (land, fertilizers, marketing, farm machinery); the profit motive has led to agro-business converting land use from food for the people to the production of agricultural commodities (sugar and corn) for automobile fuel (ethanol).

The conversion of food to ethanol has led to a massive invasion of finance capital into agriculture, and the demise and destitution of peasants and small farmers, lowering the purchasing power of food and creating large-scale hunger.

The over-exploitation of land is the result of the expansion of agro-exporters and their displacement of peasants into precarious laborers. The high price of agricultural inputs and the low income of peasants producing in low production regions means that small producers have few financial resources to rejuvenate the productivity of their land. The ‘food crisis’ is a direct consequence of the expansion of capitalist agriculture which determined what is produced (supply), the target market (demand) and the cost of reproduction (the price of inputs/profits).

Global Warming

Liberal ecologists blame ‘human consumption’ of fossil fuel, the failure of state regulation, the private transport (automobiles) and manufacturing industries.

Class analysis provides a more comprehensive and specific diagnosis. In the first place, it was the capitalist owners of the auto-industry in control of state transport policy which destroyed public transportation, eliminating subsidies and lowering budgetary funding for electric light rail while channeling billions of dollars into highways, bridges and road maintenance for private vehicles. The massive increase in CO2 was a result of the power of privately owned automobile industry over publicly owned railroads. The widespread use of highly contaminating private auto was a result of advertising which promoted the purchase of big gas-guzzling automobiles depicting them as status symbols. The bigger the car, the higher the profit, the greater the contamination.

Private and public manufacturers who operate on the market principle of higher production, lower costs and higher returns have been the driving force of industrial pollution. It is not manufacturing per se that leads to pollution; technology, productive and organizational processes exist which can substantially reduce or eliminate pollution, but they increase immediate costs and lower profit. State policies, which deregulate control over pollution levels, are the result of capitalist power. The problem of climate warmth is not the result of individual car owners or workers in polluting factories. The responsibility of pollution and high CO2 levels leading to climate change rests in the capitalist class and its state, which own and ‘regulate’ the means of pollution.

Indian Movement in Class Perspective

Liberal writers on ‘Indian movements’ and ‘Indian communities’ wrongfully conceptualize them as homogeneous social phenomena, understating the degree of capitalist penetration, class differentiation and subsequent political polarization. Liberal writers adopt a simplistic bi-polar view in which homogeneous classless ‘Indian communities’ are compared to an undifferentiated ‘white society’. On the basis of this classless conception, liberals argue in favor of so-called ‘communitarian’ politics in which micro-projects, based on class collaboration in which religion and tradition are treated as ‘bonds’ that link upwardly mobile petit bourgeois Indian political and business leaders to the mass of landless and impoverished subsistence peasants.

The Marxist analysis is based on several key theoretical assumptions and historical cases backed by empirical observations.

Capitalist penetration of Indian communities deepened pre-existing social differences, leading to the formation of multi-class society. A small group of Indians become ‘intermediaries’ between the masses of poor Indians and the local, regional, national and international markets. These intermediaries, speaking in the name of the ‘Indian communities’, in fact, became the owners of transport (trucks), local commercial buyers and sellers, moneylenders, commercial farmers. Rather than sending their children to public schools taught in regional indigenous languages, their children went to private schools taught in Spanish in order to become professionals, politicians, lawyers and heads of NGOs specializing in ‘indigenous’ issues and linked to foreign foundations, government agencies and the World Bank.

These linkages between the upwardly mobile Indian petit bourgeois with national and international capital were not without tension, conflict and competition. Two sets of conflict emerged: 1) At one level between the mass of impoverished Indians exploited by agro-business through violent dispossession of communal/individual lands, exploitation of semi-serf (and even semi-slave) and wage labor and repression by the capitalist state; 2) at another level, the rising Indian petit bourgeois competed and confronted the mestizo/European national and international ruling class, which imposed limits on their access to economic resources, finance, credit, markets and land and limited and marginalized their political role. The goal of the bourgeois Indian elite was to share power with the ‘white’ oligarchy, not to overthrow them. Evo Morales provided the exact formula for class collaboration by declaring his intention to interact with the oligarchs as ‘partners not bosses’. To open the doors to social mobility and sharing of wealth and power, the marginalized petit bourgeois Indian minority needed organized mass power to threaten, pressure and force political negotiations with the intransigent ruling class. The politics of the Indian social movements reflect the dual class basis of Indian society: a revolutionary impoverished peasant mass base and an electoral-reformist petit bourgeois leadership. Political influence and government office had two different meanings for each: For the Indian masses it meant a comprehensive integral land reform, public ownership on banking, trade and strategic economic sectors; for the petit bourgeois Indian it meant collaboration with the ‘productive’ agro-business sector and distribution of marginal, less fertile public lands, profit sharing between the Indian/Mestizo elite in the private sector and foreign-owned extractive sectors.

The class differentiation of Indian society and the overt and covert conflicting interests became clearer with the electoral advances of the Indian parties in Ecuador and Bolivia.

Ecuador: 2000-2003

In 2000, the Ecuadorian Indian movement (CONAIE) played a leading role in the overthrow of the bourgeois government of Jamil Mahuad. Three years later, in 2003, the Indian political party, Pachacuti, together with CONAIE formed an electoral alliance with a retired military officer, Lucio Gutierrez, and won the presidency. The ascendant Indian petit bourgeois leaders gained several ministries and many lesser positions under Gutierrez, including the Foreign Ministry and Agriculture. Within a year, the Gutierrez regime proceeded to privatize the oil fields, repress labor, defend and extend support to large agro-business exporters, foreign MNCs and banks and sign an intrusive security pact with the US. Pachacuti leaders in the government were forced to resign from office; CONAIE lost significant membership and was severely demoralized and fragmented. The mass of poor Indians felt betrayed by the political deals their petit-bourgeois leaders had made with the oligarchs.

Bolivia: 2003-2005

Between 2003-2005 the Indian movement formed with factory workers, unemployed and informal workers of the city slums and militant miners to overthrow two bourgeois regimes: Sanchez de Losada (2003) and Carlos Mesa (June 2005). In both uprisings the petit bourgeois leadership of the Indian-led electoral part, MAS, or ‘Movement to Socialism’, played no role in the mass struggle. Instead they intervened to block a revolutionary transformation, imposing a neoliberal substitute (Carlos Mesa) in 2003 and a caretaker bourgeois regime (Rodriguez) in July 2005. Evo Morales, his party MAS and his followers in the Indian social movements channeled most activity into electoral politics culminating in his successful electoral campaign for the presidency. The social class, property and income inequalities between the ‘white European’ ruling class and the Indian majority in Bolivia has remained intact. What did change was the social inequalities within the Indian society as a whole new strata of former Indian social movement (NGO) leaders received second level government positions and subsidies for restraining and channeling their followers into supporting the Morales government. Numerous petit bourgeois Indian/mestizo lower level professionals occupied government offices and rose in wealth and influence. The mass of Indian peasants were demobilized from the streets and re-mobilized according to the tactical needs of the Morales’ regime as it negotiated with the big bourgeoisie. Morales’ accommodation of the traditional ruling class led to their rapid recovery of power following the insurrection of May/June 2005. It did not lead to an agreement with the ruling class to ‘share power’ with the ‘Indian President’ Morales. The issue was not inequality of land ownership, which was never questioned by the governing MAS regime: 100 ‘European’ families still owned 80% of the arable land after 3 years of Morales’ ‘Indian presidency’. The question was one of sharing political power, state revenues and a recognition of co-government between the ‘flexible’ (often bent over) government of an Indian petit bourgeois leader and the ‘intransigent’ (thoroughly racist and brutal) European big bourgeoisie. It became a struggle between a petit-bourgeois Indian ‘liberal democracy’ and an oligarchic ‘fascist’ European regional government and middle class social movements.

Faced with fascist threats to eliminate political freedoms, liberal racial equality (constitutional citizen rights), access to individual social mobility and local autonomy and right to collective organization, the Indian peasants and working class masses overwhelmingly backed the liberal Morales regime against the advance of the fascist ruling oligarchs. As a result, the real divergence of class interests between the property-less and impoverished Indian masses and the upwardly mobile pro-capitalist Indian petit bourgeois professionals and leaders were subordinated to the common struggle against the racially exclusive fascist big capitalist regional power bloc.

Clearly the case studies of Ecuador and Bolivia demonstrate that ‘communitarianism’ is an ideology of the rising Indian petit bourgeois eager to undermine an intensive intra-Indian class struggle. The defining reality of Indian society in Bolivia and Ecuador is that it is class divided – one that poses a continual tension and conflict between a petit bourgeoisie struggling with the larger capitalist society to join the elite and share power and a mass of impoverished Indians without propert or influence over state policy. In summary: There are two class struggles, which are intertwined, one led by the petit bourgeois Indian professionals to consolidate a liberal democracy backed by the masses mystified by religious and cultural symbolism and another led by independent, downwardly mobile, class conscious Indian workers and peasants against both the European ruling class and their own Indian petit bourgeois leaders.

Conclusion

Our discussion suggests that both the ecology and Indian movements are not ideologically or socially homogeneous. Underneath the veneer of common goals against ecological destruction and exploitation of indigenous peoples are two diametrically contrasting ideologies – liberalism and Marxism – based on competing and conflicting social interests and political strategies. Marxist class analysis highlights the centrality of property ownership, specifically the class nature of the ownership of the means of production and control over state power as central to understanding the destruction of the environment and the complex politics of Indian society. We reject the notion of a ‘classless’ approach promoted by liberal ecologists and ideologues of Indian communitarianism as intellectually limiting and politically disastrous. These cannot create a sustainable environment and cannot provide the material basis for the social liberation of the poor and Indian majorities in Latin America. Ecology and Indian liberation are essentially and inextricable part of the class struggle.

California has spared no expense to either taxpayers or natural ecosystems to attain its status as the most hydrologically altered landmass on the planet. It would surprise few that California was built on gold, greed, extraction, depletion, extinction, dubiously acquired large-landed semi-desert agricultural empires, well-gifted railroad land grants fueling speculative growth, and highly subsidized stolen water—all comprising a tunnel vision for overextended populations and infinite growth in a world utterly finite.

The incomprehensible vulnerability of California’s over-reaching population centers (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose), the projected urban expansion of the Central Valley, and the weight of climate-warming models leaves one haunted by civilization’s lack of respect for a river’s entitlement to its water and the food systems that it naturally perpetuates.

There’s only so much natural wealth covering the 158,302 square miles of California’s ten hydrologic regions. When a region overextends its local resources, it must take from another. More than water is diverted; it drains the very wealth of the food chains these waters support in aquatic, terrestrial, and ocean basins.

With 200 million acre-feet (MAF) of average precipitation spreading over 100 million acres containing 450 known groundwater basins and draining on average 71 MAF of runoff through 20,000 miles of rivers and streams, California has only 1,900 river miles legally protected from dams and diversions. All but one major river remains dam-free, the Smith River on the upper north coast.

About 42 MAF of the state’s runoff is captured and diverted through six major systems of reservoirs and aqueducts. This massive infrastructure artificially waters the coastal region from the North Bay to San Diego, and the Sacramento Valley through the San Joaquin Valley into the Tulare Basin, the Mojave Desert, and the southernmost Imperial and Coachella valleys.

Before the Spanish arrived in 1769, there were only twelve large natural lakes in California—Lake Tahoe, Lower Klamath, Goose, Tule, Honey, Eagle, Clear, Mono, Owens, Kern, Buena Vista, and Tulare Lake. Today the latter four are devoid of original wildlife, having been dewatered for agriculture. Tulare Lake, a once-thriving ecosystem in the lower San Joaquin Valley, was four times the area of Lake Tahoe. Today, 1,200 non-federal dams and 181 large federal dams with their reservoirs temporarily dominate a contrived oasis that is doomed by sediment, evaporation, the force of time, the laws of nature, and global warming.

These numerous artificial lakes defy the balance between natural surface water stores and underground stores. In nature, 70% of the fresh water circulating in the hydrologic cycle is stored underground and a combined total of .017% for lakes, rivers, and land-locked seas. Underground storage is free from evaporation, siltation, and storage cost (both economically and environmentally).

Before European contact, underground glacial water stores were estimated at 1.3 billion acre-feet—the entire California landmass under thirteen feet of water. This now has been overdrafted to 850 MAF. Like oil, the remaining supply will be extinguished in less than a hundred years. One out of four Californians rely totally on groundwater, and nearly three-quarters of a billion acre-feet of that groundwater once lay under the Central Valley. Continual overdrafts in the region have caused the landmass to subside as much as thirty feet, yet the aquifer remains a major water source for agricultural production.

Five million acres of Central Valley wetlands—nature’s food bank, filtration system, and flood control mechanism—once brimmed with life including half a million Tule elk and sixty million ducks and geese. Reclaimed for agriculture, this area has been reduced to 350,000 artificially managed wetland acres. Nine out of every ten acres of riparian woodlands are gone, along with ten thousand grizzly bears that once roamed the valleys and foothills. The loss of mega and micro flora and fauna is beyond counting.

Ninety percent of the coastal salt marshes between Morro Bay and San Diego are gone. The 200,000 acres of vibrant salt marshes that once surrounded the San Francisco Bay have been reduced to 35,000 acres by landfill for urban development. The Bay Delta, the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, drains 40% of the state’s total runoff. It is the main pumping station for the massive State Water Project and the Central Valley Project. It serves two-thirds of California’s population and irrigates millions of San Joaquin and Tulare Basin acres. Eighty percent of all developed water is consumed by agriculture.

The Delta is not on the verge of collapse; it is collapsing. Once supporting 345,000 acres of salt marshes and a major fishery for salmon and smelt, it has been reduced to 8,000 marsh acres, with Delta pumps decimating the fisheries. With valuable marshes reclaimed as islands below sea level, they are protected by a series of poorly maintained and aging levee systems vulnerable to earthquakes, storms, and climate change.

Historic flows from the Delta to the Bay have been reduced by half, increasing saltwater intrusion into the freshwater system. (Normally freshwater flows from the Sierra snowpack create a hydraulic barrier holding back intruding salt water.) California’s unceasing march towards 50 million people by 2015 will increase demands and destabilization. A one-meter rise in sea level will inundate about 200 square miles of Delta land. Long-term climate patterns anticipate a sea level rise of six meters. Loss of the Delta will have a catastrophic effect on southern populations and agriculture. Today’s water consciousness, especially in the Bay Delta, is motivated less by the loss of fisheries and ecosystems and more by the loss of water supply and its curbing impact on agriculture, growth, and development.

Salmon are the keystone species, the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Untold millions, perhaps ten-plus million salmon, once migrated between Monterey Bay and the Oregon coast through 582 coastal streams—while steelhead migrated along most of California’s 800-mile coastline. During the winter of 1883-84, more than 700,000 salmon were caught and processed in the Bay Delta alone. By the early 1900s, cannery operations had become commercially unviable. Perhaps 80% of that protein source has been depleted now, with only 10% of the suitable spawning sites remaining.

Think about what the salmon represent in total natural energy distribution and conversion—as an energy component, their nourishing value to the sea, the land, the aquatic and terrestrial food chains, and human life.

Once 400 million strong throughout North America, beavers once populated all the tributaries of California’s great rivers. Building temporary small dams from nearby willows, alder, poplar, birch, maple and aspen, they trapped nutrients from twigs, leaves, branches, and logs, which mixed with silt behind the dam, creating a clear, cool, deep-water fishery. Bacteria break down the cellulose, which feeds protozoa, which feeds cyclops, daphnia, fresh-water shrimp, mosquitoes, dragonflies, caddis worms, tadpoles, and water spiders. These in turn feed young trout, salmon, and frogs, which feed egrets, ospreys, golden and bald eagles, kingfishers, turkeys and owls.

Downed trees fill with insects and feed woodpeckers and sapsuckers. The increased wet area around the beaver pond absorbs flood waves and slowly infiltrates water into the groundwater table. When the building materials deplete, the beavers move on to another location. The dam, filled high with rich, black organic muck, breaks down, causing the water to change course and meander around. As the area dries it becomes a rich pasture of grasses, feeding herbivores which feed predators. The meadow, recolonized by the seeds of the trees that initiated the process, begins anew. Multiply this lifecycle by 13,000 years and you have the continual development of fertile valley bottomlands and a regenerative model for human developments.

Without considering global warming, a century from now all man-made reservoirs that are not full of silt will nonetheless have lost their operational capacities to support agriculture, prevent floods, and serve human population centers. The moment they were filled, the concrete’s limited lifespan began its 50-100 year process of degeneration. Where’s the future?

This narrative represents a very short list of human events upon the landscape. The visible consequence of California’s altered watersheds and landscapes translate into today’s deepening water scarcity. The beaver negotiated its survival within nature, paid for the space it occupies by creating a pool of regenerative life, borrowing energy and converting it to produce a sum of energy far greater than it borrowed from nature—this is the model of regeneration.

In stark contrast, civilization consumes nature, converting its energy in a way that exhausts its supply, and then we return the waste with a toxic aspect that further devalues the natural systems—leading to air, soil, and water pollution, depleted fisheries, constipated rivers, ocean dead zones, deforestation, erosion, salinated valleys, overgrazing, wildlife extinction, toxic dumps, nuclear waste, and yes, global warming.

One can readily see that California as well as the planet is exhaustible. Our unique faculties allow us to shape and modify the land that provides for our survival. That faculty, that capacity, that survivability, comes at a great price, a great responsibility. That price is regenerative stewardship over the land.

The Waters of Change

As a consequence of natural evolution, the Earth’s surface has adapted to the sun’s radiant heat through a renewable hydrologic cycle. How a warming climate relates to the hydrologic cycle is the subject of the following discussion.

There is a high degree of scientific agreement that our planetary energy use relates directly to climbing temperatures. Current climate models are constantly readapting to temperature changes that are occurring much more rapidly than expected due to the climate feedback systems and non-linear movements. The climate system is the hydrologic cycle, and to the extent that model changes, so change rainfall and snow patterns across the state.

Today cold, moisture-laden westerly storms roll off the Pacific Basin from the Gulf of Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands primarily between December and April. They lift over the low-rising Coast Ranges, releasing a taste of their precious load before falling into the arid rain shadow of the 450-mile-long Central Valley. Having warmed during its descent across the lower valley floor, the stingy jet stream yields little moisture to today’s artificially contrived breadbasket of California.

The storms’ real contender is the west-tilting, 400-mile granite spine of the Sierra Nevada. Representing one fifth of California’s landmass, much of the range exceeds 8,000 feet in elevation. Mount Whitney reigns supreme at 14,494 feet. As the air rises, cools, and condenses, the contest between landmass and planetary water cycle is resolved. Moisture molecules transform and surrender as snow.

On the eastern or rain-shadow side of the Sierra is a long narrow trench known as the Great Basin. Any moisture that escapes the wringing of the western Sierra then faces the western front of the 14,000-foot White/Inyo Mountain range, which creates the watersheds of now dewatered Owens Lake and endangered Mono Lake.

Seventy-five percent of California’s precipitation falls north of Sacramento. The critical Sierra snowpack provides roughly 60% of California’s water demands and represents the state’s Achilles heel (along with the Bay Delta) in the wake of a warming planet. The Sierra range contains 24 major watersheds and the headwaters of California’s American, Stanislaus, San Joaquin, Upper Sacramento, Feather, Merced, Tuolumne, Mokelumne, Cosumnes, Calaveras, Kings, Kaweah, Tule, Kern, Caliente, and Yuba rivers. All these major rivers are constipated by numerous dams and their diversions.

This 20th-century hydrologic model laid the foundation for the infrastructure of 1,400 dams and reservoir systems providing water storage and flood protection for California. The 21st century will provide an altogether different climate model, and water management policies and structures will have to change dramatically if the state’s population is to survive that challenge.

The greatest challenge for water managers in today’s weather system is timing the flows from the Sierra snowmelt. A dicey business without climate change considerations, we’re talking about 15 million acre-feet (MAF) of runoff before it hits the first series of dams, and 20 or more MAF at or near the confluence of the Delta. The 20th-century model could anticipate gradual runoff in late spring and early summer to meet the greatest demand between summer and fall. These reservoirs have to be relatively empty in the winter for flood protection. Managers have to decide when to fill the reservoir to meet the greater demands of the dry season. Fill them too early and you risk floods; fill them too late and you risk insufficient supplies and drought conditions.

Climate models show the Sierra snowline climbing upward. As the landmass heats, it requires a greater volume of water to resolve the heat, and a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, producing more intense rainfall and resulting in less snow, earlier and greater mass movements of flows, and erosion. Snowfall that would normally inundate the Sierra throughout the winter and gradually melt between late spring and early summer will come as intense wet storms, generating massive flows and torrential flooding throughout the lower watersheds. This will alter rivers, creeks, and stream channel profiles significantly and cripple the Bay Delta as a freshwater supply for the southland as water is lost to massive runoff and not stored and released slowly as snow.

Incidence of landslides will greatly increase the sediment budget, and some landslides will create slidedams and cause a river or creek to change course, incising fresh sediment loads from alluvial plains. The large recipient of these massive, sediment-laden flows will be the mega-million acre-feet reservoirs of the State Water and Central Valley projects. Inundating the already limited-lifespan reservoirs, the increased sediment budget will reduce their functionality.

These large events will also decrease the ability of the land to slow and infiltrate water into the groundwater system, and the higher temperatures will increase evaporation. Droughts and higher temperatures will increase the incidence of forest and grassland fires. Reduced reservoir water storage will increase groundwater pumping and land subsidence in the already overdrafted, oversubsided Central Valley.

The Eel River runs through some of the most erodable landmass in California, a situation exacerbated by massive lumber operations, gravel extraction, cattle ranching, and narrow-vision land management strategies. The Eel River owns the record for the highest peak flood discharge of 753,000 cubic feet per second during the 1964 flood, enough energy to send a fleet of battleships to Japan. With Scott Dam and Cape Horn Dam choking its headwaters and depleting its fisheries, nearly 90% of Eel’s summer flow is diverted into the Russian River, altering that river’s natural profile and enabling unsustainable human developments in population centers and the wine industry to the south.

Outlet Creek, a Willits tributary of the Eel, has six dams with the seventh being built, all within a sixty-square-mile area. The ecology of Little Lake Valley and the former Little Lake, food basin for juvenile salmon, has been destroyed by straightening and channeling the six feeder creeks. With Snow, Hull, and Rice mountains forming the main headwaters, climate change will impact this region’s snowpack and flow dynamics, as well as the larger Sierra range.

All of California’s rivers, like the dams that drain the natural wealth from these regions, are ill-prepared for the upcoming changes in climate dynamics. Natural river systems are among the most efficient systems on the planet. The great sculptress shapes and transports with exacting tools of erosion and deposit. Water is the great conveyor between landmass and ocean—eroding and depositing material pushed up from the constant collision of tectonic plates. Dams incarcerate the river’s main element, water, leaving her artistry a slave to human infrastructural bondage and rendering all dependent life forms immensely vulnerable to even slight changes.

Where do we go from here?

California’s water infrastructure is overdeveloped, overused, oversold, under-maintained, and impermanent. California’s 1,400 dams share a common destiny–silt-up and become a dysfunction waterfall. One would think the profundity of this incontrovertible geophysical fact might dissuade one from building or continuing to build dense population centers supported by impermanence and develop marginal agricultural lands to feed these ultimately doomed arid population centers. Civilization has deferred this reality from one generation to the next. Not in my lifetime eventually claims the living–were so dammed close.

California’s water infrastructure is aging and degenerating. The older it gets, the more problems it has. The massively altered watersheds, accumulating the burdens of dams and diversions, have lost the stability of equilibrium. This impetus drives the collision between the environment, economy, and a population that continues to increase 600,000 per year.

The recent federal court decision to reduce water withdrawals from the irreplaceable Delta by 37% in an attempt to save its failing hydrology and fisheries has staggered farm production, cities, and the Silicon Valley. As well, less agricultural water sends a shockwave through soaring food prices and produces major losses in farm labor that is severely impacting an already deficit-ridden state budget; health care, education and transportation.

Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed 9 billion dollar Delta bailout (1982 Peripheral Canal revival) seeks to pour vast energy into the sprawl of canals, aqueducts, levees, pipesheds, and off-stream reservoirs. Cloaked as a restoration project, should the central delta be bypassed diverting the Sacramento directly to canals and off-stream storage reservoirs, the central valley and southland water boosters will be well positioned for an ultimate water grab to fuel economic determinism and contrived population growth projections down to the last drop.

The big question remains. Will a canal bypass save the Delta? Answer: No. As mentioned earlier, what the Delta needs most is increased mountain runoff water to create the hydrologic barrier to hold back saltwater intrusion from the Bay and the fisheries need inundated wetlands and sloughs.

The Peripheral Canal simply adds an ever increasing layer of complexity and energy flows to a system that cannot be saved by the same strategies that produced the problem in the first place. California history can be understood from the earliest need to transport water from a distant watershed to an overextended watershed (1913 LA Aqueduct). Each solution along that predictable path requires still more complexity and energy inputs. Yesterday’s solution becomes today’s problem like a mad layer cake. Each new solution bears exponential energy costs often greater than all the energy consumed by all previous water projects. And, the emergent spectre of the unintended consequence, watershed and infrastructure degeneration leaves one pondering this question: Is this advancing towards a higher or better state?

California’s water, population, and economy are up against Stephen J. Gould’s right wall of limitations. The insane complexity, economic and ecological, is beyond comprehension and the exponential energy cost to run the infrastructure alone denies a positive return: A Dead End.

Since our economic system cannot consider limitations because our American way of life is non-negotiable, narrow-visioned, economic growth focused policy makers will commit our remaining economic might and push this unsustainable model against the right wall of limitations unwittingly. In this context, it is difficult to envision a divergent path that recognizes the need to reduce population, consumption, and charts a path towards watershed restoration statewide. Californians will, as they have throughout California’s water history, approve any measure for one simple reason, fear.

The final analysis strongly suggests that the geophysical forces of climate change dynamics, watershed-wide ecological degradation, oversold and over-mined watersheds, overextended economy and overpopulation coupled with the limited lifespan of 1,400 dams will likely, eventually, resolve the issue of overextended coastal populations and ill-conceived floodplain developments once and for all.

The real solution, backing off the right wall, reducing and relocating vulnerable population centers, reducing consumer demand, developing local water sustainability, and restoring watersheds is simply unthinkable–and the unthinkable is the only solution–and real solutions are not found when one cannot even define the problem.

Organizers of the Labor Day weekend celebration to follow expect to draw over 50,000 people to a variety of events, including a victory garden, food tastings, a Food for Thought speakers’ series, a marketplace, and chef demonstrations. It could be the largest food event in American history.

Some of the leading voices in “the good food movement” have drafted the petition. It seeks to change the food policy of the United States and is described as a “national call for a new, sustainable food system.” It intends to provide “a clear and commonly held framework for future action to educate citizens and policy makers.”

The president of Roots of Change (ROC), a San Francisco-based group, and former chairman of Slow Food USA, Michael Dimock, initiated the concept of such a petition. “This declaration is a call to action by and for all Americans,” he said. “The purpose of U.S. food and agriculture must change and it can no longer focus on the production of cheap calories. Conditions demand a more holistic approach to human and community health that begins on our farms and ranches,” he added.

Among the drafting team and original framers were the following: UC Berkeley professor Michael Pollan, Dan Imhoff, author of “Food Fight,” and Chez Panisse Restaurant founder Alice Waters. Additional contributors to the final draft to be presented at SFN included Kentucky author and farmer Wendell Berry, environmentalist Bll McKibbon, and Native American leader Winona LaDuke.

Former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Richard Rominger, a farmer, helped draft the petition and said, “This Declaration, which is being crafted by a broad coalition, is the preamble for the next generation of farm policy, and we hope it will stimulate the discussion to help get us there.”

“Behind us stands a half-century of industrial food production, underwritten by cheap fossil fuels, abundant land and water resources, and a drive to maximize the global harvest of cheap calories,” the Declaration’s first paragraph asserts. “Ahead lie rising energy and food costs, a changing climate, declining water supplies, a growing population, and the paradox of widespread hunger and obesity,” it continues.

Such claims were documented at the weeklong Stockholm International Water Conference attended by 2,400 water experts and government officials. “A spectre is haunting the cities and villages of most developing nations, warns a senior official of a World Bank-affiliated organization,” begins an Aug. 22 Inter Press Service (IPS) article by Thalif Deen.

“’It’s the spectre of a food, fuel and water crisis,’ says Lars Thunell,” the IPS article continues. He is the executive vice president of the Washington-based International Finance Corporation. Agriculture is the most water-intensive sector. The decline in fresh water threatens the food supply. Thunell described recent riots over food prices, growing hunger, and rising malnutrition. Current estimates are that the world will not have enough water to feed itself within 40 years.

“Keeping water under local, public and democratic control is the most just way to insure the greatest degree of water access for the greatest number of people,” according to Patti Lynn of Corporate Accountability International, the IPS article concludes.

This is the context within which the Food Declaration will be unveiled in San Francisco. Endorsements and comments will be solicited. The public will be given 90 days to comment before the drafting team creates the final document. The goal is to get at least 300,000 signatures to present it in Washington, D.C. to Congress in the Fall of 2009.

“The movement to create better food and agriculture in the U.S. has been slowly and steadily gaining ground for well over a decade,” according to a recent Roots of Change (ROC) statement. “The public’s increasing interest and the media’s deepening coverage of climate change, energy, agriculture, labor issues, food costs, food quality and obesity may finally illuminate the interrelationship of these crises and provide a context for urgently needed changes,” ROC continues.

The intention is to influence the next national farm bill. “The last farm bill cycle,” ROC maintains, “confirmed that a tight cadre of lobbyists control the debate to protect the status quo rather than aid the population of the nation.” The current farm policy “is mired in a 20th Century industrial paradigm” that benefits “entrenched interests,” ROC asserts.

The Declaration calls “for a radically different approach to food and agriculture. We believe that the food system must be reorganized on a foundation of health.”

A healthy food and agriculture policy, according to the Declaration, would follow twelve foundational principles. Among them are the following:

• Provides access to affordable, nutritious food for everyone;
• Prevents the exploitation of farmers, workers and natural resources and the cruel treatment of animals;
• Informs customers of how food is produced, where it comes from, and what it contains;
• Protects the finite resources of productive soils, fresh water, and biological diversity;
• Strives to remove fossil fuel from every link in the food chain and replace it with renewable resources and energy;
• Originates from a biological rather than an industrial framework;
• Requires a national dialog concerning technologies used in production.

The final principle affirms “the development of just and sustainable regional farm and food networks.”

“Most all the major organizations seeking reform in agriculture in the U.S. have signed on to the Declaration. The challenge remains to bring in more of the current mainstream,” ROC president Dimock explained in a phone interview from his home in Santa Rosa, Northern California. “Slow Food Nation is part of a mosaic that can help change food policy in the U.S.,” according to Dimock.