Who Should Own Our Water?
Is water a human right or a commodity to be marketed for profit? Should water be run by local governments or by distant corporations in order to make a profit? Why do we pay more for a six-pack of bottled water than for a gallon of gasoline?
These are some of the tough-minded questions Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman first asked in their provocative and memorable 2004 documentary, also titled "Thirst." In that film, they exposed how foreign corporations are privatizing water all over the world. Among the stories they recounted was the rebellion of Bolivian citizens against Bechtel, which privatized water and then raised its price. "Water for life, not for profit!" local residents chanted at demonstrations. Eventually, after riots and too many deaths, Bechtel was forced to leave.
In their new book, "Thirst: Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water," the authors focus on our own country and investigate how the growing "water business" is trying to privatize water systems in cities scattered across the United States.
For the past century, the quality of American water has been the envy of the world. But the infrastructure of both our sewer and water systems is crumbling and in urgent need of costly repairs. The federal government, however, has stopped providing block grants to cities and counties for such construction. As a result, local officials don't have enough funds to invest to repair this infrastructure.
Enter multinational corporations, many of which are based in Europe and extremely eager to fix the problem -- for a price. Even when local officials are not corrupt and don't take kickbacks from these corporations, these multinationals offer such huge investments because they expect a profit, money that almost always results in higher prices for water.
This is the cautionary tale the authors tell through their vivid descriptions of eight conflicts over water -- from Stockton to Atlanta, Ga. Like oil, there is a scarcity of water and the "water business" is growing rapidly. "Eager investors," write the authors, "are bidding up water industry stocks and lining up at industry-sponsored forums to get into the 'water business.' " Since local governments own most of the water services, corporations "ally with the financial industry, which also wants to open up the market." Corporations want to privatize "urban water systems, either by outright purchase or operating them under long-term contracts euphemistically called 'public-private partnerships.' The aim in both cases is to siphon profits from the flow."
If such corporations produced cleaner and better water, maybe privatization wouldn't be such a bad idea. But the authors make a convincing argument, drawn from these eight battlegrounds, that private water companies mainly seek a profit, not an improvement in service or in the quality of the water.
Water, they argue, should not be sold as a product for profit because it is necessary to survival. Why, they ask, should a corporation make a profit from what we all view as a basic necessity?
The reason is that for 25 years, we've been repeatedly told that government is the problem, not the solution. The irrational belief that markets can, and should, solve all our problems has made us forget that the profit motive does not always produce better results and that, moreover, there is still such a thing as a common good that should be protected from markets.
More often than not, local citizens don't even know their water is being sold to a distant corporation; the deal just goes through. But when people do know what's happening, as the authors show, they form powerful coalitions, fueled by indignation and outrage, and fight the local officials who are tempted to sell their water to a private company. In the process, citizens rediscover some of the basic principles of democracy, namely, that they should have a voice in their government.
Should we worry about these new water wars? Yes. Water is not only a limited resource; it is also necessary for biological survival.
"The current conflict between corporations and citizens movements to control this precious resource," they write, "will be decided in the years to come. Whether clean and safe water will remain accessible to all affordable and sustainable into the future, depends on all of us. The stakes could not be higher. The outcome of the conflict will surely be a measure of our democracy in the 21st Century."
They're right. See their film. Read this important book, which is an early warning to us all. Then decide if you agree that public control of water is essential for our health and the health of our democracy.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/18/RVGS9OHPKT1.DTL
This article appeared on page M - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Heh. The other day I noticed a vending macbine at work, vending bottles of water. Aquafina was $1.10 for 20 ounces, while the same size of Dasani was $1.25.
"What kind of idiot would pay $1.25 for a bottle of water when they can get the same thing for $1.10?", I thought And then I realized, the answer was someone only a little more idiotic than the idiot who pays $1.10.
I mostly don't buy water. I'll buy one, then keep using the bottle to fill up from the free water fountains, which most of my coworkers are convinced is nothing but a source of poison. Hasn't hurt me so far.
March 19, 2007 4:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Some cities that operate water systems have taken to providing either duct space for cables, or actually running fiber optic cables they lease, whenever they dig up a street for water maintenance or expansion. From a city standpoint, this has two benefits: income, and also much less street disruption than if every communications carrier dug it up for its own cable runs.
I wonder if some of the water-commercialization companies have the idea of leasing duct as part of their business plan. Indeed, there's a good deal of urban quality of life argument, but also potential income, of having a very few organizations digging streets. Safety should be the major consideration, as, for example, when electrical and (local) gas lines are present, they should be accessed only by qualified people. Still, it's possible to put the hazardous materials/energy in protected ducts.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
March 19, 2007 4:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the post. I've been concerned about the privatization of water resources ever since I read a National Geograhic article about the coming water shortage a few years back.
It's bad enough it's happening here, when it happens in poor countries, I think it's immoral.
A very good case can be made that ONLY governments should be allowed to handle public utilities. Privatization has led to nothing put poor maintenance of infrastructure and higher costs to consumers, (i.e: the power grid). Some things belong to all of us, and should stay that way.
CSPAN junkies visit http://spannerbackup.ipbhost.com
March 19, 2007 6:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
I live in a town of 60,000 just outside of Philadelphia. About 8 years ago our Mayor (Republican) sold our township owned water company to a private for profit corporation, AQUA AMERICA, for $16 million.
It would be interesting to see the contract in how the corporation is paying for the aquisition.
Just prior to the sale the township outlawed private wells in the town, something that many people still used, forcing all these people to hook up to township water.
Just after the sale the new owners lowered the minimum number of gallons subject to the lowest price, which is simply a back door increase.
Next, they changed the payment schedule from quarterly to monthly.
After a two year moratorium of no rate increases after the sale, they now come annually.
Now if I have a problem with my water I don't go to the township building and petition an elected official, I have to take it to a corporate flunky who may or may not care.
Company Overview
Aqua America embarked on a successful growth-through-acquisition strategy in the early 1990s, which has resulted in more than 120 acquisitions and other growth ventures—more than 90 of which have been completed in the last five years. This growth strategy has allowed the company to achieve an annual customer growth rate of approximately four percent since 1995, and achieve record earnings and above average shareholder return while remaining a low-cost provider of quality drinking water.
March 19, 2007 6:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
First, despite the apparent allusion in the post, I don't think she really meant by privitization of water our experience with brand names, as silly as this is (persTiVo). It's a vanity product that co-exists even with a robust public water supply. We're worried more about the loss of the latter.
Second, one further related issue is deregulation that also permits pollution. A familiar example here is potential loss of the natural filtering of New York City's water supply by the watershed to the north. But any water supply is more likely to be poisoned under GOP economics. Every time they characterize environmentalists as tree huggers, one should insist on that and remind us to hug our children and grandchildren before they die.
Third, climate change is also going to have an impact, making water in the Third World in particular a serious issue with political consequences. Indeed, scarce or mismanaged water already has such consequences. We read about LA, but one could also see the Middle East conflict through this lens, and I see that a short note in The Atlantic sees Darfur this way as well.
Free markets allow efficient creation and delivery of goods and services, but they do not guarantee good, services, and their costs shared by and available to all. With education or housing, the free market vision is bad enough. With water, it's deadly.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
March 19, 2007 6:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
No surprises, since the public sphere is increasingly redefined for the sake of private shareholders. As long as the movement conservative ethic that "government is the problem" prevails, our civic culture loses relevance. Your tax cuts at work....
Even the Clinton administration diminished the public interest by further privatizing the public airwaves under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the quality of our political discourse has declined ever since.
March 19, 2007 6:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ms. Rosen suggests
I rather think it would still be a bad idea. A few years ago Robert Kaplan wrote an essay in The Atlantic Monthly entitled Is Democracy for Everyone?. The first half of the essay generated the most controversy because some of the art work associated with the article implied that brown skinned people were somehow less apt at democracy than white skinned people are. I hasten to say that Kaplan didn't really make a blanket assertion of that type, and I suspect he had very little control over the cartoonish pictures of Latin Americans and others which bedecked the article.
It was the second half of the article which was most disturbing to me. In it, Kaplan raised the issue whether multi-national corporations, allied to no nation or national system of justice, were making democracy irrelevant for everyone. I seem to remember (though I may be conflating a couple of things I read simultaneously) that Perrier was one of the companies included in examples.
I'm sure Grover Norquist loves this sort of thing. It isn't just the Federal Government he's like to shrink and drown, after all. The more services and amenities taken out of the Commons, the less control people can exert over their own lives. The piper must be paid, and the town musician never makes as much as the corporation cornetist.
The solution to a Federal Government dis-involving itself from infrastructure projects is to boot out the political party allowing and even encouraging this to happen. We've started this. Let's finish the job in 2008.
aMike
March 19, 2007 6:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh I'd never buy a bottle of Dasani because I was thirsty. I don't think Dasani even wants me to buy a bottle because I am thirsty. I'm supposed to buy it because I need to be rehydrated. (Because I'm thirsty and not in need of rehydration I drink the tap stuff when I can, and OJ or something else with at least some nutrient value when I can't). At home, where our little old reservoir has algae blooms every summer which give the water something of the flavor of chlorinated salad, I just use a pitcher with a filter. Works fine for me.
aMike
March 19, 2007 7:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
A captive client base is what they have. How is this considered a free market if there is no competition? Given that, I'd think a cap on profit should be in order. NOT just a cap on "increases."
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March 19, 2007 7:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
We do that, too. However, I read in Consumer Reports that it's not the best sanitary practice to keep refilling a plastic bottle with water.
This made me reflect that primitive peoples certainly used and re-used clay vessels for that purpose and it's unlikely they ever washed them with hot soapy water in between refills. I know when I visited Southern Europe in my youth, they didn't use either soap or hot water for washing dishes, only cold (and dishes didn't get terribly clean, either.) There was running water from the indoor tap for an hour or so a day, but drinking water came from a clay jug that was filled twice morning and evening at the fountain across the street. The water jugs sat on the tiled floor and oozed condensation, keeping the contents nice and cool.
I have also read that the plastic in the bottles may not be the best for people's health -- since it has chemicals that could disrupt people's hormones (I am not making this up). However, I am not about to give up plastic bottles until they are banned by the FDA.
Myself, I feel that if I am on the road and thirsty and there is a choice between a plastic bottle of water for $2.00 and a bottle of coke for the same, I am slightly better off buying the water -- though it is a virtual tossup. I don't believe that the bottled water is much better than inspected tap water. When we lived in Europe when I was a child, people seriously debated the different tastes of water pipes from the various aqueducts, which came into the city from springs in various mountains. Water was recognized to be a valuable commodity and probably not always safe if you were traveling and didn't know where it came from. On the whole, you were better off drinking wine or soup.
March 19, 2007 7:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Water is clearly a human need. If it is treated as a right the consequences seem frought with war and ineptitude. Why does the Left when they want to crowd out the private sector whether in education or now water is there a desire to turn everything into a right. There is no government that could provide all the "rights" so designated.
However, it does not follow that if water like other utilities electricity, gas or phones that it need be provided by private entities. It might even be a good idea to allow some flexiblitiy for both public and private entities.
An example of public provision of a crucial commodity is oil. OPEC has gouged the world, aided and abetted by private oil companies for thirty years. I am not sure we want a WPEC in the future.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
March 19, 2007 7:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why does the Left when they want to crowd out the private sector whether in education or now water is there a desire to turn everything into a right.
This sentence isn't even coherent.
The reason it makes no sense to involve private companies in the provision of water is that there can be no meaningful competition. You're not going to have five parallel water pipes going down each street, each one run by a different corporation. Instead, what will happen (and has happened) is that one corporation will buy the monopoly right to provide water to an entire locality. How does this serve the public interest? All you're doing is forcing the customers in that municipality to subsidize corporate profits. Instead of paying rates to a local, accounable government-run utility, they instead pay rates to a corporation that is perhaps distantly accountable to its stockholders and not accountable to anyone else.
March 19, 2007 8:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
As you suggest, there is a technical monopoly in not wanting to have five parallel water lines. The private model there is exactly what happens in selling or granting cable facilities.
Washington DC is constantly having downtown streets torn up to run new cable. If you are in the right area, you may be able to rent duct space from the power company, but by no means is there as much coordination of underground facilities as in San Jose (public water/sewer utility) or New York (quasi-public, IIRC, corporation).
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
March 19, 2007 8:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
When did "rights" get into the picture, except perhaps in a free marketer's dream of private property as a fundamental right? Dan's post just seems like an unnecessary diatribe. The point is whether and when privization of public services is a disaster, with global implications.
We don't have a constitutional right to grade school education, an apartment in New York City, or retirement income either, but that doesn't mean we can't see the through the myths behind vouchers and charter schools as innately superior, the abolition of rent stabilization and Mitchell-Lama protections as somehow lowering the prices of apartments, and private savings in place of social security. All vital debates that make me angry, but still I must realize that they're at least political debates in a framework I can understand. But serve everyone polluted water or no water, and you've got a serious problem.
Maybe I irked Dan by mentioning the Middle East. I forget, then we have to remember that one party to the water supply are terrorists.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
March 19, 2007 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
DanielGree states:
I'm not ready to accept a clear boundary between a need and a right. If I'm dying of thirst, does another individual possessing water have a right to withhold it from me? It would seem that my right to life trumps his right of possession. The function of the commonwealth, since at least the day of Locke, has defended this. John Winthrop, certainly no leftist, was quite clear that it was a matter of duty for the public to provide for a member's needs from the other members' superfluities.
It was the culture which produced John Winthrop which first declared education a universal right at public expense within the territory which became the United States. We know what a raving band of socialists the Puritans were. I hasten to say that neither the Puritans nor the left has attempted to "crowd out" the private sector as far as education is concerned. What Massachusetts Bay insisted upon, and what most on the left insist on today, is that all contribute to common education, whether or not they choose to avail themselves or if, or, indeed, whether or not they have opportunity to avail themselves of it. I have no children. This does not exempt me from paying taxes to the common schools in my town. The Common Good is not promoted by community ignorance, and I have a responsibility to diminish that ignorance through my fare share of the economic burden. If I wish to support private education as well (and I make contributions to both the private college to which I went and the private University in which I teach), that is my right, and also my privilege.
I would argue that the same applies to water. It is my obligation to contribute to a safe and palatable public water supply, supported by my ability to pay and the wealth I've accumulated. And I do this...public bonds supported by tax moneys refurbish and upgrade the water purification system and sewer taxes, based on value of property owned, do the same. If I wish to have Poland Springs deliver me 5 gallon drums of water (I don't) the City doesn't forbid my doing this. In times of drought, I observe the watering ban, and the grass turns brown. I save the dish water and pour it on the posies. I live within the resources of my community paid for by my community, and by the nested communities (state, and national) to which I claim membership with the responsibilities of membership.
Remove, one by one, the common responsibilities we have toward each other, and one removes the community itself as a viable social entity.
aMike
March 19, 2007 8:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why would anyone find more intrest in something that'll only show you more of a mega monopoly. Telling someone how to make a bomb can put you in jail, but holding more than you can chew can show you true reason and intent.
March 19, 2007 8:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hydraulic Despotism is not a new phenonomen. From Wikipedia:
A developed "hydraulic civilization" maintains control over its population by means of controlling the supply of water. The term was coined by the German American historian Karl A. Wittfogel (1896 – 1988), in Oriental Despotism (1957). Wittfogel asserted that such "hydraulic civilizations" — although they were neither all located in the Orient nor characteristic of all Oriental societies — were essentially different from those of the Western world.
Most of the first civilizations in history, such as Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley civilization, China and pre-Columbian Mexico and Peru, were hydraulic empires. Most hydraulic empires existed in desert regions, but imperial China also had some such characteristics, due to the exacting needs of rice cultivation.
[...]
The typical hydraulic empire government, in Wittfogel's thesis, is extremely centralized, with no trace of an independent aristocracy -- in contrast to the decentralized feudalism of medieval Europe. Though tribal societies had structures that were usually personal in nature, exercised by a patriarch over a tribal group related by various degrees of kinship, hydraulic hierarchies gave rise to the established permanent institution of impersonal government. Popular revolution in such a state was impossible: a dynasty might die out or be overthrown by force, but the new regime would differ very little from the old one. Hydraulic empires were only ever destroyed by foreign conquerors.
As you may have noted, the examples above were governments, not private enterprises so I'm not sure the question is whether water should be run by government or corporation. You did say "run" not "own" the water and/or delivery systems. Any government official that even thinks s/he can sell ownership of either should be impeached. The problem isn't that governments contract with corporations to supply essential goods and services, it is that too often they make such bad deals.
March 19, 2007 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
If it is "our" water, than "we" collectively as a society should own it. Period.
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March 19, 2007 9:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well written, Mike.
March 19, 2007 9:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
John Snow seems to be little-known outside medical and public health circles, although, for example, he was voted the greatest physician in a poll of British doctors. He is considered the founder or co-founder* of epidemiology. Snow is known for developing infection tracing, such that he was able, for the first time, to identify the contaminated Broad Street Pump that was responsible for an 1854 cholera epidemic in London.
When Snow was unable to convince the private water company that owned the pump to close it, he stopped the epidemic by removing the pump handle. The John Snow Society holds annual Pumphandle Lectures, the most recent on on water quality and world health policy.
While there certainly have been cases of water contamination in public water systems, do consider the requirement for water purification and safety monitoring. Also, where in the water system will the private company take over? Will it own reservoirs? Purification plants? Just the distribution system?
*: many medical historians now credit the work of Florence Nightingale, at roughly the same time, as the mother of modern epidemiology. She does appear to have invented several graphical ways of presenting statistics, so remember her fondly the next time PowerPoint strikes.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
March 19, 2007 10:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
2/3 of the earth is covered in water, we're just not really very smart in how we use it...
March 19, 2007 10:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is an old and very interesting theory. It is true that irrigation societies require an enormous amount of coordination and cooperation, they don't permit the individualism that we, especially in the USA, are accustomed to. Nevertheless, our own civilization derives directly from the irrigation societies of Mesopotamia and Egypt as much as from those of Feudal Europe. Remember, too, that Feudal Europe was characterized by primarily by parliaments, commons, and by shared resources, not by private ownership.
Everyone should probably read "Oriental Despotism" -- I read it myself years ago, though I hardly remember it. But people also need to know that modern historians don't entirely accept the premises and conclusions of this influential book. As I see it there is no reason to conclude that water resources should not be publicly owned and regulated and there are lots of reasons to conclude it shouldn't be owned by for-profit businesses. Not to give a drink of water to a child, or prisoner, or poor person because they don't have ten cents amounts to depraved indifference to human life and is criminal. It's about the worst thing one can imagine.
March 19, 2007 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
When the water source is on public land, does the private company own the purification and distribution service? Apropos of purification, who owns sewers?
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
March 19, 2007 10:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Need often trumps other people's rights. Thus "any port in a storm" comes from a court case. A ship had to put into a dock not their own during a terrible storm and the dock was damaged. The owner sued saying the ship had no right to the use of the dock. The court found need won out. However, the earlier Puritans were a very small group so I would not rush to extrapolate from their practice to the whole. Also I wonder if they would not have required you to share their faith in order to have the right to the education they offered. More to the point the question is not if something is offered it should be open to everyone but who decides what is going to be provided, who is going to pay for it and what if citizens, the majoirty don't want to provide what is now a right.
Also you make the arguement that in someway resembles one the NRA makes about guns. Gun ownership is clearly a right under the 2nd Amendement. If it is a right is it open ended?
If water access is a right. How and who will decide what limits there are to the provision of that right?
March 19, 2007 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Confession - I learned the concept from Frank Herbert's Dune not from Oriental Despotism which I haven't read. I was surprised when I googled the term to find a Wikipedia entry.
I think concept itself is valid if not Wittfogel's history. Control of essential resources would be a very effective means of wielding power.
March 19, 2007 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Purification and distribution systems, at least the pumps, can be replaced, as can the pipes with a greater degree of difficulty. What must remain non-transferable is ownership of the water itself and the right-of-ways.
March 19, 2007 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would argue no, it isn't open-ended. The first half of the amendment qualifies the second (and some grammar teachers would probably have sent it back for revision's sake, inverting the order for clarity's sake):
I support a well regulated militia, being necessary for the common good, and I pay my taxes for it. I realize that the NRA may think otherwise, but I don't think my neighbor's owning a flamethrower, bazooka, or AK-47, has much to do with a well-regulated militia. I also am reconciled to a Supreme Court which may disagree with me. We'll see when the next round of cases moves forward. In the meantime, I make my little contributions to the Brady Campaign.
aMike
March 19, 2007 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mike
Just to be clear I totally agree with your reading of the Second Amendment as did the Supreme Court in 1936. However, obviously the NRA does not and they see a right, a need, that is thus open ended.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
March 19, 2007 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ruth Rosen's whole post is about water as a right or not. My point was and is water may be a necessity, it is not obvious that we want to turn it into a right that can be enforced. There are unintended consequences to making things rights.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
March 19, 2007 12:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Daniel,
Water may not be a right like life and liberty but it has historically been included as a property right.
Water rights are part of many deeds just like mineral rights. Georgia and Alabama have been negotiating water rights along their boundary for years now.
Many decades ago, my grandfather got into a dispute with a neighbor when the neighbor's new well caused a drop in the level of my grandfather's. There are legal precedents regarding ownership of headwaters and rights to water.
Water companies are aware of this. They have bought lands that tapped into aquifers and disrupted the traditional usage of surrounding communities. The only recourse to a monopoly on water may end up being eminent domain. We need to watch to make sure that principle doesn't get too watered down by libertarian sentiment. Pun intended.
March 19, 2007 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ya gotta love Howard. :)
Read; 'Magic in a Bottle' by Milton Silverman; circa 1955.
The first hardback I ever read concerns many early medical discoveries like antiseptic surgery, penicillin, novocaine, early uses of cocaine, etc.
March 19, 2007 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's an excerpt from a brand new article about cheap water filters that could be of great help in the developing world:
From Eurekalert:
Biosand filter reduces diarrheal disease in Dominican Republic villages
CHAPEL HILL – A simple, affordable household filtration device can reduce the incidence of diarrhea, one of the leading causes of disease and death in developing countries, by up to 40 percent, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown.
"This technology has the potential to bring safe drinking water to many people in developing countries around the world who don't have access to it now," said Mark Sobsey, Ph.D., professor of environmental sciences and engineering at UNC's School of Public Health. "We can tremendously improve people's health and quality of life if we can help them get a reliable source of clean drinking water. Our study shows that simple biosand filters actually do improve water quality and consequently improve the health of everyone in the home."
Sobsey and researchers in UNC's School of Public Health compared rates of diarrhea and the condition of drinking water in homes in two villages near Bonao, Dominican Republic. They monitored about 150 households without filters for four months, assessing the rate of illness. Then, about half the houses were given biosand filters – concrete containers that hold gravel and sand. All households were monitored for another six months. The team's initial analysis showed the filter reduced diarrheal disease among household members by an estimated 30 percent to 40 percent, including in highly vulnerable young children less than 5 years old. At the end of the study, filters were given to all participating homes.
"These kinds of filters have been used in the developing world since the 1990s, but there was only anecdotal evidence that they actually improved health," said Christine Stauber, a UNC doctoral candidate who helped direct the project in the Dominican Republic. "It was really exciting to collect scientific evidence in an objective study that showed the filters actually worked, at least in these communities."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-03/uonc-bfr031907.php
March 19, 2007 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not saying it's not valid - it is very suggestive and worth reading. (Just because a work has been criticized does not completely invalidate it. Rather, it can be seen as a contribution -- something to refine and build on).
I did look up the topic on wikipedia, as you suggested, and it said that Chinese historians denied that China had ever been quite the type of despotism as Wittfogel described. They felt, in other words that his knowledge of China was not all that profound. Other commenters stressed that bureaucracies (and their hierarchies) are a feature of all advanced societies, and their presence does not necessarily indicate tyranny.
March 19, 2007 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amen
Besides, if we didn't have municipal water departments, the Throckmorton P. Gildersleeves of the world would be thrown out of work.
aMike
March 19, 2007 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
And your comment made me reflect that in the good old days (and in the current third world) there was a high infant and child mortality rate due in huge part to diarrhea and fluid loss.
There is a survival of the fittest thing involved, as those that withstood those bugs gained immunity and lived to old age. I prefer the modern population control method of birth control to the old method of killing off some of the children and infants with "natural" or "in the wild" hygiene, but that's just me. :-)
Brushing teeth with cryptospiridium-infected water might just give most people a slightly messy incident in the bathroom later but it can kill an AIDS patient.
Man's eternal struggle with little unseen beasties is fascinating. Yes, to be sure, excessive modern hygiene is not all it's cracked up to be, as we end up with highly sensitive children who develop things like asthma from irritants that were never a problem before. Right now people see an answer in immune system control and genes, but hey, I will not count the little bugs out just yet.
March 19, 2007 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
To say nothing of Ed Norton.
--
Howard
Ralph Kramden, teaching Norton to play golf: "All right, address the ball."
"Hello, ball."
March 19, 2007 2:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Its not only the water companies governments want to sell, its other things like Turnpikes. These sales make the sitting Governor, Mayor, etc look good becasue they get an influx of cash which allows them to keep taxes from going up, keep the budget in balance, and also gives them some political patronage money to dole out in various projects. An added problem may be when the taxpayer asset is sold to a foreign company or Government, like China.
March 19, 2007 3:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I vividly remember a young man coming into a cafe where I was sitting drinking a yogurt. He began weeping and sobbing because his baby had just died, quite suddenly, overnight, from having diarrhea.
I also saw many people with disfiguring scars from smallpox (my own stepfather had had it). It made it hard for me to understand why it is fashionable for many young people today not to vaccinate their babies.
March 19, 2007 3:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
One of the most important medical inventions of the last century was oral rehydration with simple materials that could be prepared at low cost in primitive conditions, but would save children and adults with potentially fatal gastroenteritis. A simple mixture of boiled water with starch (e.g., the cooking liquid from rice) or sugar, salt, and a potassium-rich food such as bananas or oranges is all it takes; the key discovery was that carbohydrate is necessary to get the water and minerals to be absorbed efficiently.
Still, clean water is better than emergency rehydration.
Smallpox vaccination is no longer done, as the disease has been eradicated, other than two acknowledged research stockpiles in Atlanta and Moscow. The vaccination is not benign, especially in older people.
There is considerable concern that there may also be some stocks from the Russian biological warfare program, which weaponized smallpox. For that reason, there are emergency stockpiles of vaccine. As opposed to immunization for other diseases, smallpox vaccination can prevent the disease even after exposure. There may be antiviral drugs that can stop it, but these were developed for HIV-related superinfections after smallpox disappeared and have never been tested against smallpox in humans.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
March 19, 2007 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, this issue is not about "needs" and "rights." Rather it fits into another conversation our country has been having.
It is about tax cuts. It is about current value vs. future value -- how do we balance present consumption against future deficits. Take the example given above, "town of 60,000 ... sold our township owned water company for $16 million." On the township's budget that is as good as a $1000 per household tax increase. If the mayor actually HAD raised taxes by $1000 per household, he'd be out of a job.
March 19, 2007 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Without endeavoring to get into riparian rights and the like water has long been, like other minerals, been part of private proprty rights.
Traditionally rights as conceived by the Bill of Rights are rights to be "free of" government interference. As opposed to rights to water, education and the like provided by the government. It is this latter definition of rights that I was raising questions about and which I assumed Ruth Rosen meant.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
March 19, 2007 5:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
The fact is, he was never going to raise taxes like that; the township didn't need the money. As to local taxes,
the township tax never rises that much, its the school tax that hurts most. The schools received nothing from the sale.
Eight years after the water company sale the township is now reforming the $52.00 annual Privelege Tax on those who work in the township so it isn't all taken out of one paycheck as many part time workers were bringing home nothing the week the tax was taken out. So much for the $16 million.
By the way, for the past 4 years the township taxes have been rising regardless of the sale of the water copmpany. We were tax rise free the first 4 years after the sale, but not water rate hike free. But hey, we have a new large old fashioned clock outside the township building and a digitial message sign at a local busy intersection...one that no one reads.
Anyone that thinks we benefited from the water company sale
is sadly mistaken.
March 19, 2007 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think water comes from the sky, every so often, but you never see homes anymore that have a rain barrel. I think there's water in the air but no one setting up condensers to gather it. I think there's water in the ground, but it takes a lot of work to drill for it. So, people sit and complain about the water company, city water dept. etc. I say, if you're so high-minded about your water source, go drive to the seashore, fill up as many jugs and buckets as your car will carry, and take it back to your house, and boil it yourself.
March 19, 2007 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Correct, but the only way "we" can own it is through the government, not privatization. I wont buy the stockholder's own it argument.
March 20, 2007 6:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
"And your comment made me reflect that in the good old days (and in the current third world) there was a high infant and child mortality rate due in huge part to diarrhea and fluid loss." Yeah, but without the Black Death, wealth wouldn't have been left to the few, then able to create a Renaissance in Florence. :-)
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
March 20, 2007 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
And who ever said that we couldn't learn things from books? :)
March 20, 2007 8:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
That assumes, of course, that there's a seashore nearby.
March 20, 2007 8:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ummmm...what do you do about the salt in the water in the jugs?
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
March 20, 2007 8:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, a fellow fan of Meiss' "Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death.":-)....
Precisely why I don't "get" all the recent Humanae Vitae fans over at the Vatican. (Explanation of usage: in their terms, recent is a couple of decades.) They should be able to recognize better than many others that birth control is a triumph of light over darkness, man fulfilling his destiny to benignly rule over nature and grow closer to the lord's image in which he was created, etc. etc. etc.
More mundanely as to your comment: it's probably not that necessary to sterilize gold service with hot water; earthenware, on the other hand, is very porous. :-)
Apologies in advance to all those who dislike off-topic meanderings; in this case, I couldn't resist.
March 20, 2007 10:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
I know about smallpox. When our children were young there were many parents who didn't want to vaccinate their children against diptheria, mumps, whopping cough, and measles. And they argued, quite wrongly, IMO and those of health workers I know, that these diseases are not longer dangerous because of improved nursing techiniques.
March 20, 2007 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm a little confused. Were you saying smallpox vaccination should or should not be continued?
As to the others, there is a relatively new CDC recommendation for an adolescent booster for pertussis, and a diptheria addition to the standard per-10-years tetanus vaccination for adults.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
March 20, 2007 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
I was saying that having seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears the effects of poor santitation and fatal, cripling and/or disfiguring diseases (and I had the measles, myself, and it was not trivial and had relatives who had polio), it was hard for me to understand fashionable modern skepticism about the benefits of vaccination.
I was not saying anything about whether smallpox should or shouldn't be continued.
March 20, 2007 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you're in Canna, call Jesus.
March 20, 2007 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
But what if you are a teetotaler?
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
March 20, 2007 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
On March 20, 2007 - 3:55pm hcberkowitz said:
But what if you are a teetotaler?
Grrrrrrrr :)
March 20, 2007 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ummmm...what do you do about the salt in the water in the jugs?
Probably fight over it as well.
:-)
March 20, 2007 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is true. I read that in some parts of Mexico even water collected from roofs is contaminated with e.coli from road dust, because of the lack of sewers. In parts of Africa, the lack of sewers and even of sanitized privies (or even properly dug holes [latrines] -- kids, and others, relieve themselves in open lots and don't cover it) contaminates groundwater that would be otherwise available for everyone. This situation could probably be remedied for not much cost with public health education campaigns.
March 22, 2007 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink