David Zetland studies water markets and keeps a blog (aguanomics.com) to discuss current water policies, events, key players, and myths. I had a chance to interview David and ask him some tough questions about water.

Since the beginning of DROP, we have been interacting with fellow nonprofits and activists who feel very passionately about this issue and fervently advocate that water is a basic human right and should be available to everybody. The different factions - corporations, municipal water managers, consumers, activists, etc. - all have varying views about how water should be distributed, priced, and conserved.

It was time to hear what an economist thinks about water privatization, shortages, access, human rights, etc. David was able to address all these issues through graphs and some of them actually made sense. For human rights, David argues that everybody should get some water for free and have to pay a ridiculous amount if they want more. Everyone would have enough water for basic human needs but watering the lawn, filling up the swimming pool and keeping a 24hour slip and slide would cost you big bucks! Check out the full interview with David and let us know where you stand.   

On  Dec 2^nd, Food and Water Watch organized a public forum to discuss the Corporate Water Footprinting conference taking place in San Francisco. Huge corporations like Nestles, Coca Cola, Fiji Water, etc. are getting together right now to discuss “how they can reduce their company’s water use and build a sustainable water strategy.”

The only problem is that these companies sell water for a profit- not only depleting bodies of water and compromising human rights, but also producing massive amount of CO2 and plastics waste. I agree that they came together to maybe reduce their internal use of water and thereby decrease costs, but there is no way that these corporations actually care about their impact on the environment or communities from which they extract water for bottling and selling.

The following day, Food and Water Watch held a public protest and media conference outside of the Hyatt Regency in downtown San Francisco to directly address these big fish. Here are two videos from the event.

A crowd of people stood in front of the Hyatt Regency bellowing out powerful chants.

Del Mar, a small city with enough money and arrogance to decide it is its own city instead of part of the City of San Diego, is a little city that holds a place near and dear to my heart. It is where I work as an ocean lifeguard, it is where I surf, it is where I spend the majority of my waking hours every single summer, arriving hours before my eight hour shift of work and leaving hours after. The lifeguard tower there is like a second home because i literally see it for longer each day than my real home.

This makes San Diego's little pollution problem EXTRA annoying when I am home for four days, and the beach is closed because of contamination from polluted runoff (yeah yeah, and tragic for the environment). Basically, anytime it rains in San Diego, the water runoff from the streets causes contamination at local beaches, which can cause Hepatitis and more in any watergoer foolhardy enough to brave it. Every year there is one poor soul who actually gets sick, causing the rest of us who usually charge it anyhow to think hard about when faced with a decision like the one I face now: to go or not to go?

Sickness from contamination is the type of thing that hits just sporadically to doubt that it will happen to you. When you have been away at school for months and all you want to do is fling your East Coast body into the welcoming arms of the Pacific, your judgment is a little skewed. So, today I hope that lightening doesn't strike me, I am putting my health on the line just to go and do what I love for the few days that I can and my desire for a cleaner planet is, yet again, renewed. 

*Sigh* here we go again....

So to just pound the nail into the coffin on environmental protections, our current administration ( Mr. George W., I hate the environment, Bush) is pushing through quite a few new rules and laws in his last 60 days in office. Presidents before him, starting with Jimmy Carter, have started doing this in their "midnight hour" in office. Carter, writing close to 20,000 pages worth, set the standard for future presidents (Clinton raking up over 100,000 pages). and now our current Pres is going for the gold in this race to the finish.

By many these are de-facto laws are called "midnight rules" or "midnight regulations" because they happen at the end -- or midnight period -- of an administration. "If the rules are published in the Federal Register by Friday, Nov. 21, they'll be very hard for President-elect Obama to reverse when he gets into office." (yahoo.com)

However, fear not my friends. There is one proposal that is still out there to comment on. It's the glorious idea of increasing the amount of Perchlorate in our tap water. Perchlorate is a chemical compound found in rocket fuel. yum. Apparently this stuff grows and nutures itself near rocket fuel test sites, chemical plants, and miliatry bases, and would cost billions to clean up. So the question is: Rocket Fuel in our water (which leads to thyroid problems in pregnant women, children, and newborns) or making sure our standards stay strong (to make sure the health of our people stay strong).

You can be on either side of the aisle on this one, and find it troubling that the Bush Administration is poised to deregulate laws to make chemical companies clean up their mess. Perchlorate standards in drinking water has actually INCREASED 15 times since 2002 of the levels that are declared safe.

Please take action by:

1. Making a Public Comment

Have you ever thought about simple, little ways you can help contribute to the 'go green' movement? Well, for starters, if you have a dishwasher, try not to use it. Wash your dishes thoroughly by hang and use the dishwasher racks to drain-dry your dishes. It saves so much water. 

I always hear that California is in a drought, and Californians must start conserving water and must stop frivolously using water (i.e. running dishwashers for 2 hours) and everyone must stop wasting water (i.e. dumping out water in water bottles that you didn't drink yet).

Here's some tips from www.monolake.org: Don't leave the water on when brushing your teeth, turn off the water in the shower when shaving, and while you wait for your shower to heat up, catch that cold water in a container and use it later to water plants.

With my suggestion, and the ones above, we can all help in ways we never thought possible!