Gasping Canaries in the Mines - Hay shortage driving up incidence of neglect and voluntary forfeitures

"They eat before I do."

Livestock owners say the situation is now so desperate, many of them are having to get rid of some of their animals, simply because they can't afford to feed them.

The News & Observer reports:

Rescue agencies are taking in record numbers of horses across the state, many emaciated because of the drought-related hay shortage.

In the most recent case, a Randolph County woman was charged Thursday with 11 counts of animal abuse and eight counts of disposing of a dead animal improperly, after county officials investigated separate reports of a large number of dead horses scattered on the ground and of 11 live horses jammed into an undersize corral with no water and little hay.

The U.S. Equine Rescue League normally accepts about 100 neglected or abused horses a year in the three states where it operates, which include North Carolina. This year, the agency has taken in about 170 -- 90 in this state alone -- said Jennifer Malpass, director of the league's Triangle chapter.

Horse rescue groups nationally -- even those in states not stricken with a severe drought -- are being inundated with pleas to take neglected horses.

One group in Florida is fielding daily calls, up from bimonthly requests early this year. A rescue group in south central Kentucky had to turn away 13 horses this month. Kathy Grant, an equine cruelty investigator who runs a rescue group, says the rural roads in her eastern Tennessee community are lined with pastures dotted with emaciated horses.

"A lot of the farmers around here have hay, but they're holding on to it," said Grant. "When they're releasing it, they're charging exorbitant rates. A normal person can't afford it."

A round bale jumped from $12 to $100 since the summer, Grant said. In South Carolina, rescue volunteers noticed the price triple. In Texas, struck by a severe drought last year, hay prices haven't leveled off; horse owners are paying double what they did three years ago.

High prices are leaving owners with tough choices. Some are voluntarily forfeiting their animals. In other cases, horses are seized after county officials determine they have been abused or neglected.

County officials typically don't have holding facilities for large animals and so depend on agencies such as the rescue league to assume responsibility for horses. The league nurses them back to health, then places them in foster homes until someone adopts them, Malpass said.

The flood of rescues this year is a double blow to the volunteers.

Even before the drought, they were struggling to find space for foster horses. Now, they not only have to find shelter for more horses but also feed them when hay is expensive and scarce, Malpass said.

Hay donations drop

Her chapter normally receives about 300 bales of donated hay before winter, mostly from big horse operations clearing spring hay from their storage barns to make room for the fall cutting. But there was so little to spare that hay donations this year were only about a third the normal amount.

That means the volunteer rescuers are having to pull money out of their own pockets -- and a lot of it -- for hay, which has doubled in price in many areas.

The hay crisis also has increased the severity of the cases they are seeing, said Amy Woodard, a volunteer who leads the league's efforts in the northeastern corner of the state.

As the expense of feeding them has risen, the selling prices of horses have dropped. That has made purchase possible for people who might not be able to afford proper food and health care, or who didn't have the knowledge to keep horses healthy, Malpass said.

'Pieces everywhere'

The horse owner in the Randolph County case, Jauvanna Craven, 51, of Groom Road, Sophia, surrendered her horses. That saved time in court and allowed the county to get the surviving horses more quickly into the hands of rescuers.

Randolph County Health Director MiMi Cooper was so shocked at the animals' condition that she went to Craven to issue the charges herself. Craven could have faced more counts of improper disposal, said Cooper, who owns four horses herself.
"There were probably more than eight, but there were pieces [of dead horses] everywhere," she said. "Do you know what I had to do? I had to count heads."

Craven could not be reached for comment.

She had kept the horses on a 22-acre tract but sold it recently, Cooper said. The new owners discovered a number of horse carcasses and called the health department Dec. 21 to report them.

On the same day, the department got what it thought was an unrelated call about the 11 living horses, which were in a different location. They were confined in a pen that was big enough for only one or two horses, Cooper said. The horses were clearly starving, with every rib showing and their hip and shoulder bones jutting. One had an injury and had to be euthanized.

"She said that she was running a rescue operation," Cooper said. "That's not how you rescue horses."

The Equine Rescue League's Triad chapter took four of the horses, and another agency took three. The other three were apparently owned by someone else, who hadn't known about their health problems, and he took them away.

Shortage hits everyone

The hay shortage is so bad, though, that even conscientious owners are getting into trouble, Malpass said.

Marilyn Kille, who is taking care of three foster horses just outside Chapel Hill, said that people who own only one or two horses don't often have the massive dry storage space required for a whole winter supply of hay.

Normally, hay is abundant enough that suppliers keep plenty on hand, and horse owners can drop by every couple of weeks to buy more. Now, horse owners are competing for the scant supply against beef and dairy operations. Often, the only way to get it is to buy full truckloads from as far away as Ohio or New York.

Randolph County has fielded at least half a dozen calls this year from owners who didn't know where to turn, Cooper said, and area veterinarians have been getting similar calls.

Depending on the situation, Cooper said, the county steers them to hay sources like the on-line list kept by the state agriculture department, or links them with a rescue agency. Instead of suggesting that owners give up horses, the rescue agency prefers to teach them how to keep horses healthy, Malpass said.

Usually that approach works, she said. When it doesn't, the county or the rescuers ask the owner to give up the horse, or the county takes the owner to court to force the issue.

Normally rescues taper off in summer, when horses can graze. That's when the rescuers get a breather and start to build up their stores of hay.

This past summer, though, there was no break in rescues and the hay donations didn't come. So now, Malpass' group finds itself starting winter -- when livestock rely more on hay and less on grazing -- with an unusual number of horses to feed, not nearly enough hay and predictions that hay crops next year might be poor, too.

"It's really worrying because it can only get worse from here," she said.

More Than Half of Amazon Will Be Lost By 2030, Report Warns

The Guardian reports:

Climate change could speed up the large-scale destruction of the Amazon rainforest and bring the "point of no return" much closer than previously thought, conservationists warned today.

Almost 60% of the region's forests could be wiped out or severely damaged by 2030, as a result of climate change and deforestation, according to a report published today by WWF.

The damage could release somewhere between 55.5bn-96.9bn tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the Amazon's forests and speed up global warming, according to the report, Amazon's Vicious Cycles: Drought and Fire.

June 1989, Brazil: The forest burns. The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world and is home to 15% of the world’s known land-based plant species, and nearly 10% of the world’s mammals. It has as many as 300 species of tree in a single hectare. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

Trends in agriculture and livestock expansion, fire, drought and logging could severely damage 55% of the Amazon rainforest by 2030, the report says. And, in turn, climate change could speed up the process of destruction by reducing rainfall by as much as 10% by 2030, damaging an extra 4% of the forests during that time.

By the end of the century, global warming is likely to reduce rainfall by 20% in eastern Amazonia, pushing up temperatures by more than 2C and causing forest fires, the report said.

September 1988, Rondonia State, Brazil: Newly cleared land. Soya farming is one of the primary drivers of deforestation in the Amazon.
Photograph: Stephen Ferry/Liaison/Getty Images

Destroying almost 60% of tropical rainforest by 2030 would do away with one of the key stabilisers of the global climate system, it warned.

Such damage could have a knock-on effect on rainfall in places such as central America and India, and would also destroy livelihoods for indigenous people and some 80% of habitats for animal species in the region.

The "point of no return", in which extensive degradation of the rainforest occurs and conservation prospects are greatly reduced, is just 15-25 years away - much sooner than some models suggest, the report warns.

Releasing the report at the UN conference in Bali, which aims to begin negotiations on a new international climate change deal, the WWF called for a strategy to reduce emissions from forests and stop deforestation.

Beatrix Richards, the head of forests at WWF-UK, said: "The Amazon is on a knife-edge due to the dual threats of deforestation and climate change.

"Developed countries have a key role to play in throwing a lifeline to forest around the world. At the international negotiations currently underway in Bali governments must agree a process which results in ambitious global emission reduction targets beyond the current phase of Kyoto which ends in 2012.

"Crucially this must include a strategy to reduce emissions from forests and help break the cycle of deforestation."

The report's author, Dan Nepstead, senior scientist at the Woods Hole research centre in Massachusetts, said: "The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed.

"It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature but such a large source of freshwater that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that it's a massive store of carbon."

October 2002, Lower Amazon, Brazil: A raft of logs

September 1988, Rondonia State, Brazil: The rainforest burns as a result of fires started by farmers and ranchers Photograph: Stephen Ferry/Liaison/Getty Images

June 1989, Brazil: Housing owned by a mining company which has been built on rainforest land Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

November 2003, Para State, Brazil: After the loggers have harvested the trees, huge areas are burnt by cattle ranchers and soya producers who move onto the deforested land. Picture shows deforestation near Porto de Moz, where 80% of all timber produced is illegal Photograph: Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

November 2003, Para State, Brazil: Deforestation near Porto de Moz, where 80% of all timber produced is illegal Photograph: Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

April 2004, Rondonia State, Brazil: Smouldering pastureland cleared for cattle Photograph: Michael Nichols/National Geographic/Getty Images

September 2004, Novo Progreso, Brazil: An aerial view of deforestation caused by soybean farmers Photograph: Alberto Cesar/Greenpeace/AP

December 2004, Coari, Brazil: The Urucu oilfield, of state-owned Petrobras compan. Petrobras announced in 2004, that it will begin the construction of a 383 km long oil pipeline between the cities of Coari and Manaus. It took nearly two years, mainly for the opposition of environmental grups, to obtain the planning permission for the construcion of the stretch that will allow the oil to be taken from Urucu to Manaus, and that will require the deforestation of a 50m-wide strip along the way Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images

February 2005, Amapu, Brazil: An aerial picture of piles of wood at a sawmill Photograph: Antonio Scorza/AFP

August 2005, Mato Grosso State, Brazil: A fallen tree inside the word 'Crime' as a Greenpeace protest against deforestation Photograph: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace/AP

California City Reverses Water Privatization

Stockton, California City Council Reverses Water Privatization - It Passed Over Widespread Local Opposition

Part 1

Part 2

Transcript of Democracy Now!, August 1, 2007:

AMY GOODMAN: We end today’s show with a major victory for the opponents of water privatization. I’m talking about Stockton, California, a place that’s long been at the center of California’s water wars.

In late 2003, despite concerted efforts by a wide coalition of groups, the Stockton City Council voted in favor of a $600 million twenty-year water privatization agreement. The deal gave a multinational consortium, made up of the Colorado-based OMI and the London-based Thames Water, full control over Stockton’s water, sewage and storm water systems.

Well, two weeks ago, the City of Stockton reversed its earlier position and voted unanimously to undo the privatization deal and resume control of its water utilities. Before we go to the current victory, let’s go back in time to the Stockton City Council vote in favor of privatization in February of 2003. I want to play a clip from the PBS documentary Thirst that brought national attention to the struggle in Stockton.

DON EVANS: To safeguard the water of Stockton, you have the absolute commitment of our company and you have the commitment of Thames Water to deliver this contract effectively. That’s also, as the president, my personal commitment to you.

STOCKTON RESIDENT: It is clear that the decision to privatize has been made covertly without a public vote.

STOCKTON RESIDENT: I don't think the people at home realize how many hundreds of people were here and that it's all filled up back here and downstairs, and that it was hard to hear, so I appreciate [inaudible].

DEZARAYE BAGALAYOS: City Council Members, by signing this contract without the vote of the people, you will be betraying the people you supposedly represent. Water is life. This company, OMI-Thames, wants to profit from our water. Water for life, not for profit.

STOCKTON RESIDENT: I'm ashamed that we’ve followed this path and have gone down the road at making something happen that was not consensus building, not citizen-involved. It was basically handed down as a dictate. This is not the principle of an All-America City.

MAYOR PODESTO: OK, Council Member Giovanetti.

COUNCIL MEMBER GIOVANETTI: Thank you. I'm prepared to approve this contract tonight, ahead of the so-called vote of the people.

COUNCIL MEMBER: There comes a time when the people become so involved in an issue that it is important that they be heard by way of the ballot.

COUNCIL MEMBER NOMURA: As a Christian, I’ve always felt that prayer is very powerful. And when this process began, I’ve always prayed for guidance in what I should do. It says that in the Constitution, that you will elect representatives to vote and to make decisions that are best for you.

COUNCIL MEMBER MARTIN: We've not been elected to babysit and maintain the city until a vote can be taken by the citizens on major issues.

COUNCIL MEMBER: I do not feel they are too dumb to understand.

COUNCIL MEMBER MARTIN: Nobody said that.

COUNCIL MEMBER: And you know, the people who founded this republic obviously didn't think the people were too dumb to run it.

COUNCIL MEMBER MARTIN: Neither Lorrie and I or anyone on this council believes that the people are too dumb to resolve or to understand the issue. That's not -- that's not what we've said.

MAYOR PODESTO: Alright, quiet down. Officers, close the door, please. Tonight I want to thank the council for their indulgence and their endurance and their hard work to come up with whatever their answers are tonight. Do I believe that this should go to a vote of the people? Absolutely not. And that’s for no more reason than I can think any government by initiative is good. There's been a motion and a second. I'm calling for the question. Please cast your votes. Carries 4-3. Thank you all for your hard work.

AMY GOODMAN: With that, in 2003, the Stockton City Council voted for the privatization of their water supply. This, an excerpt of the award-winning PBS documentary Thirst, on water privatization in Bolivia, India and the United States. Alan Snitow is its co-director, also a board member of Food and Water Watch, and recently co-wrote the book that delves deeper into the implications of water privatization in the United States. It's called Thirst: Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water. Alan Snitow joins us from San Francisco. Welcome, Alan, to Democracy Now!

ALAN SNITOW: Thanks, Amy. Thanks for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what happened since 2003 in Stockton, California.

ALAN SNITOW: Well, what's happened in Stockton is really quite an extraordinary victory and transformation. It proves that privatization is really fundamentally flawed as a model for something like an essential service like water.

What we’ve seen in the past four years, since the private consortium took over, have been spills -- sewage spills, with a failure to inform people at the height of the summer when the river was being -- when people were using it for recreation and swimming. There was a pass of who was going to tell people that the water actually had fecal matter in it. You're talking about a series of problems, in which you brought in a lot of temp workers, non-union contractors. There were spills into irrigation ditches. There were fines. There was lack of transparency. People couldn't find out what was going on. The rates went up.

There's a series of problems, one after the other, so that in the end you got not only unanimous city council reversal of its decision four years earlier, but even the mayor who had been pushing this in the past, the former mayor, said he agreed with the council decision. The city newspaper, the Stockton Record, which had been a supporter of privatization, said they supported the council decision. There was no one willing to go to bat for this consortium, OMI-Thames, and the only reason that people are not really getting down on them in public is that they signed a no disparagement agreement.

This is the way things work when you make a contract with a private company for something that's really an essential service that people have a right to have. You know, this is something that is too key. It is really -- you know, they say that police and fire and schools have to be something that's in the public sector, that's run for the people. Well, you know, there's something else that also has to go in there, and water -- and some of us would also say, I suppose, healthcare.

AMY GOODMAN: But how did Stockton get out of it? It was a twenty-year deal. And how did this consortium approach Stockton?

ALAN SNITOW: You know, when people say that there's a contract -- “Oh, it's a safe thing to do a privatization, because you have a contract that's hard and fast” -- contracts are changed. That's what lawyers are for. And when you have certain kinds of noncompliance, when the company is not making money, it's always possible to say, “Hey, look, guys, you guys are not doing a good job here, and you're not even making that much money. Let's make a deal to cut you out and get rid of you and return it to public control.” So that's what's happened in this particular case.

And the reason why the company would let it go was that they were not even making money. They realized they were not fulfilling their obligations. But they're going to take an enormous hit, because Stockton was the largest privatization in the western half of the United States. After Atlanta's failure by Suez in the 2002, when they were kicked out of Atlanta, you now got another major failure. This is a real blow to the idea that a private company, a contractor, can come in and take over your water supply and do a better job than public employees.

AMY GOODMAN: In your book and also in your documentary -- in your book, Alan, Nestle -- you talk about Wisconsin, you talk about Michigan. You're speaking to us from San Francisco, where the mayor has banned the flow of money to buy bottled water. Talk about these local initiatives and where you see them going right now. I think, for most people, this is way below the radar screen. They think of bottled water, one thing, as healthy, and people don't realize that water supplies are being taken over.

ALAN SNITOW: Well, you know, people have a visceral response to the loss of control of their water. But water is a local issue. So when you hear about Stockton, it's pretty unusual that you'd hear about Stockton in New York or Michigan or Florida. And the same is true that a small local battle in Massachusetts or in Wisconsin rarely is going to get national press. And the result is that water is a watershed issue. It's both essential, but it's also something that you're not going to hear about outside of the local area.

So what we've found is that all over the country, in towns and cities, you're getting these local movements, visceral upsurges of community reaction to the loss of control of their water services or their water supplies. And supplies -- I know that the folks from Corporate Accountability and Michael Blanding were all talking about the bottled water -- they're also having the same kind of reaction of loss of control of their utility. And this has brought now a kind of emerging movement to try to make it not only that bottled water is something that we're not focusing on, that we're not going to be drinking, but also that we're going to actually provide the money that is necessary to make public water universal, affordable and clean.

And to do that, because you have hundred-year-old pipes in the ground, there needs to be federal investment. And the Bush administration has cut back investment in water by billions of dollars every year. And there's now a fight that's going on in Washington to create a federal trust fund for water, the way we have for highways or building airports, so that you actually can have a clean water trust fund that makes it possible for local areas, for states and cities, to be able to upgrade their water systems so that they won't have to have this kind of situation in which the bottled water companies are implying that their water is pure, when actually they're getting the same source of water, they're using tap water themselves.

AMY GOODMAN: Back on the issue of Stockton, I mean, didn’t -- we're talking about the state weighing in here, too, a judge saying that the Stockton City Council actually violated the Environmental Protection Act -- the state won -- by not doing an environmental assessment. And you had the former mayor, Podesto, or the former head of the city council, who voted for the privatization, turning around. How does that all take place?

ALAN SNITOW: Well, when they passed the privatization, they were in a real rush to do it, because the Citizens Coalition, this amazing and tenacious citizens group in Stockton, had gotten 18,000 signatures from people in the city to put a referendum on the ballot to require a public vote for the privatization. The city council voted to approve the privatization just thirteen days before that vote was to take place. And in order to do that, they had to put in a line saying, “We are exempting this decision from the California Environmental Quality Act.” That was patently illegal. And the result was that two judges have ruled against the privatization and said to the city that they have to reverse it.

The city had a choice that they could have appealed it; they decided not to. They had a choice to take it to the referendum vote and revote on the issue; they decided not to. So what was really going on here was that the privatization hadn't worked on the ground, to some extent. It hadn't worked for the river, it hasn't worked for the water. And so, they decided unanimously to reverse it.

And one of the things that happens is happening here and around the country, this question about preempting the vote in the referendum. One of the things that we found in the movie and in our book Thirst was that you have a constant drumbeat by these companies to undermine democratic input in order to be able to take control of water supplies, because people want it to be a public service.

AMY GOODMAN: Alan Snitow, we only have a few minutes, so I want to just -- bullet points on these struggles that you've documented around the country. For example, Nestle comes to Wisconsin Dells in Wisconsin; what happened?

ALAN SNITOW: There, a series of groups got together and battled against the company and drove Nestle out of the state of Wisconsin, an amazing victory there. But Nestle then moved into the state of Michigan, where the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation has been fighting against their taking water out of aquifers and streams in Michigan. And they just had a Supreme Court decision in the state of Michigan, which was denying citizens’ groups the right to intervene on certain environmental issues. Again, Nestle trying to intervene against the possibility of people taking a direct role in the future of their water.

AMY GOODMAN: And Nestle, which owns among other water brands, Poland Spring, Arrowhead, Deer Park.

ALAN SNITOW: Ice Mountain. Yeah, Deer Park.

AMY GOODMAN: What about Lee, Massachusetts and Holyoke?

ALAN SNITOW: In Massachusetts, there was a real battle, because there's a state law that allows cities, if they apply for it, to be able to do single-bidder kinds of contracts on essential services. And in Lee, again, a citizens’ movement, sort of spontaneous from below, fought against Veolia North America, a major French-based company, taking over their water. And they fought it successfully.

In Holyoke, they did not succeed. It was very much a parallel case to Stockton, in which Aquarion took over the water system in the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts, again going around the process.

AMY GOODMAN: Lexington, Kentucky?

ALAN SNITOW: Lexington, Kentucky, there, the citizens’ group lost a vote to take back water that was owned by the American Water Company, a part of a big multinational consortium, one of the hundred largest companies in the world, after a multi-year fight. But now it's coming back to haunt the city. And the fight is once again on the agenda over the future of the water in Lexington, Kentucky.

AMY GOODMAN: And Atlanta, Georgia?

ALAN SNITOW: Atlanta was one of the biggest scandals. The mayor who brought in the privatization was indicted. There were charges that he went to Paris on an all-expenses-paid trip with his mistress, paid for by the water company, and then signed off on massive increases in money going to the water company in Atlanta. They were thrown out by the current mayor, Shirley Franklin, because there was brown water, because there was constant eruptions.

AMY GOODMAN: Alan, we're going to have to leave it there.

ALAN SNITOW: All right. Thanks so much.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us, Alan Snitow, co-director of the PBS documentary Thirst, author of Thirst, as well, Fighting the Corporate Theft of our Water.

El Salvadoran Protestors Against Water Privatization Being Tried As Terrorists

. . . . According to laws patterned after Patriot Act (& approved by U.S.).

Water, Water, Everywhere, and Not A Drop (For The People) To Drink:

Transcript of Democracy Now!, August 1, 2007 broadcast:

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to El Salvador, where protests against water privatization early last month ended with the arrest of fourteen protesters, thirteen of whom were subsequently charged with committing acts of terrorism.

On July 2, hundreds of people had gathered in the Suchitoto municipality to protest President Antonio Saca’s plan to decentralize water distribution. They saw the plan as an attempt to privatize municipal water resources as stipulated in a 1998 World Bank loan. The protesters were met with heavily armed riot police, who fired rubber bullets and tear gas on the crowd and detained fourteen people. Among those arrested was a journalist covering the protest and members of CRIPDES, the Association of Rural Communities for the Development of El Salvador. They were on their way to attend the rally in Suchitoto.

Last week, the prisoners were released on bail as a result of national and international pressure. But the charges of terrorism remain, and if found guilty, they could face up to sixty years of prison time. El Salvador's antiterrorism law came into effect last year and is modeled on the USA PATRIOT Act. Human rights groups have condemned the government’s response and application of this draconian law. Human Rights Watch said yesterday the law criminalizes a wide variety of acts most of which “do not fall within any reasonable definition of terrorism.”

Today, Krista Hanson joins us, also from Boston, to tell us more. She's the program director at CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Krista. Explain what's happening in El Salvador.

KRISTA HANSON: Well, I think that what's really important to know about that event on July 2 in Suchitoto is that it comes from -- I mean, the resistance that was happening there comes from a long history in El Salvador of -- first, of this implementation of privatization. People in El Salvador know what privatization of public resources looks like. The telecommunications, electricity, other industries have been privatized, and the rates go up so much that people have no access anymore to those. And so, you can't have that with water, right?

So over the last couple of years people have been out in the streets. And community by community, really, going out, and a common protest tactic is to shut down a street and demand access to water, to demand that it not be decentralized or privatized, or that there even be water. People pay water bills right now, and water comes out one hour a day in their taps, or one day a week or two days as a week, so people have been doing this for the last couple of years.

What was different on July 2 is that we're getting a lot closer to the government pushing forward this general water law that would privatize the currently public water system. So people were out there defending their right to water, defending, trying to stop the announcement of this first step in decentralization.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain the response of the state, of the police, and who the people are who have been arrested.

KRISTA HANSON: So on July 2, the people that went out were the community that lives there in Suchitoto, this fairly rural community, as well as people who are involved nationally in this rural development organization, CRIPDES, the local water union, FMLN representatives. They were all out there trying to stop the announcement of the privatization or what -- the government knows they can't call it “privatization,” so President Saca was there to announce “decentralization,” which, of course, is the first step.

So people were protesting. They were protesting in the street, you know, with signs saying, you know, “Water is a human right.” And the police went in in full, full force, as you were saying, full riot gear, rubber bullets, shooting rubber bullets at close range, shooting tear gas at kids, at old people. And then, actually, four of the people who were arrested were actually in a car a few miles away, driving to the protest. And there's video of this that was shown in court, and it's on our webpage, the CISPES webpage, if people want to see it. And you can really see the police dragging people out of their car who were on their way to the protest. And those are the people that they arrested and are currently charging with terrorism.

AMY GOODMAN: With terrorism.

KRISTA HANSON: They are being charged with terrorism for attempting to go to a peaceful protest against the privatization of water. It's really terrifying, because, as you said, it is exported from the United States. I mean, when this law was passed -- it's not a coincidence, just stepping back a little bit, that CAFTA passed -- CAFTA was implemented, excuse me, in March of 2006. It was September of 2006, last fall, when the rightwing government passed this law called the Antiterrorism Law that would define broadly, broadly define things like occupying a public road as terrorism and allow people to be imprisoned for up to sixty years, which is what these people from Suchitoto are facing. Not coincidentally, the US was behind the passing -- the US government was behind the passage of CAFTA, pushed really hard to get it implemented, because even after it passed, there was resistance. And then in September the US ambassador in El Salvador congratulated the Salvadoran government for passing that law and said, you know, “This is proof that we're partners in the war on terrorism.” So that's the law.

And this is really one of the first times that this law is being used, and it’s being used, not coincidentally, not against any terrorists, but against peaceful protesters. And so, people see this as really precedent-setting, this case that's going to come before the courts in September, of seeing whether or not the government really will move forward in imprisoning people and whether or not they actually -- you know, they're declared guilty of -- you know, supposedly of terrorism. Everyone is really clear that this is about scaring people out of protesting and criminalizing protest to the extent that people are afraid to go out and defend their right to something that's so clearly a human right.

AMY GOODMAN: CAFTA stands for Central American Free Trade Agreement. We only have thirty seconds, but, Krista, what does this have to do with the World Bank? How is the World Bank identified with this so-called “decentralization” program?

KRISTA HANSON: The World Bank gave the loan in 1998 that first pushed decentralization and brought in the element of private corporations having a say in this. And maybe just to conclude, also I think that because the World Bank is a part of this, because the US government is pushing this, that's why as solidarity we're so concerned about accompanying people out there. And the US government is going to continue to be involved through their major elections in 2009 in El Salvador. Whether it's the Democrats or the Republicans in power here, they need to maintain their ally, this rightwing government in El Salvador that's going to push privatization, push the neoliberal model, through repressive policing, through calling protest terrorism and criminal acts.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to have to leave it there. Krista, I want to thank you very much for being with us.

KRISTA HANSON: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Krista Hanson, program director of CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, and Gigi Kellett with the Corporate Accountability International, both speaking to us from Boston. Corporate Accountability International is the incarnation of Infact. Link to the video of the Salvador protest.

The Privatization of America's Water Supply

New Scrutiny Falls on the Economic and Environmental Costs of a Billion Dollar Industry

Aquifers (underground reservoirs) are being depleted by overdevelopment of the land and an increasing population. Global warming is changing weather patterns around the world, causing droughts in densely populated regions and flooding in others where overdevelopment has paved over the land's ability to replenish the aquifers. The flood waters run off instead to places where it (usually) becomes unusable by man.

America's water systems, built and paid for originally by the American taxpayer, is being sold off to multinational corporations. The water is being pumped out of aquifers, bottled and shipped out to the highest bidders.

If not in our lifetime, but certainly in our children's, San Franciscans will be facing thirst, dehydration and death because tap water, taken over by multi-national corporations, will be shipped to those who can pay top dollar for it.

PepsiCo delivery man Nick Jones unloads Aquafina water and other Pepsi products while making a delivery in Tualatin, Ore., in a file photo of April 26, 2006. The label on Aquafina water bottles will soon be changed to spell out that the drink comes from the same source as tap water, the brand's owner PepsiCo said Friday, July 27, 2007. (AP Photo/Don Ryan, file)

Democracy Now! reports:

AMY GOODMAN: The soft drink giant Pepsi has been forced to make an embarrassing admission: its bestselling Aquafina bottled water is nothing more than tap water. Last week, Pepsi agreed to change the labels of Aquafina to indicate the water comes from a public water source. Pepsi agreed to change its label under pressure from the advocacy group Corporate Accountability International, which has been leading an increasingly successful campaign against bottled water.

In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom recently banned city departments from using city money to buy any kind of bottled water. In New York, local residents are being urged to drink tap water. The US Conference of Mayors has passed a resolution that highlighted the importance of municipal water and called for more scrutiny of the impact of bottled water on city waste.

The environmental impact of the country's obsession with bottled water has been staggering. Each day an estimated sixty million plastic water bottles are thrown away. Most are not recycled. The Pacific Institute has estimated twenty million barrels of oil are used each year to make the plastic for water bottles.

Economically, it makes sense to stop buying bottled water, as well. The Arizona Daily Star recently examined the cost difference between bottled water and water from the city's municipal supply. A half-liter of Pepsi's Aquafina at a Tucson convenience store costs $1.39. The bottle contains purified water from the Tucson water supply. From the tap, you can pour over 6.4 gallons for a penny. That makes the bottled stuff about 7,000 times more expensive, even though Aquafina is using the same source of water.

Gigi Kellett of Corporate Accountability International joins us in Boston, the group spearheading the Think Outside the Bottle campaign. We're also joined by freelance writer Michael Blanding. Last year he wrote an article for alternet.org called “The Bottled Water Lie.” We welcome you both to Democracy Now!

I want to begin with Gigi Kellett. Talk about Pepsi's admission.

GIGI KELLETT: Well, after a couple of years of our Think Outside the Bottle campaign, we have been asking of the bottled water corporations to come clean about where they get their water, what is the source of the water that they're bottling, because most people don't know that Pepsi's Aquafina, Coke's Dasani, comes from our public water systems. And so, after thousands of phone calls, thousands of public comments submitted to the corporation, and us taking these demands directly to the corporation’s annual shareholder meeting this year, Pepsi last week made the announcement that it would reveal that it gets its water from our public water systems.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, where exactly does Pepsi get it? Which public water supply?

GIGI KELLETT: Well, that is the issue that we're really looking at next, is what cities are they bottling the water in. You know, here in Massachusetts, it's coming from Ayre, Massachusetts. So we want to make sure that on those bottles it says: “Public water source: Ayre, Massachusetts.” That way, people know exactly what they're getting when they're buying that Aquafina bottled water.

AMY GOODMAN: Ayre being the name of a town in Massachusetts.

GIGI KELLETT: Ayre is the name of a town, right. Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happens to the town? They have their public water supply, and they have the plant for Pepsi?

GIGI KELLETT: That's right. We want to make sure that -- you know, Pepsi has certainly taken a lead on this for the bottled water industry, and we want to make sure that Coke and Nestle also follow suit. One of the things that we're finding as we're talking to people about this issue on the street is that they don't know where the water is coming from. And the bottled water corporations have spent tens of millions of dollars on ads that make people think that bottled water is somehow better, cleaner, safer than our public water systems. And in reality, we know that that's not true. And so, we want to make sure that we're increasing our people's confidence in their public water systems once again and knowing that we need to be investing in our public systems.

AMY GOODMAN: Gigi, can you go further who owns what? You mention Nestle. What does Nestle own?

GIGI KELLETT: Nestle owns several dozen brands of bottled water. The bottled water brand they source from our public water systems is called Nestle Pure Life. They also own Poland Spring, Ozarka, Arrowhead. The list goes on. And regionally, it's distributed across the country. And then we also have Coca-Cola, which bottles Dasani water, and, or course, Pepsi with Aquafina.

AMY GOODMAN: And when it comes to being tap water, what is the difference between plain tap water and distilled water from these public sources.

GIGI KELLETT: Well, there's very little difference. You know, our public water systems go through a very rigorous testing and monitoring system and is tested by the Environmental Protection Agency. So we want to make sure that people know that our public water systems are much better regulated than these bottled water brands, which don't have to go through the same rigorous type of process.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Gigi Kellett, associate campaigns director of Corporate Accountability International. Michael Blanding is a freelance writer, has written the piece "The Bottled Water Lie." Michael, what is the lie?

MICHAEL BLANDING: Well, there are actually several lies, I think, that the bottled water companies perpetrate, but I think the main one is exactly what Gigi said, that this image bolstered by, you know, millions and millions of dollars of advertising that bottled water is somehow better for you, it tastes better, it's more pure. And in many cases, that's simply not true. People are paying, you know, enormous premiums for bottled water and don't even realize the fact that in many cases not only does tap water taste the same, but that it's actually more tightly regulated and actually healthier for you. There have been, you know, several cases of bottled water that's actually been contaminated and found to contain hazardous chemicals. And tap water, there’s actually, you know, a rigorous testing and monitoring of the water supply that actually in many cases makes it healthier.

AMY GOODMAN: When we come back from break, I want to talk about some of those cases of contamination, but also talk about the community struggles that are working to take back their water supply. Our guests are Michael Blanding, wrote "The Bottled Water Lie," and Gigi Kellett of Corporate Accountability International. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Gigi Kellett of Corporate Accountability International and Michael Blanding, wrote “The Bottled Water Lie” for alternet.org. They're both in the Boston studio. We're talking about the bottled water lie.

Now, Michael, you begin your piece by talking about Antonia Mahoney. Talk about who she is.

MICHAEL BLANDING: She was someone who was just walking down the street in downtown Boston when the folks at Corporate Accountability -- Gigi and the folks in her group -- were holding something called the Tap Water Challenge, which was a taste test between tap water and various bottled water brands, Aquafina and Dasani. And I stood there during the afternoon and watched, you know, many people come up who were bottled water drinkers and could swear that they could tell the difference and that they could recognize their brand.

And Antonia Mahoney was one of those who -- she actually had given off drinking bottle -- drinking tap water a few years ago and was drinking only Poland Spring and knew, you know, that she would be able to tell Poland Spring of all the other types of water that she was drinking there. And it turned out that what she thought was Poland Spring was actually the tap water from Boston, the good old tap water, which -- we actually have very good tap water that comes from western Mass here. So she was very surprised and shocked and decided right there that she was going to leave off her contract of paying $30 a month for Poland Spring water that she got delivered to her house. So it was very -- and there were other experiences like that during the day that I witnessed.

AMY GOODMAN: Michael, you write about the problems of a suspected carcinogen chemical, bromate. You talk about the contamination of Dasani water, owned by Coca-Cola, in 2004. Explain what the problems are, the contamination issues.

MICHAEL BLANDING: So, ironically, one of the processes that actually takes the tap water and purifies it -- it’s called ozonation -- can actually in some cases have a byproduct, which is bromate, which is, as you say, a suspected carcinogen. And the largest case of contamination was in the UK in 2004, right when Dasani launched in the United Kingdom. They had something like a half-million bottles of Dasani water actually found to be contaminated, and people were getting sick. And, you know, it's just indicative of the lack of controls and the lack of monitoring that you find with bottled water.

And it's not an isolated case. There have been many others that have occurred. Most recently up in Upstate New York with an independent bottled water company, there were multiple cases of bromate contamination, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the issue of filtering? First of all, I don't know if people realize when something says “public water source” that it means tap water. But then, what it means for that tap water to be filtered to -- you talk about additional techniques like reverse-osmosis.

MICHAEL BLANDING: Right, yeah. So there are various techniques that the companies use, and, you know, they tout them as these proprietary techniques that, you know, they go through seven different phases of filtering, and all the rest of it. And, you know, when you look at it, though -- you know, reverse-osmosis is the main one, which is basically just pushing water through a membrane to remove contaminants, and it's actually very similar to the type of process that can be found in home water filters, just, you know, the kind that you attach to your tap for a couple of hundred bucks. So, you know, the -- it's not as sophisticated as they might, you know, pretend that it is.

AMY GOODMAN: And internationally, the movements, from Bolivia to Peru, La Paz, all over.

MICHAEL BLANDING: Yeah. What's interesting is that, you know, here in the United States there are, you know, several communities that have actually, you know, had plants take a lot of water from their groundwater up in Michigan, you know, where they can actually see the water level of one of their streams declining because of, you know, the massive amount that Nestle was taking from their water.

And it's even a more critical issue in other countries where water scarcity is a real problem, so places like India, where Coca-Cola and Pepsi have actually, you know, really depleted communities and farmers have been unable to grow their crops, it's kind of been a double whammy. They've taken the water, and then the water that they -- the waste water they've dumped back has been polluted, in many cases. And so, that's one issue, is just the depletion of water from the plants themselves.

And then the other issue, which I know Gigi could talk about, is just the perception that comes across that somehow tap water is -- you know, municipal water is somehow, you know, not as good as water that's been privatized. And so, you have -- it sort of starts this steady creep of where privatization of water sources becomes OK. And there have been many communities, like in Bolivia, where water supplies have been privatized and have been sold back to -- water that was previously free has, you know, skyrocketed in price. And people have taken to the streets and protested and actually got the private companies to leave.

AMY GOODMAN: Gigi Kellett, let's talk about the tainting of the image of the municipal water supply in this country, the effect of the bottled water advertising industry campaigns.

GIGI KELLETT: Well, this is something that’s of real concern to our organization and our members and activists across the country, because we are seeing this -- you know, who are we turning to to provide our drinking water? And there are -- these bottled water corporations are spending tens of millions of dollars every year on ads that effectively undermine people's confidence in their water. There was actually a poll done by the University of Arkansas earlier this year that found young people tend to choose bottled water over tap water, because they feel it's somehow cleaner or better than their public water systems. And as we've already mentioned here, we know that in reality that's not true. So there is a real concern about the impact that these bottled water corporations are having on the way we think about water.

And our Think Outside the Bottle campaign is aiming to change that, and we're having real success with cities like San Francisco and Ann Arbor, Michigan and New York City, taking a lead on putting their public water systems back in the forefront and not contracting with bottled water corporations, for example, like in Salt Lake City and in San Francisco. And we're seeing restaurants turn to the tap in lieu of bottled water. So there’s a lot that people are starting to look at in terms of this industry and what changes we can make to promote our own public water systems here in this country and make sure that they have the funding they need to thrive, and that also we're looking internationally to make sure that countries that may be cash-strapped also have the resources they need to have good, strong public water systems and not turn to privatization.

AMY GOODMAN: Gigi, tell us about what happened in Salt Lake City and in San Francisco, with the mayor announcing that city money cannot be used to buy bottled water.

GIGI KELLETT: That's right. You know, the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, after we had been working with his staff there, working with the San Francisco Department of the Environment and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, they looked at how much money they were spending on bottled water every year. It was close to a half-million dollars. And they said, “We're the forefront. We're cities. We're the forefront of ensuring that people have access to good, safe, clean water. And we're also now at the forefront of dealing with the waste that results from the bottled water industry. So we need to take a stand as a city.” And in June, Mayor Newsom issued an executive order saying that the city would no longer be buying bottled water. And he joined with the mayor of Salt Lake City, Rocky Anderson, and also the mayor of Minneapolis, R.T. Rybak, to put forward a resolution at the US Conference of Mayors calling on a study to really look at what are the impacts of bottled water on our municipal waste. So it’s a real great leadership that we're seeing of these cities.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Gigi, what about the effect that the water in the plastic bottle has? Is there any kind of leeching out? People think that they're getting healthier water in all sorts of ways, but what about the impact of that plastic?

GIGI KELLETT: Well, there are a number of concerns about the impact of the plastic, yes, of course, in the leeching. These bottles that are made are single-serve bottles, so they're not intended to be reused, because of the potential for leeching of the plastic into -- you know, when you're drinking the water. And then, of course, there are the environmental impacts of the bottles that are ending up in our landfills and on the side of the road as litter. They're not being recycled. Only about 23% of these plastic bottles are being recycled. So it's a huge impact for our environment and, of course, for people's health. So we want people to be looking at turning back to the tap and thinking outside the bottle.

AMY GOODMAN: You talked about international, and we're going to go international now to El Salvador.

A Peek Into Tomorrow, Coming Sooner Than You May Think

These refugees in Chad are escaping violence in Darfur. But the displaced of the future may be running from the climate.

Der Spiegel reports:

The picture painted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is one of blighted nations and millions of desperate immigrants fleeing climate disaster. But experts disagree about whether the bleak vision will ever come true.

These refugees in Chad are escaping violence in Darfur. But the displaced of the future may be running from the climate.

Once upon a time, a warming climate tempted the Romans into northern Europe -- as far as northern Germany and even into Britain. Hundreds of years later cooling weather drove Germanic tribes from Scandinavia into the south. Vikings settled Greenland after it warmed up, only to leave when it froze again.

Climate, in short, has long triggered mass migration. And the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that more may be on the horizon. The second part of its extensive report on global warming, released on Friday, warns that coming climate-related disasters may kick off a worldwide exodus of Biblical proportions. Indeed, according to the International Red Cross, 25 million people have already started to shift from places blighted by environmental problems -- a figure that would top the current number of war refugees across the globe.

Rich industrial nations, after decades of pouring more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than poor countries, can adjust to the changes if they invest enough money; but the poorest parts of Central America, Asia and Africa will suffer harshly from flooding and drought. This conventional wisdom in the climate controversy has opened a human-rights debate: Now it's not just globalization, closed markets, or the consequences of colonialism that have robbed the poor of their opportunities -- it's also greenhouse gases. Will coming decades see millions of "climate refugees" flowing north from the floodplains and deserts of Africa or Latin America?

"Horror-movie scenarios"

This question is still wide open among scientists. Experts can't agree if climate refugees even exist. Oxford-based ecologist Norman Myers argues they do, and says the number could soar to as high as 200 million within 50 years. "These people see no alternative to seeking asylum elsewhere, as hazardous as the attempt (to get there) might be," he says.

His colleague Stephen Castles, at Oxford's International Migration Institute, contradicts these horror-movie scenarios. "Myers and others simply take the climate predictions at face value and look at how many people live in the areas that will be flooded," says the author of "The Age of Migration," a now-standard text. This method, says Castles, leads to exaggerated refugee estimates.

He says it's more accurate to research how people actually respond in a given area to environmental disaster, war, or widespread poverty. "What we see is something else -- immigration is generally not the main strategy." When living conditions do get unbearable, people also tend to move within their own countries -- only rarely do they cross national borders.

Immigration experts in countries like Bangladesh tend to agree. Along with low-lying islands like the Maldives, Bangladesh is an early indicator of climate-change prophecies, and even there, sea levels aren't rising all at once. Parts of the country can be protected with dikes; other parts may have to be abandoned, but the people can be resettled. "Only a few will really flee to India," says Castles.

The crucial issue is how well governments react to disasters. After the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, most of the 300,000 displaced residents returned a few months later. After the Pinatubo volcano erupted in the Philippines, though, a large-scale return took years. But the capacity of a nation to respond isn't just a matter of money, as the US government's desultory response to Hurricane Katrina showed in 2005. "It has more to do with decisiveness and organization, and with the struggle against corruption and mismanagement" within a government, says Castles. Overly dramatic predictions of mass migration, he says, mainly serve to aggravate xenophobia: "Right now a tide of refugees is already lapping against the EU's shores," he points out.

Land reform against the apocalypse?

Thomas Faist, a sociologist at the University of Bielefeld, also resists the shrill language his colleagues have started to use. "I don't want to deny the problem," the professor says. "But we can't lose sight of the fact that there are other far more decisive reasons for people to leave home." Floods and desertification are happening now; at the same time people are going hungry and trying to flee. But Faist argues that their ultimate reasons for leaving boil down to ethnic conflict, or economic as well as political mismanagement. He thinks climate change is just an exacerbating factor. Anyone who wants to stop a stream of immigrants has to address its underlying cause, and he doubts the climate can be cited as a root cause for all conflicts raging through all the poor parts of the world.

Faist therefore believes that pots of emergency-fund or "just in case" money for the countries most affected by climate change will be useless. "What they need from us is technological help, drought-resistant seeds, and political support to help the governments react," he says. "Climate change should not be exploited as a cause, to relieve developing nations of their own responsibilities."

The difference between good and bad political management can be seen in Turkey. In the west, where land reform has been underway for decades, the farming sector has flourished; people can support themselves and export their products. In eastern Turkey, where most farmland still belongs to a handful of huge landlords, productivity is low, poverty is high, and many people are leaving for the cities.

"Western Turkey," says Faist, "is in better shape to deal with climate change."