Oil - Demand, Supply, and President Bush, pt 2
Posted by Moonage on 02 Sep 2004 | Tagged as: Oil Supply
Water: The oil of the 21st Century
There’s no link to reference here. So I’ll quote from an article in CE News, June 2004.
Is water a commodity or a public resource? It falls from the sky, free of charge. Yet people pay for water to cover the cost of treatment and distribution. So, at first glance, water would appear to be a commodity because it is bought and sold.
…a 1983 California Supreme Court decision on water diversion from Mono Lake by the L.A. Edpt. Of Water and Power defined the relationship between the state’s water-rights sytem and its public trust doctrine…. The court’s ruling protected Mono Lake for the benefit and use of the public.
The future likely will see water systems placed in the public interest with many previous rights and guarantees nullified, and a system administrator mandating operations. Access to the water system will be weighed against public interest. In keeping with this trend, more states are shifting from treating water as a property right to finding administrative or regulatory solutions for water allocation issues.
Where all the water goes
Water use in the U.S. was an estimated 408 billion gallons per day in 2000, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This total has varied less than 3% since 1985 because withdrawals have stabilized for the two largest uses - thermoelectric power and irrigation. The USGS provides the following breakdown of water withdrawal - surface and ground water - for 2000:
During 2000, about 85% of the U.S. population obtained drinking water from public suppliers, compared to 62 % in 1950. Surface water provided 63% of the public-supplied drinking water in 2000, according to USGS.
More data can be found at:
http://water.usgs.gov/watuse/
For current streamflow and ground water records:
http://water.usgs.gov/waterwatch/
***
While googling for a link to this article, which just isn’t available, I came across this same theme, only with a more global consequence.
In the past ten years, three giant global corporations have quietly assumed control over the water supplied to almost 300 million people in every continent of the world. A 12-month investigation by journalists in Canada, the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America shows that the results range from questionable to disastrous. And it shows how well-meaning municipal governments in the U.S. and Canada can become vulnerable to the persuasive techniques of these high-powered corporate giants.
This link leads to others in a series.
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