Corporate thieves are stealing our resources and making off like bandits. Whether it’s Nike sweatshops stealing human labor, or Kimberly-Clark clear-cutting ancient rainforests, our shared resources are being stolen, packaged, marketed and sold back to us (that is, if we can afford it).
When corporate representatives get elected to government or appointed to non-profit boards, we get disaster in public policy. George Bush and Dick Cheney have been great examples of that.
Recently, the State of Florida gave Nestle Corporation the right to steal the people’s water–as much as it can–from the drought-distressed Madison Blue Springs State Park. For this right, they will pay absolutely nothing for the next 10 years.
Hard to believe? You can read more here.
And before we think it’s far from home and we don’t need to pay attention, did you know that for the last 10 years the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, a state-chartered government agency, has contracted wastewater treatment out to private companies?
I wonder who sits on their board?
11 Apr 2008 | 4:45 pm | Water, Representation | No comments yet - Add your comments
What can you do with old medicine, over-the-counter cough syrup, prescription drugs, inhalers, pet medicine?
Medicine Collection Day
Saturday, April 19
9 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Continue reading ‘Sat., April 19 - Medicine Collection Day’
31 Mar 2008 | 12:34 pm | Water, Health | No comments yet - Add your comments
March 22 is “World Water Day,” designated in 1992 to draw international attention to the plight of more than 1 billion people worldwide that lack access to clean, safe drinking water.
I hope the Tap Project has a strong pollution prevention aspect, and they aren’t underwritten by wastewater management companies.
Some thoughts on water:
- We need to close the loopholes which allow cities, countries and corporations to empty the Great Lakes. We need a Strong Great Lakes Water Compact.
- Which approach to clean water do we take — preventing its contamination or cleaning it up afterward? Our long-term focus needs to be on prevention of water contamination rather than on water clean-up programs, which ultimately benefit corporate interests by continuing to allow pollution and creating an opportunity for corporate intervention through river/lake/ocean clean-up programs and purification/filtration systems.
- We must all fight to keep our city’s water and waste water systems from being privatized and susceptible to corporate interests. Unfortunately, Milwaukee’s wastewater operation has been privatized for years. Efforts to keep it public failed this past year and a new contract was signed (not sure for how long).
- We need better rainwater runoff management, so that raw, untreated sewage doesn’t get dumped into the river and the lake.
- There’s a lot we can do individually to reduce our own water usage. Check it out:
Below is from: http://dnr.metrokc.gov/wtd/waterconservation/tips.htm
How much water do you use?
Flushing the toilet 1.5-7 gallons per flush, depending on the design of the toilet
Taking a shower 3 gallons per minute, or 25-45 gallons for an average shower Continue reading ‘March 22 is World Water Day’
21 Mar 2008 | 5:56 pm | Water | No comments yet - Add your comments
While everyone has been buzzing about a recent report about our pharmaceutical-laced water, another report remains underground. Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern, was originally scheduled for release in July 2007. But several days before that, the study was suddenly withdrawn for “further review.”
The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the study, which warns that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen “areas of concern”—including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee—may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.
Download the report here.
Great Lakes Danger Zones?
by Sheila Kaplan, The Center for Public Integrity
February 12, 2008
For more than seven months, the nation’s top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly because it contains such potentially “alarming information” as evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates.
Continue reading ‘Great Lakes Water: Dioxins, PCBs, Lead, Mercury and Pesticides’
12 Mar 2008 | 10:24 pm | Water, Health | No comments yet - Add your comments
Brave, bold and brutally honest interview with Maude Barlow by Amy Goodman.
The Great Lakes are discussed.
Water is now a $400 billion global industry, the third largest behind electricity and oil. (Water is the new oil)
By the way, the focus of corporations, in response to the water crisis, is to clean up dirty water, instead of preserving water at its source. There’s a lot of money in cleaning up water.
This is why we desperately need a strong Great Lakes Compact. (The Midwest is the new MidEast)
Watch, listen or read about the end of our civilization as we know it, and the privatization of water here
Read the full interview here
AMY GOODMAN: Eight of the nation’s largest water providers from California to New York have announced the formation of a coalition to develop strategies on dealing with climate change. The members of the newly formed Water Utility Climate Alliance together provide water to more than thirty-six million people in the United States. The group has developed a list of goals that include expanding climate change research, developing strategies for adapting to climate change and identifying greenhouse gas emissions from individual operations.
Today, we’re going to spend the rest of the hour looking at the global water crisis. Flow: For Love of Water is a new documentary screened here in New York last night. The film examines how the world’s water supplies are diminishing and how the privatization of water is worsening the crisis.
PETER H. GLEICK: For the longest time, people have taken water for granted. Most people don’t think about where their water comes from. They just turn on the tap, and they expect it to be there. Those days are ending.
MAUDE BARLOW: This notion that we’ll have water forever is wrong. California is running out. It’s got twenty-some years of water. New Mexico has got ten, although they’re building golf courses as fast as they can, so maybe they can whittle that down to five. Arizona, Florida, even the Great Lakes now, there’s huge new demand.
PETER H. GLEICK: The Nile River doesn’t reach its end. The Colorado River, the Yellow River in China, they, for the most part, don’t flow anymore to the sea.
MAUDE BARLOW: So this notion that somehow these problems are far away, get rid of that. You know, take it out of your head. You know, delete that.
PATRICK McCULLY: We’re treating the water resources of the planet with contempt, which is just so stupid, because we depend on them. We need water to live. We will only survive for a day or two if we don’t have water.
WILLIAM E. MARKS: Scientists, through decades of study and millions and millions of pieces of data, now recognize the fact that we’re on the brink of the sixth great mass extinction ever to be experienced on the face of the earth. The fifth mass extinction was the dinosaur age.
MAUDE BARLOW: You know those movies where there’s the comet coming at the earth, and all of a sudden the governments of the world say, “Gee, we’re not—our differences aren’t so big anymore, because we’re about to all die”? That’s really where we are. There is a comet coming at us. It’s called water shortage.
PETER H. GLEICK: Climate change is a real problem. Humans are changing the climate. We already see evidence about it. One of the most significant impacts of climate change will be on our water resources.
PATRICK McCULLY: We’re going to see a lot of people are going die because of the floods and droughts and various social upheavals that are caused by global warming. What’s also tragic is that there’s a lot of awareness of that now, but so much of that awareness is then being used by corporate interests. Oh, we’re running out of water, and we need to invest so much money in water, and it’s so terrible how water is managed. And then, somehow they make the flip to: oh, we must privatize it, so then we’ll use it more efficiently and everybody will be better off—which is total nonsense, total amount of nonsense. It means merely that these people have an interest clearly in making money or to selling water to people.
Read the rest here
3 Mar 2008 | 2:32 pm | Water, Health | No comments yet - Add your comments
The Milwaukee River has become a huge issue in this race, and almost all the candidates talk about it.
Mandel Group has been floating the idea of more dorms, retail, and hotel space on the river at the Hometown site at North Ave.
The Milwaukee River Work Group (MRWG), is pushing for protections of the river’s banks, bluffs, water quality and viewshed.
If you want a basic overview of the work of the MRWG, check out my response below to the question in the Riverwest Currents on dealing with the Hometown Site owned by Mandel.
Public Trust, Zoning and Development
Cities need development to thrive—not just housing, but economic, organizational, environmental and cultural development in balance. Too much development in one area causes taxes to skyrocket. Too little foreordains blight. Cities and local governments must foster a deeper sense of “public trust” in order to be effective. Zoning, as a public asset, is part of that trust. If we want sustainable development, then we can’t allow ourselves to be held hostage to developers or to equate development merely with fast-buck condo/dorm/hotel building. In this vein, I support development that goes hand in hand with public trust. Continue reading ‘The Milwaukee River and upcoming development (more dorms?)’
17 Feb 2008 | 9:35 am | Water, Development, Environmental Sustainability, 3rd District | No comments yet - Add your comments
I believe we need to get all aspects of our water out of the hands of private, for profit businesses. Other cities have seen water bills double, triple and quadruple after private companies took over managing water resources, treatment and cleanup.
I found this press release at Friends of Milwaukee’s Rivers:
Milwaukee, WI – Yesterday, Friends of Milwaukee’s Rivers, Midwest Environmental Advocates, Sierra Club Great Waters Group, and Alliance for the Great Lakes wrote to the Commissioners of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (“MMSD”) to express their concern over continued privatization of the municipal wastewater treatment system. Currently, wastewater services for the City of Milwaukee are contracted out to United Water. On December 3rd, MMSD will decide whether to turn that contract over to Veolia Water North America or return wastewater treatment responsibilities to the District.
“We support the return of wastewater treatment to the District because contracting out services cannot adequately protect public health and the environment,” said Cheryl Nenn, Riverkeeper for Friends of Milwaukee’s Rivers. “Our rivers and Lake Michigan have been subjected to enormous amounts of pollution from sewer overflows, many of them preventable.” Karen Schapiro, of Midwest Environmental Advocates, added, “The current contract in place does not penalize the contractors for this pollution, and fails to provide incentive for proper equipment maintenance and upgrades, which could reduce or prevent these overflows.”
Rosemary Wehnes, of the Sierra Club’s Great Waters Group, emphasized the public access and accountability benefits of returning the wastewater responsibilities to the District. “Contracting out wastewater services provides almost no transparency and weakens public accountability. A private company is not held to the same public accountability as a municipal district such as MMSD.”
The letter asks MMSD Commissioners to consider returning the operation and maintenance to a public system, and also encourages that, should another private contractor be selected, that the contract be revised to eliminate incentives that reward inadequate treatment of sewage and pollution of our waterways, and to provide stronger tools for enforcement and more public accountability.
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FAST FACTS
-The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District is a state-chartered government agency that provides wastewater treatment services to 28 municipalities in southeast Wisconsin. For the past 10 years, they have contracted operation and maintenance responsibilities to United Water Services.
- In 1994, the “Deep Tunnel” was brought online to address the problems of sewage overflows in Milwaukee, storing sewage during rainstorms when it was expected that treatment plants would be overwhelmed. The 19-mile long tunnel cost nearly $2 billion dollars, yet overflows still occur.
- Since 1995, over a billion gallons of sanitary sewage has been dumped in Milwaukeearea rivers and Lake Michigan.
- Friends of Milwaukee’s Rivers’ (FMR) is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting water quality and wildlife habitat and advocating for sound land use in the Milwaukee River Basin. FMR is a member of the Waterkeeper Alliance, an international coalition dedicated to protecting and restoring our world’s waterways, and is the licensed Riverkeeper® for Milwaukee.
- Great Waters Group is a Sierra Club member group of the John Muir Chapter that serves club members in Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington, & Waukesha counties. Sierra Club groups are run by their members who volunteer to promote environmental sustainability by taking action on local issues and educating others to understand the issues and opportunities available to make informed decisions that will better protect our shared environment.
- Midwest Environmental Advocates, Inc. (MEA) is Wisconsin’s only non-profit environmental law center dedicated to environmental justice and the protection of the public’s right to clean air, clean water, clean government, and responsible land use.
- Alliance for the Great Lakes is a non-profit organization dedicated to conserving and restoring the world’s largest freshwater resource using policy, education and local efforts, ensuring a healthy Great Lakes and clean water for generations of people and wildlife.
30 Nov 2007 | 2:35 pm | Water, Environmental Sustainability | No comments yet - Add your comments
