New film explores water politics as a major threat to the public’s health
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NWHF Staff
| Posted on: October 5th, 2008
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Environmental Health •
Economic Issues •
Policies & Laws •
Public Health
Have you seen the movie “Flow”?
Irena Salina’s award-winning documentary is an investigation into what she calls “the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - the World Water Crisis.”
The Philadelphia Weekly reviewer was interested in the movie’s “jaw-dropping examples of cronyism and incompetence from the Bush administration…Our Environmental Protection Agency currently doesn’t bother regulating 51 known water contaminants,” and commented, “My personal favorite is the popular pesticide atrazine, an endocrine disruptor so toxic it causes prostate cancer in humans and turns boy frogs into girl frogs; the EPA’s okay with us spraying 76 million pounds of this junk all over the countryside every year. The usage of atrazine is banned in the European Union, which provides Salina her best ironic punch line, since that’s where we buy it from.”
USA Today focused on the private companies seeking to gain control over global water supplies. “These firms have a primary interest in profit, not in ensuring safe and affordable access to water.”
The New York Times calls it “an informed and heartfelt examination of the tug of war between public health and private interests.”
The Oregonian did not review the movie, although Steve Duin did recommend it in his column.
The movie has left Portland, but should be available on DVD soon.
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Our nation’s public water and sewer infrastructure is old. This can lead to a plethora of social, economic, and environmental problems. We face interruptions in water service, failures to meet federal water quality standards, sewage overflows and polluted waterways. In the coming years, states will need billions of investment dollars to maintain their current systems. Not to mention, funding to modernize water treatment, storage, and distribution.
How many states or communities can afford this maintenance?
The Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which administers money to states for clean water projects, assists with states monetary needs. Yet, funding gaps still exist. According to the EPA, we fall short on water infrastructure spending by approximately $22 billion per year. Federal funding for water projects are consistently decreasing. In 2008, President George W. Bush requested that states be given a mere $688 million!
As public utilities may struggle to maintain or modernize water systems, some policy makers may turn to privatization of water services. The financial burden of updating and servicing our water systems would then fall on corporations, not the states. In their article, “Who Owns Water?”, authors Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke argue privatization would jeopardize public safety, reduce employment, cause maintenance and water quality problems, lack infrastructure investment, advance environmental degradation, create outrageous rate hikes and be riddled with political meddling.
Public investment in water infrastructure maintenance and modernization is a better alternative. This would create jobs, generating worker income and stimulating overall activity. Not only would public investment give our economy a much needed boost, our aging pipes would be upgraded, the delivery service could be better and we could ensure some level of environmental protection.