Water pvtization
819 see WRI already huge water stress for 1/4 ppl eg India, qatar
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cirp acctability 12 25 ymail
In recent years, we’ve seen some of the biggest cities in the U.S. mobilize against water privatizing corporations. Most recently, thousands of residents in Pittsburgh voted to ban water privatization in their city — keeping their water system in public hands for generations to come.1
Pittsburgh’s story proves that through community organizing and collective action, we can take on some of the most powerful corporations and, most importantly, win. From Houston, Texas, to Lagos, Nigeria, we and our allies are making sure that water remains under local, public control. But we can’t do it without your support
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7 23
https://www.alternet.org/saudi-farming-water-crops-arizona/
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2022/09/28/saudi-firm-isnt-only-investor-draining-rural-arizona-water/8124438001/
Arizona Republic recently reported about the bipartisan outrage regarding foreign investors exploiting, or arguably squandering, Arizona’s water resources (“Arizona AG, governor candidates call for Saudi Arabian water leases investigation,” Aug. 30).
The anger is justified, but it is important to remember that this problem extends far beyond a single corporation growing alfalfa.
It is a statewide concern.
Though it is easy to focus on foreign actors, aggressive investor-owned outfits have been threatening water resources all over Arizona.
Equity firms, cities could drain rural Arizona
In Cochise County, for example, intensive drilling for corporate agriculture has jeopardized the livelihood of residents and imperiled small farms.
On the opposite corner of the state in Mohave County, so much water has been withdrawn for investor-owned large-scale farming operations that the future economic development of the region is in doubt.
Meanwhile, in La Paz County, a private equity firm is buying up land for the sole purpose of selling the water rights to a suburb of Phoenix.
This last example brings up another point. Fondomonte, the corporation which is the target of the candidates’ outrage, is using an aquifer that, according to the article, could be tapped “as a future water source for metro Phoenix and other urban areas.”
The controversy:Inside Arizona's sweet deal to a Saudi farm
The implication here is that the concern is not for the residents of La Paz County, but for a suburban town more than 150 miles away over mountains and desert valleys.
The residents of La Paz County have their own needs and their own vision of their future as a community, and these deserve at least some consideration in the discussion of water. The wells will be just as dry whether local water resources are monopolized by corporate farms or are redirected elsewhere.
Rural areas need the power to manage their water
The emphasis on foreign boogeymen and the needs of one metro area tends to ignore the larger problems here, chiefly the fact that the use of groundwater is largely unregulated in much of the state.
Rural communities are even limited in their capacity for land-use planning. Local governments in rural areas do not have the same tools for comprehensive planning available to them that those in Arizona’s urban counties do, so measures to control water use by limiting certain development are not feasible.
An effort to address this shortcoming in the last legislative session by creating a system of “rural management areas” to oversee local regulation of groundwater use stalled in spite of broad bipartisan support.
It calls for action on the issue from elected officials and community leaders across the state.
An appropriation of $440 million for conservation and water reliability projects, passed in the waning hours of the session, is a significant step. But a more comprehensive approach, including planning and regulation, is necessary to sustain whatever progress we can make.
This conversation must continue, and as Arizona revisits the way it manages this precious resource, we must include the empowerment of local communities to determine their water future.
Arizona native Tom Prezelski is a program manager for Rural Arizona Action, a nonprofit organization based in Coolidge that works to boost voter empowerment and civic engagement. He is a former state lawmaker. On Twitter: @tomprezelski.
an 7 22 pvt all
Since the beginning of his campaign, Blake Masters, the conservative venture capitalist turned U.S. Senate hopeful from Arizona, has been drawn to the kind of rhetorical extremism that now animates the Republican Party, bandying insults and talking points of the kind that require no specialized knowledge or experience but nevertheless leave an indelible impression on Republican voters. As far back as 2015, Masters told The Washington Post, he'd been entranced by the rhetoric of Donald Trump, a loud misogynist, who during one of his presidential debates proudly embraced accusations of sexism rather than deny them.
"You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals," then-Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly said to Trump during a 2016 GOP debate. "Your Twitter account ––"
"Only Rosie O'Donnell," Trump interjected, before getting rapturous applause from the crowd.
It was during this now-notorious back-and-forth, Masters explained, that he had his lightbulb moment.
"Somehow he just busted through some wall," Masters recently told the Post of Trump. "He didn't apologize. He kind of just picked on her as this target."
Since then, Masters has largely emulated the former president's brashness on all matters political. Just this May, in the wake of the Supreme Court's rescission of Roe v. Wade, the former tech executive stressed the need for nationwide ban on abortion, a practice that he called "demonic" just last year, according to The Tuscon Weekly. Masters also believes that the Capitol riot was an FBI-led "false flag operation"; that the American education system is pushing "gay sex ideology" onto students; and that Democratic elites are deliberately attempting to loosen borders and win future elections with a more pliant voting bloc from the Third World.
Of course, none of this is particularly unique to the MAGA agenda, which has for the most part set its sights on culture war issues like abortion, race, immigration, sex, and gender. But Masters also espouses a strange flavor of half-baked libertarianism that calls for the complete abolition of long-standing cornerstones for American welfare.
For one, Masters supports a generalized push to privatize the country's water supply, according to audio provided to Salon by American Bridge, a Democratic Super PAC.
"Would you support the transferring ofwater resources to private ownership?" a voter asked Masters two weeks ago during a campaign event in Sedona, Arizona.
"In general, yes," Masters responded, because "the state can't do it and you don't want the government doing a lot of this stuff."
To be sure, private water companies would be nothing new for the nation. But anecdotal evidence suggests that water is the kind of basic human right that has no business under Corporate America's thumb.
Back in 2017, The Washington Post reported that states that offload their publicly-owned water infrastructure to private corporations tend to see rate hikes for customers, adding to the millions of Americans whose sinks, toilets, and showers are routinely disconnected for unpaid bills, as The Guardian reported.
Janice Beecher, the director of Michigan State University's Institute of Public Utilities, told the Post that state officials "should ask good questions, and they should understand the trade-offs" before selling off their municipal water systems, because "once it's gone, it's gone."
According to a sweeping 2016 analysis from the Food & Water Watch, a consumer rights organization, private water companies charge 58 percent more than their publicly-owned counterparts. In states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the premium can be as high as 79 and 84 percent respectively.
And that's just pricing. Public Citizen, another consumer rights group, found that privatization leads to worse water quality, job losses, over-extraction, and corruption. To add insult to injury,$26.5 billion of the EPA's budget goes to for profit-water providers, which presently control 10% of the nation's water supply, suggesting that water companies have trouble sustaining themselves without the largesse of the government.
Meanwhile, cities all across America are now attempting to expropriate water infrastructure they sold off in response to complaints about rate hikes and bad service. However, as the Post reported, exercising eminent domain in this area can be extremely costly, leading to municipal deficits that, ironically, might have been the original impetus for privatization.
Apart from water, Masters also has a grand, albeit ill-defined, vision to privatize Social Security, the federal insurance program that provides benefits to 65 million retired, disabled, and unemployed people.
"We got to cut the knot at some point though because I'll tell you what, I'm not going to receive Social Security," Masters said at a primary debate back in June. "I'm a millennial."
"We need fresh and innovative thinking, maybe we should privatize Social Security," he added at the time. "Private retirement accounts, get the government out of it."
Make no mistake: Social Security security has been a perennial punching bag for the Republican Party for decades.
As early as 2004, then-President Bush campaigned on privatizing the program, arguing that young people should be able to take "ownership" of their future benefits by investing their tax withholdings into a private account that would be subject to the whims of market forces.
"We should make the Social Security system a source of ownership for the American people," Bush said in a January 2004 State of the Union address.
However, the plan ultimately unraveled once it became clear that it was massively unpopular amongst the American public, 96 percent of whom currently support Social Security as is.
Today, both parties agree that Social Security needs to be reformed, in part because the retirement funds are projected to run dry by 2034. But what that reform should look like breaks down across party lines.
Democrats, for their part, have argued that the program should be expanded – along with provisions that would create a minimum benefit and a cost-of-living adjustment – through tax increases. Unsurprisingly,Republicans have repudiated this plan as anti-business, instead proposing plans to raise the minimum age of retirement, establish "rescue committees" that would mull cuts behind closed doors, and even sunset the program every five years.
cochabamba bolivia water war bolivia
shots fired near family bechtel world bank
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb-vIbcOL4M
==
cf movie even the rain
2002 realplayer Moyers NOW
https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bolivia/thestory.html
leasing the rain
Cochabamba is a town of 800,000 situated high in the Andes Mountains of Bolivia. Two years ago, a popular protest there turned into a deadly riot. The army battled civilians in the streets on and off for three months, hundreds were arrested, a seventeen year-old boy was shot and killed, the government of Bolivia nearly collapsed. The issue was water.
The spark was privatization. A private consortium, dominated by the Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco, had taken over Cochabamba's water system and raised water rates. Protestors blamed Bechtel for trying to "lease the rain."
New Yorkerwriter William Finnegan traveled to Cochabamba to learn about the water war and to see what lessons could be drawn about privatization, globalization and the growing anger in Latin America over economic inequality.
Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. 70% of its people live below the poverty line. Nearly one child in ten dies before the age of five. The Bolivian economy, never strong, was wrecked by hyperinflation in the 1980s.
Desperate for relief, Bolivia has been faithfully following the dictates of the international lending community for the past fifteen years -- selling its airline, railroads, mines and electric company to private -- usually foreign-controlled -- companies. The economic shock therapy tamed inflation but led to severe recession and massive unemployment.
In the 1990s, Bolivia, under pressure from the United States, eradicated its most lucrative export - coca - the leaf that is used for cocaine.
"Drugs, illegal as they may be, they were 3% of the GDP, 18% of exports," Luis Quiroga, Bolivia's vice president during the water war, tells Finnegan. "Bad as it was, damaging as it was, if you look at it from a purely business standpoint...It [the drug trade] was Milton Friedman heaven: all privately run, no taxation, no regulation and in essence -- if you want to look at it cynically -- duty free access to markets," observes Quiroga, who is now Bolivia's president.
Politicians like Quiroga fully supported the eradication of coca, but the loss of drug money made the country even more dependent on international financial institutions like the World Bank. The Bank advised the country to continue selling its remaining assets, including water.
Cochabamba put its water system up for auction in 1999. Only one bidder showed up. The company, called Aguas del Tunari, a division of the large American construction firm Bechtel, promised to expand water service. In exchange the contract guaranteed the company a 15-17% profit.
Two months after taking over the water system, Aguas del Tunari raised the water rates. People, resentful and angry, took to the streets in protest. One of their leaders was Oscar Olivera, a long-time union activist. He and others tapped into the anger many Bolivians feel about their country's long history of political corruption and foreign domination.
"Everyone was protesting, everyone," journalist Luis Bredow tells Finnegan. "I've never seen anything like it in Bolivia. Housewives were throwing stones at the police. It really was a revolt."
Although a major American corporation was at the center of the conflict, not a single U.S. newspaper had a reporter on the scene. But news of the uprising was reaching a worldwide audience through the Internet, thanks to Jim Shultz, an American activist living in Cochabamba. Shultz shows Finnegan how he organized an e-mail campaign to pressure Bechtel to leave town.
The company finally withdrew and the uprising subsided.
But did anyone really win the water war?
Aguas del Tunari filed suit against the Bolivian government asking for $25 million in compensation. The case is being heard in Washington D.C., in an arbitration court run by the World Bank.
The water warriors who ousted Bechtel took control of the water system, vowing to run it as a human right, not as a commodity. But without new investment, they have been unable to improve or expand service.
Neither the government, nor the World Bank appears willing to help them.
medium 221
Water Is Being Traded on the Stock Market for the First Time
Some say trading water as a commodity could help mitigate future water crises, but others are highly…
site/tool
https://www.corporateaccountability.org/water/
920 providence RI AA. Lagos?
hall of shame vote:
Veolia was hired to manage Pittsburgh’s water system, claiming it could improve it and save the struggling utility money. Instead, Veolia prioritized cost-cutting measures to boost its own bottom line and walked away with over $11 million.
Under Veolia’s management, the staff of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority’s (PWSA) laboratory was cut in half. Additionally, the corrosion control chemical used to prevent lead contamination was switched to a cheaper alternative without the required approval, violating state regulations. What followed was a health crisis that endangered residents throughout the city.
Veolia also held a contract in Flint, MI months into the water crisis there. It not only failed to publicly sound the alarm despite internal emails expressing concern about the potential for lead in the water, but also told the city its water was safe.
We nominate Veolia for this year’s Corporate Hall of Shame ballot for its role in lead crises in Flint and Pittsburgh, and continuing to threaten the human right to water by pushing privatization schemes that have led to rate hikes, labor cuts and abuses, and dangerous cost cutting.
puerto rico
now try pvt water?! kpfa 6/27/18
Maine Gov. Paul LePage
Around the world, private firms have been given “carte blanche rights to mine local groundwater supplies at the expense of local populations, say experts.” In 1997, Swiss food giant Nestlé signed a contract with the privately- owned water services provider in Fryeburg, Maine, to buy freshwater in bulk for its Poland Spring brand of bottled water. Fearing that large-scale commercial water exploitation would lead to groundwater depletion and the Saco River drying up, the town of Fryeburg enacted a Land Use Ordinance that required that any company pumping more than 10,000 gallons of water a day get approval from the planning board. With a constant stream of litigation and appeals, however, Fryeburg Water Co. was able to buy time while continuing its moneymaking sideline business without interruption.
Read the rest by Jonas Persson and Mary Bottari -- LePage Supports Pumping Public Water for Private Gain -- on PRWatch.
==
==
Residents of Osceola township are watching water levels in local streams drop drastically since Nestlé moved into town and started pumping their water to sell for massive profits. And a small group of local volunteers has taken Nestlé to court.
For years Nestlé has tried to crush this committed group of residents so it can pump even more water to sell at an eye-watering profit.
This dedicated group in Osceola has been locked in a two-year legal battle against Nestlé --but after mountains of legal challenges, the group is drowning in debt.
So they’ve asked for your help today Pat. The final decision on whether Nestlé can pump more water is right around the corner -- and if they can’t get some money to their lawyers soon, this fearless group risks losing everything to Nestlé.
Can you chip in $1 to keep Nestlé’s greedy hands off Osceola township’s precious water?
Right now, Nestlé is pumping 250 gallons of water a minute or more than 350,000 gallons every single day from Osceola Township for just $200 a year.
And in their battle to stop this outrageous water-grab, this tiny group of volunteers is over $100,000 in debt.
Their lawyers have fought tirelessly by their side, but they can’t continue without getting paid. Losing their lawyers now would leave them in debt with nothing to show for years of work against Nestlé, and that’s exactly what the mega-corporation wants.
But you can make sure their fight isn’t over yet. Nestlé has millions to throw at this court case, but this group of dedicated fighters in Osceola has you. With your donation today they can keep their lawyers and make sure they have the best legal team on hand in these last critical months so that Nestlé can’t pump more of their precious water.
raised 50K defense
34 giants: the global power elite peter phillips:
Amazingly, TCC/Global Power Elite money managers study
the transforming environment for new investment opportuni-
ties. Climate change investing can be profitable, according to
Forbes, and getting in on low-carbon investments, and sectors
that will benefit should climate stress increase—such as defense,
health care, and property insurances—can prove lucrative.48
Increasing interest in new mining opportunities available due
to global warming is an important issue in Greenland.49 Private
:{
}:
investment in the control of water sources is seen as an increas-
ingly attractive opportunity for power elite speculation.50
California’s Drought Policy Serves Corporations First, People Second
California is suffering a historic drought with no relief in sight. According to the latest report from NASA, California has less than a year’s supply of surface water left. In an executive order, Governor Jerry Brown, a self-proclaimed climate leader, imposed a 25% reduction on the state’s local water supply agencies, which serve 90% of California’s residents. Everyday citizens are being asked to cut down on shower times and lawn watering. While these are worthy efforts, they are mere drops in the bucket considering that residential and municipal use of water in CA account for less than 20% of water consumption. Instead of getting at the root of the problem and targeting water-guzzling agribusiness and the oil and gas industry, Governor Brown’s climate policy is pro-corporate, irresponsible and unsustainable.
Despite the growing water crisis, there are no provisions in Brown’s water reduction plan to halt fracking, an extreme method of oil and gas extraction requiring high-pressure injection of millions of gallons of chemical-laced water and sand into deep rock setting free oil or natural gas unavailable through conventional drilling. Last year fracking production in the state used 70 million gallons of water,1 the equivalent of 514 households annually.2 Although proponents of fracking may claim that the combined water use of 514 households is not that high, water used in fracking is highly contaminated and not returned to the annual water cycle, unlike household wastewater.
It was recently learned that California officials allowed oil and gas companies to dump this contaminated water into federally protected aquifers that could have been used for drinking and irrigation purposes.3 Illustrating the corporate control of regulatory agencies, 46 percent of the state permits authorizing these practices were granted in the last four years, the same four years during which the EPA warned California regulators they were not doing enough to protect underground water reserves.
In the Central Valley, many Latina/o farmworkers are struggling for their livelihoods due to years of drought. As a result of last year’s extreme weather, 17,000 farmworker jobs and 400,000 acres of farmland were lost.4 Other Californians are living entirely without running water. In East Porterville, for example, people are turning to costly and environmentally destructive bottled water to meet household needs.5
We can also look at Nestle Corporation’s privatization of our water to further understand how corporate rule is impacting every Californian. In Sacramento, tens of millions of gallons of Sacramento municipal water are being withdrawn by a local Nestle plant. Nestle uses and bottles thousands of acre-feet of California water. An acre-foot, roughly speaking, equals 326,000 gallons, enough to supply a family’s yearly needs.
Nestle and other bottling companies buy water at a pittance and sell it back to the public at exorbitantly high rates. As California’s water disappears, the investment portfolios of some of the nation’s most profitable corporations are being flooded.
In a recent interview Nestle CEO Tim Brown was asked if halting waster extraction was in the company’s plans. Brown responded: “Absolutely not. In fact, if I could increase it, I would. …If I stop bottling water tomorrow, people would buy another brand of bottled water. ...It’s driven by consumer demand, it’s driven by an on-the-go society that needs to hydrate.” 6
Is it possible that CEO Brown never heard of a reusable drinking water bottle?
Out of this Nestle Corporation debacle, the “Crunch Nestle Alliance” formed. The group has singled out Sacramento City Hall, saying Nestle’s privatization was made possible through a “corporate welfare giveaway.” Nestle pays Sacramento $186.00 per 215,000 gallons of water taken from the area aquifers. Those 215,000 gallons bring the Nestle Corporation a whopping $2.1 million in profit.7 The Crunch Nestle Alliance has successfully blockaded a Sacramento Nestle plant several times, raising awareness that water is a human right not a commodity to sell on the open markets.
Notes
1 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/03/us-california-drought-fracking-exclusive-idUSKBN0MU01M20150403
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/02/fracking-california-water_n_6997324.html
2 http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/04/06/3643184/california-70-million-gallons-fracking/
3 http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/02/05/ap-oil-drilling-waste-dumped-into-calif-aquifers-used-for-irrigation-drinking-water/
4 http://fusion.net/story/114463/as-california-goes-dry-latinos-suffer-disproportionately/
5 http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/20/east-porterville-california-drought-bottled-water-showers-toilets
6 "Starbucks Moves Ethos Water from California after Drought-shaming" The Washington Post, May 12, 2015
7 https://criticl.me/post/crunchnestle-alliance-1179
==
Slater’s company owns the water rights to 45,000 acres of land in the Mojave Desert, and he’s already secured contracts to sell the water for $960 per acre-foot (the amount of water it takes to cover an acre of land in a foot of water), according to The Guardian. At that price, the company stands to make $2.4 billion over the 50-year period of its water extraction deal with San Bernardino County.
But in the last 10 years, the company has suffered $185 million in losses.
“To develop the project, the company burns through $10 million to $20 million annually,” The New York Times explained, “paying for a never-ending battle in courthouses and conference rooms across California to win make-or-break government permits and to cover the salaries of its 10 full-time employees.” The company borrows extensively and regularly issues new shares to cover its costs.
The project has faced fierce opposition from environmental groups, local ranchers, Native American tribes, politicians—notably, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)—and most recently, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
In a letter to Cadiz in October 2015, the BLM informed Cadiz that it “cannot use an existing railroad right-of-way for a new water pipeline that would carry supplies from the project’s proposed well field to the Colorado River Aqueduct,” The LA Times reported.
The project now requires a lengthy and expensive federal environmental review. To further complicate the matter, Feinstein has once again added a rider to the federal budget prohibiting the BLM from spending any money on the project.
“I remain concerned the Cadiz project could damage the Mojave Desert beyond repair and believe the BLM decision to deny the right-of-way is the right one,” Feinstein told The LA Times in October 2015. “I’ll continue to work through the appropriations committee to block any additional attempts to draw down this aquifer. We need to use water more responsibly, not less, and the Cadiz project is a bad idea.”
All of these developments leave many wondering if the project will ever come to fruition. Slater, who was a water rights lawyer for 30 years before taking over as CEO in 2013, contends that the BLM is misinterpreting 19th century railway law. He told The Guardian that not only is the plan a “pretty simple” one, but the 50,000 acre-feet of water a year the company would extract would also “otherwise evaporate, which is far more of a waste than people drinking it.”
Still, many have what Slater described as a “visceral, negative reaction” to a private company making billions off of water. Even public-private partnerships on water ventures face strong opposition. Poseidon Water, a private company, partnered with the San Diego County Water Authority to build the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere. But it took 15 years of lawsuits and regulatory hurdles to do so. The plant finally opened last month in Carlsbad, California, and the San Diego County Water Authority estimates it will produce enough water to meet 7 to 10 percent of the San Diego region’s water needs.
That may sound like a drop in the bucket for the drought-stricken state, but there are already about 15 other desalination plants being proposed in California. Despite this, critics contend that desalination and the Cadiz water project are not good solutions to addressing the state’s drought.
Watch Slater explain the Cadiz Water Project in an interview on KCAA 1050AM, a California radio station:...
http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/04/sell-water-mojave-desert/
www.bibliotecapleyades.net/.../sociopol_globalwater16.htm
by Stephanie Rogers December 3, 2008. from EarthFirst Website . Imagine a future where water is more valuable than gold - where corporations have control over the ...
www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2008-06-11/there-will-be-water
Jun 10, 2008 · T. Boone Pickens thinks water is the new oil—and he's betting $100 million that he's right Roberts County is a neat square in a remote corner of the ...
www.alternet.org/story/95471
Why T. Boone Pickens' 'Clean Energy' Plan Is a Ponzi Scheme ... Using his wind investment to fuel his water privatization has only made things worse.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatization
Water privatization in Argentina began in 1992 under the government of Carlos Menem as part of one of the world's largest privatization programs.
www.foodispower.org/water-usage-privatization
Water privatization now has a firm foothold in Mexico, ... Water Wars: Privatization, pollution, and profit. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2002.
www.nationofchange.org/four-dollars-gallon-water-dream...
Privatization of water in which companies control the public's water sources and free water is a thing of the past appears to be what Pickens and corporations such as ...
voices.nationalgeographic.com/.../01/water-privatization...
Professor Kaufman is not the first person who has raised the alarm over the false bogeyman of water privatization. ... 16/t-boone-pickens-why-i-got-out-water ...
==
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatization_in_Bolivia
The privatization of water supply and sanitation in Bolivia took place during the second mandate of Bolivian President Hugo Banzer (1997-2001) in the form of two ...
www.citizen.org/documents/Bolivia_(PDF).PDF
- 1 - The Historical and Economic Build-Up to Privatization From the 1950s through the early 1980s, a succession of governments at-tempted to wrench Bolivia out of ...
Water Privatization Case Study:
Cochabamba, Bolivia
The Historical and Economic
Build-Up to Privatization
From the 1950s through the early
1980s, a succession of governments at-
tempted to wrench Bolivia out of poverty
through “structuralist” measures. Because
the Bolivian economy did not respond well
to these measures, the structural adjustment
program set up by the World Bank and IMF
collapsed in 1981, leading to six consecu-
tive years of negative economic growth.
A stabilization program begun in 1985
liberalized all prices, restored financial
stability and reduced inflation. Growth has
been positive since 1987, but the social
effects of these policies have hit the poor
very hard.
2
Since the Sanchez administration
(1993-97), privatization has been a key
component of Bolivia’s neoliberal economic
In February and March of 2000, protests broke out in
Cochabamba, Bolivia, in response to the skyrocketing price of
water. Many people saw their bills triple or even quadruple,
just weeks after Aguas del Tunari, a private company owned
by London-based multinational International Water Ltd., took
over the city’s water system.
For thousands of families, the rate hike meant up to half
of their monthly income went to paying for water.
1
Unable to survive under these conditions, the citizens
demanded that the water contract be terminated. After
suffering civil rights abuses, injuries and even death at the
hands of the police and military, the protesters were heard
and their water rights were restored.
==