I just finished watching the riveting documentary Blue Gold: World Water Wars.  I guess we should be happy about the discovery of water on the moon, given the fact that our supply here on earth is drying up, and what's left is being rapidly privatized.  Not that moon water will be cheap once PepsiCo starts bottling it.

And you don't have to look far to see how that's working out.  Remember last summer, when Milford, MA., went half a month without potable water? Well, today the Milford Water Co., the privately run water company that provides Milford's water, was fined a [sarcasm alert] whopping $50,000 for misleading regulators and failing to conform with regulations for years leading up to last summer’s crisis. 

Humans die after a week without water.  Milford went without it for two.  OK, sure, there was plenty around — they could boil it or buy it bottled — but what kind of a fine is $50,000 for a company contracted to supply a necessity of life to nearly 30,000 people, that has shown a pattern of dishonesty resulting in what should amount to a case of criminal negligence?

Obviously, even under the circumstances, we don't take our water very seriously around here.  Water Wars puts it into perspective. There are so-called developing countries where Coca-Cola has exclusive water rights.  In Bolivia, before it sparked a revolution, a similar arrangement with the multinational water barons at Bechtel privatized even rain water, making it illegal for citizens to set up cisterns.  No, really.  Pretty wild, considering Water wasn't even considered a commodity before the Reagan years. 

The situation has sparked a global call to reclassify water yet again — this time as a human right.  We still take water very much for granted in America, but a fairly strong case could be made (and they make it in Water Wars) that land-grabs by multinationals seeking to privatize water supplies represent the new imperialism, impacting economies, governments, and societies every bit as profoundly as the "old" imperialism. 

It's seems strange to us to think that already there have been revolutions sparked by the control of a resource we take totally for granted. In fact, that's the most frightening thing about Water Wars:  they're already being waged in earnest.