Water Flowing Back Into Public Hands

Water Flowing Back Into Public Hands

The announcement by the Paris municipality that water services will return to public hands by 2010 is in line with a global trend of ending privatisation of such services. Mayor Bertrand Delanoë announced Jun. 2 that the municipal administration would regain control of all water services for the city, ending a private monopoly that has lasted more than 100 years.

The contracts with the world’s two biggest water service companies, Suez and Veolia, will not be extended after Dec. 31, 2009. “We want to offer a better service, at a better price,” Delanoë said. “We also promise that prices would be stable.” Delanoë said his administration will encourage other municipalities in the Ile de France region around Paris to end privatisation of water services.

“That France, once known as the heartland of water privatisation, is embracing a return to public management of water services, is a strong signal in this new pattern,” Olivier Hoedeman of the Water Remunicipalisation Tracker told IPS. The group, a sub-division of the Amsterdam-based Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and the Transnational Institute, documents the decline of water privatisation.

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A victory! This is good news and a good trend we need to see across the globe. Water is a public trust. Hopefully, the information put out about the effects of water privitization has helped this along. This is just the beginning.

Flood Waters Ravage Illinois and Iowa

Fears for Mississippi River as flood hit Iowa cleans up


Officials warily eyed the mighty Mississippi Monday swollen by days of flooding as waterlogged Iowan towns began a massive clean-up with damage set to run into billions of dollars.
With some 2,500 National Guard already deployed across the state trying to keep the floodwaters at bay, experts believe the Mississippi, the country's second longest river, could crest either Tuesday or Wednesday.


Iowa Governor Chet Culver warned the Mississippi would be the next battleground, as floodwaters from the state's Cedar, Iowa and Des Moines rivers poured into it.
"It's likely we'll see major flooding in every city on the border, from New Boston on down. We're very concerned about that," he said late Sunday.


The massive river, which passes through 10 states in its 3,734-kilometer (2,320-mile) journey from its source in Minnesota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico, defines the border between Iowa and Illinois.


Parts of Illinois are already under water, and officials there are bracing for the same kind of misery heaped on homes and businesses in Iowa, where 36,000 people have been evacuated, most from the town of Cedar Rapids.


"While this is a trying time for our state, every Iowan should know this: together, we will rebuild," Culver said Sunday, before touring the devastated areas on Monday.
More than 11 million people in nine midwestern states have been affected by the flooding and extreme weather of recent weeks, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said.
Iowa was by the far the hardest hit: 83 of its 99 counties have been declared disaster areas and more than 4.8 million sandbags were laid down to try to stem the tide.


Seventeen people have died as a result of the floods in Iowa since the start of the extreme weather on May 25, adding to another five deaths in neighboring states.


"It's some of the worst flooding I've seen since (Hurricane) Katrina" which hit New Orleans in August 2005, FEMA director David Paulison told CNN after touring the damage in Iowa.
Losses will likely be greater than they were in heavy floods which hit in 1993, experts told the Des Moines Register, when the damage and lost business from widespread flooding totaled about 2.1 billion dollars.


Some 750 million dollars worth of property, mostly homes, has already been swallowed by the waters in Cedar Rapids.


"We're talking two billion dollars to three billion to get this place back on its feet," Lee Clancey, president of Cedar Rivers chamber of commerce, told the newspaper after 400 blocks were submerged in the town.

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This is a tragedy for the Midwest and the country. How ironic that the entry below this one speaks of drought in California. It is said the floods happening now are worse than what was experienced in the last great Midwest flood. This combined with drought, glacier melt, and other weather anomolies in the United States and around the world speaks as a harbinger of global warming. Water and the lack of it are proving to be the overriding force in this world. Have we gotten the message yet?

NASA Images: Floods In Iowa

Drought Declared In California

http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html

The dryness continued this past week for the entire Southwest and most of California. This was somewhat tempered by cooler-than-normal temperatures that occurred across the Great Basin, Arizona, and California as well. New Mexico saw an expansion of D2 to the west across the extreme southern counties of the state. Precipitation has been pretty dismal for most time frames out to the Water Year (October 1), with only 25-50% of normal being reported in that period. In California, many locations recorded a record or near-record dry spring.

In fact, on June 4, Governor Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought. On the heels of last winter’s low totals, the water strain has been increased after a disappointing finish to this winter. Final snow water content levels statewide were only around 67% of average and thus streamflow runoff forecasts are only calling for a little more than 50% of normal. As a result of the past 90 days, D0 and D1 have pushed north up the valley and along the coast north of Santa Barbara up to Eureka.

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If you consolidate all of the areas that are colored on this map together, that constitutes approximately 45 to 50% of the land mass of this country being in some state of drought. For those who think this only happens in Africa or some place else on the other side of the world, it doesn't. Drought can strike anywhere water has been wasted, mismanaged, and where the effects of climate change and overpopulation are making themselves felt the worst.

According to the IPCC, the Southwest US is one of the areas predicted to be experiencing severe drought due to climate change. And yet, our Congress plays games regarding this crisis as if we have time to continue to squabble over whether it even exists. With water tables in rivers throughout America falling, including and predominantly The Great Lakes, The Colorado River, and Lake Mead which serves Nevada and this area in drought, people must wake up to what their wasteful practices are doing to the environment.

Population increases in this area without proper water management have also led to this stage. We either conserve now, or we will see just how much taking this resource for granted can do to change not only our way of life, but life as we know it.