Water Privatization Quotes

Fresh, clean water cannot be taken for granted. And it is not - water is political, and litigious. Transporting water is impractical for both political and physical reasons, so buying up water rights did not make a lot of sense to me, unless I was pursuing a greater fool theory of investment - which was not my intention.

We buy a bottle of water in the city, where clean water comes out in its taps. You know, back in 1965, if someone said to the average person, 'You know in thirty years you are going to buy water in plastic bottles and pay more for that water than for gasoline?' Everybody would look at you like you're completely out of your mind.

Big Water makes an argument straight out of Economics 101. The best way to deliver water to people's homes efficiently, the water barons argue, is to put the process in the hands of the market. If water is scarce, then raise the price - let the law of supply and demand take over!

Cash-strapped cities in nations from Argentina to Albania have begun to turn over their municipal water systems to Big Water, often under lease arrangements that can continue in force for decades.

I think it's mental to pay for water. Where is that water coming from? Are they in the hills puttin' it into bottles when years ago it used to roll down and go into the lakes?

Is water the next oil? Motives behind the question vary, depending on who asks the question. Those who see water as a future core commodity - therefore as profitable a prospect as oil - pose the question to create the right market conditions for water trade.

I think that, when I think about the future that 'The Water Knife' represents, it's one where there's a lack of oversight, planning and organization.

Water's about everything. And when the federal government controls water, it controls everything - that's the problem.

I know what people say, that water's a lot like air. Do you charge for air? Well, of course not. Well, you shouldn't charge for water. Okay, watch what happens you won't have any water

Rather than forcing local factories to clean up after themselves, Changzhou decided to outsource the job of managing its water supply to a French company named Veolia - one of a handful of corporate giants now scrambling to take over city water systems around the planet, especially in the often polluted and water-short developing world.

The poor people drink water which is very good and very common in this country.

Today you have a situation where now the prescription is: People who don’t have enough money to buy food should end up paying for their drinking water. That is going to be the kind of situation in which you will get more child labor. You will get more exploitation of women. You’re going to get an absolutely exploitative economy as the very basis of living becomes a source of capital accumulation and corporate growth. In fact, the chief of Coca-Cola in India said: “Our biggest market in India comes from the fact that there is no drinking water left. People will have to buy Coca-Cola.

Wherever you disrupt water from its natural cycle, there's always a winner and a loser. Whoever is the one it's directed towards is the winner, and whoever loses that water is the loser.

Water is the worst thing to privatize. It’s what we need to live.

People really feel like music is free but will pay $6 for water. You can drink water free out of the tap, and it's good water. But they're OK paying for it.

The film 'Tapped' illustrates quite clearly how we've been getting 'soaked' for years by the bottled water industry.

From being a dream, dams have become a very cynical corrupt enterprise; a way of letting governments lay their hands on huge sums of money; a way of centralizing resources; a way of snatching rivers away from the poor and giving them to the rich. And so in a sense they've become monuments to corruption.

It’s not that Monsanto is making money out of the blue. It’s making money by coercing and literally forcing people to pay for what was free. Take water, for instance. Water has always been free. We’ve never paid for drinking water. The World Bank says the reason water has been misused is because it was never commercially priced. But the reason it’s been misused is because it was wasted by the big users—industry, which polluted it.