Water as Commodity
"I don't think we should treat water as a commodity."
That's the quote at the end of a Boston Globe article on the MWRA considering selling surplus water, Agency seeks to sell surplus water. The co-director of the "watchdog agency" Water Supply Citizens Advisory Committee said she thought that the surplus water should not be sold to service a debt, and in fact, that it should not be treated as a commodity.
So. Do we pay for water, or water delivery? Doesn't water belong to everyone already? Is it a commons? Is water held in the public trust? Is it so precious that to commodify it is a moral wrong? Might different approaches be more applicable in rural v. urban contexts?
posted by Sidra @ 9:18 PM
2 Comments:
I didn't think about it until I read that quote, but I recall talking about intellectual property rights over rice in Asian countries, and that many? some? have been just livid at the thought of rice-growing being restricted due to a patent. This in cultures where the word for "food" or "meal" is often some derivative of the word for "rice". (It's literally a moral wrong to keep someone from growing rice, to someone for whom rice is such a fundamental underpinning of how their society views itself.)
Do we here feel the same way about water? Do people in dry states feel differently than people in wet ones?
Like a fish not noticing until they're pulled out, it never occurred to me to consider this question.
Do the poor here today get denied water like they might get denied electricity?
==
All the things that you list -- gathering, etc., are about the service of collecting and distributing water - so that people don't have to walk to a well or a riverbank to get it themselves. Do we pay for water, or for the delivery of it? If we're paying for delivery, then we're internalizing the externality of the costs of distribution.
Do we lose something by not knowing that's what's happening?
Followup article in Boston Globe today:
MWRA considers selling more water
(It doesn't add much to the discussion, though.)
Post a Comment
<< Home