Polaris Institute's World Water Day Statement

Posted March 22, 2007 in [Water]

In 1993 the United Nations General Assembly declared March 22 a day for international focus on the conservation and development of water resources. On World Water Day, people and governments are encouraged to set up concrete activities to highlight water issues from a national and local perspective.

This year’s theme, water scarcity, is designed to raise awareness of the over one billion people around the world who do not have access to enough water to meet their basic needs for drinking, cooking, and cleaning. On the opposite side of this spectrum are regions like Ontario, highly developed and rich in fresh water resources. The reality however is that our water resources are under threat. Our provincial government is presently giving water away to private companies, while our municipal water and waste water infrastructures are overburdened and in need of repair.

In contribution to this global dialogue on water resources, the Polaris Institute, an organization dedicated to the development of tools for democratic social change, is releasing the report Aquafarms 93 Exposed: The private company behind the bottled water at Wal-Mart, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Loblaws.

In the Spring of 2006, the Ontario government gave the bottled water company Aquafarms 93 permission to take 11.9 billion litres of water (the volume of 4,760 Olympic size swimming pools) over ten years for their operations in Feversham, a rural community northwest of Toronto. The company is relatively unknown to consumers, but is among the top-four bottled water companies in Canada along with Coke, Pepsi and Nestlé. It paid only $3000 for this 10 year permit to take water.

A closer look at the operations of Aquafarms 93 provides a clear image of how private companies prosper off extracting and selling Ontario’s fresh water supplies, while paying next to nothing for this precious resource. To maintain the weak regulation of our water resources, Aquafarms 93 – like its bigger multinational competitors – pays lobbyists to put pressure on government to maintain their nearly free access to water.

The bottled water industry, a largely unnecessary industry, also causes harm to our environment. The industry takes water from municipal, ground and surface sources, bottles it in petroleum based plastic bottles, ships its products to market in C02 emitting trucks, and contributes to a growing landfill crisis with discarded plastic bottles.

While the McGuinty government promised to introduce water fees on ground water takers in 2003, we have yet to see this materialize. Neither has the possibility of taxing municipal water bottlers been seriously explored.

Private companies who profit off lax legislation must be exposed for their role in this water bonanza. Our future prosperity and the health of our rural communities, municipalities and environment depend on the proper public management of water resources.

World Water Day is a day to consider how crucial clean water is for life and how important the responsible management of water resources is. The Polaris Institute, in collaboration with the Canadian Union of Public Employees – Ontario Division (CUPE Ontario), is committed to stepping up the pressure on the Ontario government to impose long awaited water fees on ground water bottlers, impose taxes on municipal water bottlers, and to invest adequately in municipal water and waste water renewal. We are also committed to ensuring our municipalities stop using citizens’ taxes to buy bottled water. Residents of Ontario, let’s take ownership of our water, our environment and our health.