Despite this, the state company said that the water was potable. A statement released days later said: “In relation to the event of the taste and odor perceived several days ago by the population of the metropolitan area, OSE informs that it was entirely due to a substance released by a type of microscopic algae in the Santa Lucia River. This substance, called Geosmin, has no bearing on the health of the population “.

The authorities closed ranks and denied emphatically the contamination of water sources, which had always been of high quality. However, much of the population did not believe the State’s arguments, buying bottled water and depleting stocks.

Read more on the website of Upside Down World

As Canadian negotiators visit Brussels this week to move the CETA negotiations further towards conclusion, “The right to say no” warns the proposed investment protection clauses in the agreement would jeopardise governments’ ability to regulate or ban fracking.

Currently, EU member states are studying the environmental and public health risks of this newly popular technology to extract hard-to-access natural gas or oil. While the majority of countries concerned with shale gas endowments are taking positions against it, powerful oil and gas corporations are pushing back against regulation.

Read more from the press release of CEO, Council of Canadians and TNI on the website of CEO

This report by the New Policy Institute analyzes what has happened to the water industry in the UK since it was privatised by Thatcher in the late 80s. In a nutshell: very high profits fuelled by debt creation and low investments, and bad performance. The initial local then international corporations have now been mostly replaced by financial players.

The full report by the New Policy Institute (pdf, 410 Ko)

More than 100 environmental, social and indigenous organizations protested Monday in the Chilean capital to demand that the state regain control over the management of water, which was privatized by the dictatorship in 1981.

According to the organizers, one of whom was former student leader Camila Vallejo, who plans to run for parliament for the Communist Party, more than 6,000 people took part in the peaceful, colorful “Great Carnival March for the Recovery and Defense of Water” in Santiago.

The demonstrators also delivered a letter to right-wing President Sebastián Piñera, complaining that the water shortages affecting local communities were not only due to persistent drought but also to structural problems in the policies governing the exploitation of natural resources.

“We have discovered that there is water in Chile, but that the wall that separates it from us is called ‘profit’ and was built by the (1981) water code, the constitution, international agreements like the Binational Mining Treaty (with Argentina) and, fundamentally, the imposition of a culture where it is seen as normal for the water that falls from the sky to have owners,” the letter says.

Read more on the website of Upside Down World

Damocracy is a story of resistance by the thousands of people who will be displaced, and a call to world to support their struggle.

We have handed in a Petition to the European Parliament in order to ask politicians to take action against the Ebro River Management Plan which, as it is formulated now, would cause an environmental disaster and the disappearance of 80% of the territory in 50 years.

The Ebro River Management plan draft is affected by economic fraud, technical incoherence and a serious lack of democracy in its elaboration.

Therefore we invite you to take a look at our blog where you can find can find more information on our challenge and ask you to declare your support.

Soon we’ll come to Brussels in order to prepare and follow up the debate in the Petition Committee and would like to invite you for an informal meeting in order to present our case to you and listen to your advice in the third week of May.

Thirst is Marathwada’s greatest crop this season. Forget sugarcane. Thirst, human and industrial, eclipses anything else. Those harvesting it reap tens of millions of rupees each day across the region. The van loads of dried-out cane you see on the roads could end up at cattle camps as fodder. The countless “tankers” you see on the same roads are making it to the towns, villages and industries for profit. Water markets are the biggest things around. Tankers are their symbol.

Thousands of them criss-cross Marathwada daily, collecting, transporting and selling water. Those contracted by the government are a minority and some of them exist only on paper. It’s the privately-operated ones that are crucial to rapidly expanding water markets.

Read more on the website of The Indu

The European Commission has in recent weeks gone on a PR offensive in response to growing criticism of its pro-privatisation agenda for the water sector. The criticism centres around the water privatisation conditions attached to the Troika’s rescue packages for Greece and Portugal, and the proposed EU concessions directive, which could lead to increased privatisation pressure on public water municipalities across Europe.

The concessions directive, which has the stated object of opening markets and eliminating “discrepancies among national regimes”, would end the exemption that has so far existed for drinking water supply and for the first time bring it under the rules of the EU’s single market. Previous attempts to bring water under single market rules failed due to resistance from civil society and MEPs opposed to water becoming a commodity, but this time the European Parliament has been less vigilant. The directive would not directly force municipalities to privatise, but could lead to ‘privatisation through the back door’. Municipalities who have some form of private participation in their water supply, even a small part, would have to offer their water contracts for EU-wide bidding.

Read more on the CEO website

Ottawa, ON – People across Canada and around the world are marking today as the fourth Bottled Water Free Day. Over 25 events are being held across the country highlighting the negative impacts of bottled water, and the need to defend public water resources and infrastructure from privatization.

“Canada’s public water systems provide millions with clean, safe drinking water every day. Bottled water puts unnecessary strains on these resources in the name of profits,” said Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. “Bottled Water Free Day is an opportunity for all Canadians to stand up against the privatization of our water by choosing and supporting municipal public tap water.”

Organized by the Canadian Federation of Students, Canadian Union of Public Employees, Council of Canadians, Polaris Institute, and the Sierra Youth Coalition, Bottled Water Free Day events will include the premiere of a new video on the importance of public water.

“Access to safe public drinking water is a human right, yet far too many in this country – particularly on First Nations – are being denied the basic necessity,” said Maude Barlow, national chair of the Council of Canadians. “For all people in Canada, and for the billions around the world denied access to clean drinking water, we need to do more to protect this vital resource.”

In partnership with Cinema Politica, organizers are also sponsoring a series of documentary film screenings in communities and campuses across Canada.

“Students across Canada are standing up for public water,” said Adam Awad, national chair of the Canadian Federation of Students. “We’re proud of the growing number of campuses that have shown their support for our public water by banning bottled water.”

Bottled Water Free Day started in 2010 in response to the growing privatization and commercialization of drinking water by the bottled water industry, and has been endorsed by over 80 organizations. To date nearly 100 municipalities, over two dozen university and college campuses, and countless workplaces have restricted the sale or distribution of bottled water.

A full list of events and endorsing organizations is available at backthetap.ca.

the Bottled Water Free Coalition has just released a new video about people taking action to protect water and what you can do to protect water in your community:

Frenchmen, our brothers!

On the 19th of February, your President, François Hollande, visited the capital of our country, Athens. “Our message to Greece is a message of friendship, support, trust and growth” stated your President and asked the French corporations to invest… to invest in land and water.

Hollande and Samaras (Greek PM) talk about “investments” in the sector of water resources management, resources which are protected by the Greek Constitution, and belong to none, nor the Prime minister, to trade them in.

We are very well acquainted with your struggle to protect the social and common goods and your sensitivity to water management. After years of private management and despite the fact that the two bigger players, Suez and Veolia are of French interests, Paris, Brest, Varage, Durance-Luberon, Castres, Cherbourg, Toulouse and others vindicated and succeeded to return water into public hands. And they did so after they experienced the consequences of water commercialization, the surge in water prices, the inequality in access to water services, the reduced investments in network maintenance and expansion and the monopoly practices. Even though in Greece the citizens have forgotten the distant era of 1925, result of the international audit of that time, where water in Athens was at the hands of the American Ulen, the younger of us, by reading and studying, we share with you the exact same worries for the forthcoming privatization of EYDAP and EYATH (Athens and Thessaloniki water companies) and other, as the rumor has it, municipal services.

And our agony gets intensified and transformed in rage, when we read the answer of Oli Rehn’ Directorate to the civil society groups that confirms that the European Commission intensively pushes for the privatization in all troubled countries that receive loans, despite the fact that this is directly opposite to the Directive for neutrality when it comes to public or private property of water services management (article 345 TFEU and article 171 Directive 2006/123/EC on internal market services) but also on the Protocol on Public Services of the Treaty. At the same time, the Commission and the Greek government ignore to their knowledge the fact that it is the Commission itself that conducts a research on Suez Veolia and Saur monopolistic practices and practices of conduct harmonization.

In this country therefore, in the brink of default, that loses daily its sovereignty and independence and where citizens’ voices and reactions against the colonial sell-off of its natural resources are drowned under the dogma of “zero tolerance”, the Greek government, that stole the Greeks’ vote to “renegotiate” the memorandum, thinks it is urgent to cash in with anything that can be sold, and it seems they have for sale not only its heritage but also a part of its soul. We, the Greek citizens, return humiliated to an era of protectorate, forced to privatize our water, which will become thus not safe and expensive.

After the grand Italian referendum for the water on 2011, the remunicipalization in many French cities, the legislating from the Netherlands in 2004 of compulsory public management of water services and the existing protection of water in the German Constitution, we cannot help but wonder: Does the EU still considers us Europeans? And we are sad, exactly because we are indeed Europeans, not only for us, but for the event that we will become, against our will, the Trojan horse for the creation of a water market everywhere in Europe. We know that the French people will become not a euro richer, even if French water corporations expanded their action to the last of our islands and that is why call on you to stand on our side. We do not want such “investments” that mean privatization of profits and socialization of costs, which will hold our country indebted for eternity.

We want to shout at you with all the power of our souls that water privatization in Greece is a matter of all Europeans that have for many years now resisted vigorously the commercialization of water services. It is a step backward in our common struggle for commons and human life. For all of us, water is more than a common good, it’s a symbol of justice and freedom, a collective heritage that we have the duty to safeguard and deliver safe and free to the next generation.

In conclusion, Greece’s destiny is also Europe’s destiny, a Europe behaving as an undemocratic oligarchy, installing a new type of feudarchy of the 21st century, where decision making is reserved for the market lobbies.

Frenchmen, our brothers, we the Greek citizens ask you to stand on our side on this struggle for the democratic management of our water resources, against a troika that decides and commands and a government enchained, sometimes to its pleasure, to the memorandum clauses. It is time we give together a new impetus to the triptych liberty – equality – fraternity.

Το εναντιούμενον τω δυναστεύοντι δήμος ωνόμασται.
That which is opposed to the tyrant has the name “demos” (people)
Thucydides, 460-394 B.C.