Political Action Water

I bought a bottle of water the other day. I've been trying to avoid buying bottled water lately, after growing aware of the issues surrounding the bottled water industry: their sinister privatization of the global water supply, the conspiracy to convince us that tap water is unsafe, and the fact that billions of plastic water bottles end up in landfills every year instead of being recycled. And yet there are situations when it makes more sense to buy a bottle of water than it does to go thirsty.

I found myself in one of these situations, so I bought a bottle of water. I was at Central Coop's Madison Market, and I was pleased to see that they had the Okanogan Highlands water that I used to drink whenever I found it back in the days before I really understood about the evils of bottled water.

The label reads, "Water is more precious than gold." The proprietor began bottling this water in reaction to an 1872 law which prioritizes gold mining over a supply of fresh, clean water. I've met him. He's a great guy with a lot of integrity. But as I finished off the last of the water in the bottle I was struck by this irony: his message is that we all have a right to pure water and the mining companies can't take that away from us. And yet the big bottled water companies are treating water the way the mining companies treat gold, that is, as a resource that can be appropriated for individual profit rather than for the common good.