Free Tap Water: For a "Service Fee" of Just $4.18 a Minute

Water, water, everywhere, but so is the need to curb speculators

The $15 billion-plus bottled-water industry has grown out of nothing over the last couple of decades. The water used to supply it amounts to far less than 1% of supply. However, the idea that water itself can be owned is disturbing.
We can only survive about three days without water. Like air, it should be made available to us as part of what many organizations call the "commons." We don't pay for air, why water?

The amount of private water providers has grown more than 100-fold since 1990 and they now supply about 10% of the world's population, according to water activist Maude Barlow, founder of the Blue Planet Project. And water ownership is growing with people, and investors seeing it as a ripe commodity.

T. Boone Pickens, the famous oil investor, for example, is betting big on water, buying up rights in the Southwest.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't have the right to buy premium water (some wingnuts have opened oxygen bars after all), but there should be a limit on the amount of water profiteers can own, then let speculators have at it.
We need look no further than our food supply to see the dangers speculation has on prices -- and therefore those who cannot afford to pay; they starve.
We should set a water policy that assures people have ready access to it as part of their right to exist. Sure we trade taxes for rights all the time. And I think that is exactly the point of the U.S. mayors who voted to end taxpayer funding of bottled water: It's ours to begin with.

Water should not be made into a total commodity. That would have life and death consequences, and markets don't care; they operate without conscience.