Headline, June12, 2013

'''DYING A MISERY -LADEN DEATH-

 FOR WATER'''

The stakes  -environmental and political-  could hardly be higher. According to a report prepared by the International Water Management Institute, a respected International Group, one person out of every three on the planet today lacks reliable source to fresh water, whether because the water is unsafe, unaffordable, or unavailable.

Some 2.8 billion people, the World Health Organisation estimates, have inadequate sanitation  -they do not have proper latrines that prevents waste from spreading into the environment. Every day more children die from dirty water than H.I.V/ Aids, malaria, war and accidents all put together,'' says Maude Barlow, national chair of the council of Canadians.

The water crises, she says, is not something that besets only the megalopolises of the Third World. France instituted water rationing some years ago; then Thames Water applied for a drought order in London; Los Angeles the same time hit the driest rainy season in more than a hundred years. According a 2003 water survey for the European Environment Agency, nitrates, toxins, heavy metals, or harmful micro-organisms contaminate groundwater in nearly every European country and former Soviet Republic. 

Globally,  -and for the miseries worst-  and in the developing countries in particular, the water crises has begun its meteoric rise. And in the not too distant a future, for those of us and you, who can't pay their water bills, the spigot is going to be turned off.

Qin Huairen, a teacher at a middle school, was a fate inspired man who was determined to make himself a force for good. Slight and energetic, with a ready smile that fills his gaunt face, he spent his years between 1985 and 1995 helping his ''students'' draw water from the canals, perform simple tests on the samples, and send the water and the test results to the city government. Every following year the results got worse.

Fearful of the water in the canals and the river, the people of Changzhou frantically began digging wells. Today, the visitors to the city see advertisements spray painted by the thousands on the walls of building, the Chinese characters for ''well digging''. So many wells have been dug by now,  that the groundwater has been over exploited, and the local ground-level has sunk by two feet.

Big Water, one of the world's top best Water Management Company in the world, makes an argument straight out of Economics 101. I bring it here to help you develop a perspective: The best way to deliver to water to people's homes efficiently,  -the water barons argue- is to put the process in the hands of the market. If water is scarce then raise the price  -let the laws of supply and demand take over!

If people want water that is not only plentiful but actually clean, then raise the price again. The market will find the point of balance between what consumers want and what they can afford. And if the water company does not make good on its promises, it can be ejected in favor of another company. The threat of the competition will force utilities to be accountable.

Cash-strapped cities in nations from Argentina, Pakistan, India, and on and on and on to on, -and Albania have started to view this looming crises of water as`Life and Death struggle for survival. Some of the poorest places in the world are now being suddenly exposed to the discipline of the market. But all too often, the results do not resemble the cheerful predictions of Economics 101.

In this messy real world of unstable governments, corrupt bureaucrats, and volatile currencies, terrorism, competing miseries, all efforts have been unable -and sometimes unwilling to deliver what they promised. Big Water

included. There is no patience no more, with anything. Waiting for the market to work its magic, fearful customers have and are reacting to abrupt price hikes by filling the streets with misery, rage and fury.

Alas, life goes on!

The post continues with each writing coming in with its own set of adjectives to define the reality.

With respectful dedication to the ''Quality Of Life And Living.''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless