Blue Gold World Water Wars Film Analysis

The Movie Blue Gold-World Water Wars is based on the book written by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke. In this report, I will try to put some the good points about and the most examples of misinformation. Maude Barlow is National Chair of the Council of Canadians and Tony Clarke is Executive Director of the Polaris Institute, another Canadian organization. Both Clarke and Barlow are featured prominently in the film, which is directed by Sam Bozzo.

What I Liked
• Visually impressive
• Discussion about sea water desalination and its high current energy costs
• Emphasis on community-based actions and solutions
• No great affinity for bottled water
• Prior appropriation water law and its seeming discouragement of conservation (from Robert
Across the screen is flashed a sequence of cities' names (e.g., New York, Chicago, Riverside, Houston, Tampa, Pittsburgh (misspelled) , Las Vegas, Seattle, et al.) followed by "Buyer: XYZ Company". The implication is that the water supply of these cities is now owned/controlled by some multinational corporation. I checked four of the cities: Las Vegas (Suez), Seattle (RWE/Thames), Chicago (Veolia) and New York (Suez). The water supply of each is not controlled, in whole or in part, by the private firms mentioned - Suez, Veolia, RWE/Thames. I checked the WWW sites of each city and called Seattle, New York, and the Las Vegas Valley Water District.
• A similar visual trick is used for the Great Lakes, although it says Potential Buyer: Nestlé. I am sure the governors of the eight states and premiers of Ontario and Quebec would be interested in this statement. Nestlé is not going to buy the Great Lakes, folks.
• Innuendo is made that the USA's military operations in the Great Lakes region are somehow related to the USA's interest in claiming/stealing the Lakes' water. Yes, Virginia, the USA does have military bases in the Great Lakes region, just like they have them in the Pacific Northwest. Does the latter fact that mean that the USA is planning a BC invasion? Barlow and Clarke seem to forget that some of their countrymen have suggested that Canada supply some of its water to the
This has been (mis?)interpreted as meaning the world pumps 30 billion gallons per day, but that is actually too small for a global figure. Thirty billion gallons is about 92,000 acre-feet, about the annual pumpage by the City of Albuquerque when I lived there a few years ago. The daily global pumpage is about 600 billion gallons. According to Kevin McCray of the National Ground Water Association, the daily pumpage in the USA is about 80 billion gallons per day and in the world, about 408 billion gallons per day (see his presentation).
A few people discuss living within your watershed and not transporting water long distances to fuel growth. Okay, that's fine, but how do you control growth? By law? The case of Bolinas, CA, was mentioned, but there was no mention of some of the negative effects, such as potentially unaffordable housing.
Profligate water use is decried, but I detected no mention of pricing as a means to reduce demand and extend supply [David Zetland's smiling now!]. In fact, supply, demand, and economics in general seem to be absent from the discourse.
No mention is made of privatization that appears to be working, e.g., Veolia's management of Oklahoma City's wastewater treatment facility (contract just renewed) and Indianapolis' drinking water system. I suspect there are other examples. Let's have some