The New Oil

Interlandi, Janeen, Ryan Tracy. "The New Oil". Newsweek 156, no. 16 p40-46.
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.mnsu.edu. (Accessed February 8th, 2011).


This article discusses the transfer of water by sophoning it into the same types of tankers normally reserved for oil, and shipping it to countries in need of water. Of course, this all happens for a price. Water has now become a global commodity, and by private companies taking over the rights to water sources it is something to be bought and sold for profit. Goldman Sachs estimates that global water consumption is doubling ever twenty years--the United Nation expects demand to outstrip supply be more than 40% by 2040 (Inerlandi 41). The companies that hold the rights to water will be at liberty to charge as much as they like--and, unlike oil, people will HAVE to pay, as water is necessary to sustain life. Unfortunately, when things go wrong, cities whose water is controlled by a private company are still liable to clean up after them if something goes wrong. For example "when two Veolia-operated plants spilled millions of gallons of sewage into San Francisco Bay, at least one city was forced to make multimillion dollar upgrades to the offending sewage plant" (Interlandi 43). Also discussed in the article are New Jersey's suing United Water for violating thier contract. This also happened in Milwaukee in recent years. I will no doubt be using this source as it provides examples of privatization of city municipalities gone wrong--something that i am including in my paper.