The lords of water

WHILE ATTENDING meetings with members of our city water department, with the City Council in attendance, and hearing many other conversations concerning water, I have been struck by what appears to be a certain culture of thinking in relation to water rights and allocation.

It seems that we have commoditized our natural resource water to the point that that this substance, an imperative to all life, can be had at far greater rates by the rich over the poor.

Is that what we have become in our American society? Will we start charging for air next? I remember a film staring our fine Gov. Schwarzenegger, set on a planet (Mars) lacking a breathable atmosphere. The poor and the weak were deprived by their conditions of unequal suffrage of fresh, clear, breathable air. When this population thought to revolt, object to these oppressive conditions or protest, they were cut off from one of the things all human life requires.

I could be wrong, but in my model of justice and human rights there is no one person more deserving of fresh air so as to deny clean breathable air to the least among our population. This same truth I would extend to the natural resource of water.

Water is a shared resource. It belongs as a condition of our natural environment to one citizen as much as it does to any other. Equal access is, I believe, a basic human right. The conditions of one's private economy and private profitability must not be allowed to control a fair and truly just allocation of our resources.
Gregory Morales, San Diego