Water - scarce commodity?

March 4, 2003

By Ed Clark
ESCMC@aol.com

The Brevard Insider

Malabar, FL

What's that stuff falling on your head today?

Water.

That stuff that made you all damp and clammy yesterday?

Water.

That stuff that flooded your garden last summer?

Water.

Yet, alarmists tell us (re: William P. Suiter, FT, 3/4/03, p. 9A), "Only
about 1 percent of the water on earth is available for our use."

As John Wayne would say, "Not hardly."

There is no water that cannot be desalinated, purified, filtered, or whatever
it takes to make it usable, for drinking or other.

Desalination of seawater is probably the most difficult, costing twice as
much as using more suitable water.

What does this mean to you and me?

Instead of paying roughly $2 per thousand gallons, people using desalinated
water are paying about $4 a thousand gallons.

With the average person counting for about 2 thousand gallons a month, our
expense could rise much as -- $4 per person per month.

Ain't that an earthshaker?

Suitor goes on to build a case for not privatizing water distribution
(presumably keeping the control under public authority). He brings on the
old bugaboo of "a few large corporations" and the profit motive ("Large
corporations are building huge pipelines and supertankers to move vast
quantities of water around the world at a profit.").

He terms trading in water an "exploit."

Presumably, supplying water to desert areas is a bad thing, if the investors
get a return on their money.

"The United Nations must declare that water is a fundamental human right and
not for sale." Boy, that's gonna frost a lot of cities that have been
selling water as a way of recovering their costs of purifying and moving it.

Wonder why, if water is a fundamental human right, we don't have it in the
Bill of Rights? But don't worry, William P. Suitor. You have a champion:

Our local Water Management District, for a cost of only about $185 millions
of our tax dollars a year, keep reminding us to limit our lawn sprinkling.

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Brevard Insider is published 5 times a week except holidays at 1106
Ramblebrook Street, Malabar, Fl. 32950. 321-956-0815. Fax:
321-956-8762. Email: ESCMC@aol.com Copyright 2002. Publisher Pond Press,
Inc. Editor: Edward S. Clark. Assistant editor: Dan Warrensford.
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