[BCFSN] Fwd: Job Posting for displays

[Burnaby Food First]

I listened to a CBC phone-in about whether Nestle should have to pay 2.5 cents per million litres of water - which seems a pitiable value to place on our water. Just because it falls from the sky for us doesn't mean it has no value. And it's astounding we have already allowed this commodification of water for direct sale, rather than going through the value added of producing food, or industrial products like lumber or oil etc. 

At the same time I realize our farm has also been paying very little for irrigation license water, so know it's pretty cheap for everyone - at least surface water. And of course, our ground-water well is free after the well is pd for. I still supported the general principles of the new Water Act that all water needs to be better managed, including groundwater. Still, a lot of my comments had to do with how little was clear about how this all would work. 

For example, the river we've been relying on has apparently been "over-licensed" already. Why? What was the point of knowing the volume limits over time but ignoring those when deciding how much to license? Since there was never an effort to 're-balance' water needs under the old system, no one knows what could happen to 'senior' existing surface water rights to start with. If the use was just opened up in the past due to pressure from new 'needs' - what might happen if it starts going to the highest bidder? We just sold our land to a mining exploration company - should we have been valuing that irrigation license a lot more highly? No one really knows yet. 

BUT it now appears to me that a corporate interest is trying to come in under the old (weak) rules and get grandfathered water rights. It seems to me that when straight water, to be sold to final consumers, is the purpose of sale - we should put a moratorium on any of that until the Act comes into place and there might be more public consideration of what it means in practical reality. 

I remember hearing that water would never be for sale under the Free Trade Act - and also that once you start to sell something then you can't reverse that or charge different prices for your own citizens versus cross-border sales. I'm just not sure about all this, and of course it didn't come up in the Water Act review much because that wasn't the focus of the kinds of questions being asked. 

But it's not hard to imagine moving from "we want to bottle the water and sell it" to "we want to build a plant cheaper in the US and just ship the water by pipeline to bottle" to having extreme pressure from California et al - to make that a pipeline straight to their reservoirs. And could it be stopped? What kind of 'resource' is water going to be? Or is it first and foremost a basic need, and a basic right for us as citizens to count on? 

What is the best approach for me to make these concerns heard in the government? 

Marg Durnin 
Goat Farmer 


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