Planet and PEOPLE

Water is just two hydrogen atoms plus one oxygen, two common gases which can be split apart by passing an electrical current through, but with extraordinary properties. It exists in an extraordinary variety of forms, from solid ice, through various kinds of snow and hail, to liquid and vapour. Seen from space the Earth is blue – water covers 70% of the surface of the planet, and it makes all life on Earth possible. About 60% of the human body is water and it fulfils several vital functions.

Water molecules are polar, with partial positive charges on the hydrogens, a partial negative charge on the oxygen, and a bent overall structure. This is because oxygen is more electronegative, meaning that it is better than hydrogen at attracting electrons.

Water is unique in its ability to dissolve many different substances. In every living being, it carries nutrients and assists in removal of waste products. Its high heat capacity helps regulate the temperature of the environment and its evaporation (for example, through sweating) is an essential part of cooling the body.

It has cohesive and adhesive properties that give it a surface tension allowing small insects to walk on its surface and the ability for trees to carry nutrients to the top branches against the force of gravity.

Because ice is less dense than water, it floats. This prevents ponds and lakes from freezing solid and so preserve life below.

Water is therefore not a commodity to be traded by creating demand through scarcity then wasting it. Like the air we breathe, it is far too important to planet and people for that. But that is not how it is regarded.

Because water is so fundamental to our planetary ecosystem, control of the water cycle is a potential source of great power and wealth. It is regarded – as everything is, by the nihilists – as a resource to be exploited for short-term profit, and discarded. It is this ideology that is killing us all.

Like any other ‘resource’, its value depends on supply and demand. Those who wish to make money out of water will be happy to ensure they become the monopoly supplier of clean water. If the wells, rivers and the rain are polluted, you will have to drink their processed water. If even the tapwater is polluted, you will be driven to buy bottled water. The greater the demand, the greater the profit. Nestlé, CocaCola, buy up the springs and bottle them; meanwhile fracking pollutes vast quantities of water and empties the aquifers. Who cares, when there’s money to be made?

The very basis of capitalism is to avoid responsibility. The limited company is simply a way of avoiding paying debts. As with capitalism generally, profits are driven by selling a ‘product’ or ‘service’ for the highest price you can get, and reducing any associated costs of sales. Once a sale has been made, any ‘waste’ or unfortunate consequences are for someone else to deal with, because there’s no profit there. In general the public or the planet itself are expected to pick up any such costs. From abandoned mines to single use plastics, it’s always the same.

With water there is no incentive to clean up and recycle wastewater because nature provides that service free. Also if rivers, wells, rainfall are undrinkable it just drives up demand for processed ‘clean’ water. If even the tapwater has been polluted, for example by fracking, bottle the remaining clean sources and sell that. Restricting supplies just drives up the price. No wonder the water companies, under fire for polluting rivers and coastline, propose to pass the cost of any clean-up to the consumer in higher prices. Never mind that the consumer has already been paying wastewater charges for years, money that just disappears into directors’ and shareholders’ pockets.

There is no money in wastewater – cleaning it is simply a cost to be avoided. Nature cannot pay money for clean water so it just gets the pollution. Profits are also driven by volume sales: dirty industry can be given large discounts if they sign up for large quantities. And if the frackers will pay more than the farmers, that’s where the water will go. Public campaigns to persuade the poor to use less water are pure hypocrisy: the less the old lady uses for her washing up, the more can be sold for the frackers. When water was being privatised we were told that private investment was needed to improve the infrastructure, but in reality it does the opposite. The water is processed and distributed as cheaply as possible, and it is more cost-effective to let the pipes leak and charge the customer more than to fix them.

Here’s a personal story. At the start of 2020, the tenants left my café. Previously, when the place was empty, and no water was used, it had been no problem, but this time, I received a notification from a company I had never heard of, ‘Unicom’ that they supplied the premises. I thought nothing of this. I let them know that I expected new tenants in February and would leave it to them to deal with. Then I received a bill for ‘water services’. I refused it. No water services had been requested or agreed to. Apparently however standing charges had been introduced since the last vacancy in 2016. These were supposedly for the maintenance of the infrastructure. Unicom, which is actually a trading name for Clear Business Water, itself owned by the international private equity fund Vitruvian (https://www.vitruvianpartners.com/), went on to subject me to a torrent of ( largely automated) abuse and threats for several months, and sadly neither the Scottish Government, nor the Public Services Ombudsman, nor the Water Industry Commission for Scotland were willing to stand up to them.

In Scotland, although Scottish Water sources and distributes and processes all the water, private companies have somehow managed to create a ‘retail market’ for non-domestic water. It is simply a protection racket. The so-called water companies actually do nothing to justify their profits in Scotland except abuse and threaten customers and extract the cheapest possible ‘wholesale’ price from Scottish Water for their corporate mates. In theory, non-domestic customers can shop around for the cheapest price. In practice, the largest corporate users obtain a licence to ‘self-supply’ at specially negotiated cheap prices, the medium sized businesses buy the cheapest they can get, and the small businesses pay proportionately the most. I later discovered that even premises with no water or drainage connection at all were being coerced and threatened into paying water bills to private companies! They find themselves subsidising unearned profits under threat of debt recovery action. My cafe is connected to a private septic tank; and the incoming water pipes serve my domestic house too. Nobody has inspected these pipes for decades so to threaten to dig them up nor non-payment of charges levied for services neither requested, nor agreed to, nor delivered, is simply criminal extortion. What these standing charges also demonstrate is that Scottish Water has somehow been forced to ‘sell’ water to these companies at a price that does not cover investment in the public infrastructure. They are therefore simply leeches – and unlike real leeches, provide no benefit at all to anyone except themselves. It is actually piracy without the eye patches or amusing west country accents.

Well, I refused all such demands and I continue to do so. At present, since the last change of tenant, another company. ‘Everflow’ is sending me bills and refusing to release the premises to another supplier. I, in turn, refuse to accept any obligation to this company since I specifically refused a contract as soon as they contacted me. We seem to have reached a stalemate. However, these completely unjustifiable ‘deemed contracts’ are actually illegal, but that doesn’t stop the companies attempting to impose them, or the regulators, Scottish Water, or even the Scottish Government ending the practice. Any enquiries or complaints are met with a cowed silence. All (it seems) are ruled by organised crime.

The water companies provide nothing of any value to the public or the planet. In fact they simply exploit, extort, and destroy then go running to the bank. If we are serious about ‘saving the planet’, we need to stop this. The entire water cycle has to be engaged with, for the benefit of all living beings and the profit motive removed. We need waste ater to be cleaned up before release into the environment. We need issues of water shortages and flooding to be properly managed. We need priority to be given to the provision of clean water to both people and other species that depend on it, and that means supplying sustainable farming before dirty industry and banning fracking altogether. It means cleaning up pollution as part of the same management system as supply. I have become deeply suspicious of traditional nationalisation – it is too easy for corrupt or fearful politicians to let the pirates back in by the back door, as has happened in Scotland. Water and drainage used to be a local authority responsibility, and this worked well for a very long time until the ideology or private greed arrived. It urgently needs to go back under local democratic control, and paid for through general taxation. If anywhere, ‘Zero Waste’ needs to start here.