Swords & box knives, Nestle, water & the well-to-do soaking up the will to live...

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Produced by: 
KBOO
Program:: 
Air date: 
Wed, 03/24/2010 - 12:00am
Jonathan Thompson on water law in the West & Joy Keene on water wars in the Gorge

So Nestle wants to crush Cascade Locks under its massive Carbon Footprint...The plan is  First they want to trade spring water currently the habitat of fish for municipal water.  I'm not making this up:  the fish get the tap water and Nestle sells the fresh water right out from under the fish.  Apparently it's going to take a year of 'study' to learn what is obvious to anyone who ever bought a guppie:  chlorine and fish don't mix.  And the hallucinogenic  prospect of hot and cold running trout in the bathtub is not so far-fetched.  Supposing Nestle twists all the right arms - you know, the ones attached to fists full of dollars...suppose this  travesty comes into being.  It will mean 200 tanker trucks a day running up and down the already deadly I-84.  Who pays for the pollution?  Who pays for the roadwork?  Who pays when streams dry up and a town dies?

Water laws have seeped like acid throughout Western states, over the decades separating the water from the land, the land from people and the people from the wealth of their own labor.  Once water is moved from place to place, money moves with it.  And as potable water becomes increasingly scarce, its value as a commodity rises.  No "trickle down"  about it.

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