Water is Life!
True, but how true is Humankind’s understanding of those three simple words that have such profound effect on our todays and tomorrows?
In some parts of Planet Earth, water is freely available or accessible — sometimes at low cost — while in others, it’s such a scarcity that those with access could never imagine ever being without.
In some cases, industry competes with humanity for the precious life-sustaining resource – like in data processing centres in developing countries that require using more water than is made available to surrounding communities.
Yet, in many countries, water has become so-scarce that rivers that traditionally supplied it have been declared too-polluted to drink from; and in others, preventable water-borne diseases persist thanks to natural disasters and man-made reasons like border restrictions on rivers traversing nations.
In Gaza and Sudan, genocide and tribal wars deprive millions of free and needed access to clean water daily, resulting in unimaginable death tolls from thirst, hunger and starvation, with food and water weaponized by Israel against Palestinians and displaced multitudes not knowing where their next drop will drop from.
In many developed countries, including the UK and across Europe, dirty river water is being recycled for tap use, but with warnings to consumers to ‘Don’t Drink’ because it’s simply unhealthy.
In the Caribbean, access to pure and clean water has been so guaranteed for as long as anyone can remember that it’s difficult to get the average citizen to think daily of ‘saving water’, or ever contemplating its unavailability.
National water providers have been largely seen and treated as preservers and protectors of the valuable source of life, but in most cases, not allowed – even forbidden by law – to go into the business of producing and selling water on the commercial market.
Saint Lucia’s Water and Sewage Company (WASCO), for example, as a state entity, is in the business of producing, distributing and selling water – and at ridiculously lower levels than required for its survivability (like $12 per 1,000 gallons).
But the nation’s provider of this essential resource must – by law — sell at uncompetitive prices.
And while the private sector reaps a whirlwind of liquid profits from bottling clean and crystal-clear WASCO water, the national water company isn’t allowed to bottle and sell its own water and is therefore always left drowning in a constant loss-making sink-hole, legally unable to earn greater profits from the water it produces.
WASCO is allowed to sell water to ships and hotels, private companies, including those also in the competitive business of selling water products (from bottled water to soft drinks, beer and rum), but it’s forbidden from doing likewise – and (thanks to the concept of public companies not being allowed to compete with the private sector, thereby left to the mercies of insufficient government subsidies.
And then there’s the matter of maintaining adequate production capacity to ensure national water companies can always meet the needs of ever-expanding consumer bases.
In Saint Lucia’s case, take the dredging and desilting of the Roseau Dam, the latest cost-benefit analysis seeing a near $50 million payment to a local contractor yielding much-less than 10% results.
But WASCO can’t raise water rates, while users continue to steal water through illegal connections and car washers continue sourcing their liquid raw material from public standpipes and community baths, toilets and laundries.
Across the Caribbean, water continues being treated in ways that make it look and sound more like a dying source of life, while elsewhere utilities are actually recycling sewage into something that looks and tastes like pure water, while others look at desalination.
Where desalination was once prohibitive by cost, it’s now developed to a state where even mini ‘desal’ plants are being offered to the Caribbean by private global producers from China and Japan.
But all the progress in water production, development and distribution will go to naught regionally, if the current status quo is allowed to continue sinking unabated.
Climate Change and other negative environmental factors continue to threaten the very future of water, negative weather factors increasingly affecting normal flows in ways the region experiences in increasingly-worse ways, annually.
Even while utilities may have positive plans for protective action, it always boils down to how much the political directorate is prepared to do.
However, the major factor affecting regional water today is not only accessing resources needed for improvement, but the continuing and increasing costs of delaying and postponing the most important task of today’s water providers: cleaning-up and modernizing the delivery infrastructure.
WASCO – now more than ever – has to undertake costly and lengthy delays in service delivery from having to increasingly attend to damaged pipelines, whether caused by careless contractors on building sites, or because pipelines simply can no longer stand the increasing water pressure.
WASCO’s pipe-borne water is clear and clean by cup or glass, bottle or bucket, but not many consumers ever actually see the sorry state of the corroded metal pipes from days of colonial yore, through which the water we drink flows to our homes today.
It’s not-at-all a good sight and one that can only result in those who do see, understandably gasping and resorting to more use of bottled water for drinking purposes.
Where once-upon-a-time it was natural for homes to store rain water in drums with protective cloth covering, today WASCO invites customers to purchase emergency water tanks, while the government has provided over a thousand 1,000-gallon water tanks to farmers to help combat drought.
While ‘Water Is Life’ forever, the time has come for Caribbean nations to give more priority to finding the liquid cash and material resources necessary to modernize water production and delivery – and one of the most-assured ways is to allow the utilities to do what’s necessary to allow them to float, instead of sinking.
But try telling consumers they will have to pay more per 1,000 gallons – and watch them Cry Big Water!