How Limousine Liberals, Water Oligarchs and Even Sean Hannity Are Hijacking Our Water Supply

[marmar]

How Limousine Liberals, Water Oligarchs and Even Sean Hannity Are Hijacking Our Water Supply

By Yasha Levine, AlterNet. Posted November 19, 2009.

A group of water oligarchs engineered a disastrous privatization scheme to make a fortune out of California's most precious natural resource.




A group of water oligarchs in California have engineered a disastrous deregulation and privatization scheme. And they've pulled in hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars without causing much public outrage. The amount of power and control they wield over California's most precious resource, water, should shock and frighten us -- and it would, if more people were aware of it. But here is the scary thing: They are plotting to gain an even larger share of California's increasingly-scarce, over-tapped water supply, which will surely lead to shortages, higher prices and untold destruction to California's environment.

California is in year three of a fairly nasty dry spell. And some very powerful forces are not letting this mini-crisis go to waste, fiercely lobbying Governor Schwarzenegger and Senator Dianne Feinstein, paying off corporate shills like Fox News' Sean Hannity and capitalizing on people's fear of drought to push a massive waterworks project that will pump more water, build more dams and keep sucking the state's rivers dry. The fearmongering schtick goes like this: California is on the brink of a water crisis of cataclysmic proportions, with a life-or-death struggle just around the corner, pitting small farmers who want to save their livelihood against big city elitists who care more about the environment than they do about American jobs. But in reality, this drought hysteria is nothing more than political theatrics, a scare tactic backed by big agribusiness to strong-arm California voters into building a multi-billion dollar system of dams and canals that would not really help small farmers -- of which there are very few anyway -- but would deliver more water to corporations, subsidize their landholdings, fuel real estate development and enable large-scale water privatization. At its core, it is a war waged for water by California's megarich on everyone else.

The leader of these recent water privatization efforts in California is a Beverly Hills billionaire named Stewart Resnick. Stewart and his wife, Lynda Resnick, own Roll International Corporation, a private umbrella company that controls the flowers-by-wire company Teleflora, Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful, pesticide manufacturer Suterra and Paramount Agribusiness, the largest farming company in America and the largest pistachio and almond producer in the world. Roll Corp. was ranked #246 on Forbes' list of America's largest private companies in 2008 and had an estimated revenue of $1.98 billion in 2007. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/water/144020/how_limousine_liberals%2C_water_oligarchs_and_even_sean_hannity_are_hijacking_our_water_supply

[Buzz Clik]

1. How is it that California keeps falling into these traps?

Enron with the energy scam. Now this. Could it be that California has more people than it can support with its own natural resources? Their endless fiscal disaster suggests that they are incapable of taking care of themselves.

[excess_3]

2. this is crap.

if city people had to pay for fresh water
made from seawater,

the difference in the monthly bill
woukd be minimal

[AlecBGreen]

3. lol

yeah, desalination is sooooo cheap (thats why EVERYONE does it!)