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Flow: For Love of Water

            They paved paradise and put up a parking lot, with a pink hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot. Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. They took all the trees put ‘em in a tree museum and they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see ‘em. Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. – Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi

            I know that you cannot tell this, but my voice is soft, there is almost a smile in it as I ask this question, “Do you drink bottled water?” Given that 8-ounces per person in the United States is swilled down each day and that our nation is the largest consumer of that liquid, I am sure a lot of you do.  We spend over $9 billion on this beverage. How do I say this, oh, lean closer. YOU ARE AN IDOIT, A MORON, A BOOB. YOU HAVE MORE MONEY THAN COMMON SENSE. YOU ARE PAYING LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY FOR SOMETHING THAT IS ALMOST FREE WHEN IT COMES OUT OF YOUR TAP. In other words, corporate flimflam men are selling you modern snake oil.  I know what you are thinking, “But tap water is filthy. Trevor, do you know what is in tap water?” Forty percent of bottled water is tap water just surrounded by plastic and trucked in from another city.  There are no crystal clear streams where gentle maidens in white dresses pour this liquid gold into earth friendly clear bottles for you. Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coke’s Dasani are just the water they use in soft drinks but without the syrup.

            “But Trevor…” No, no, no, American drinking water is the safest of any nation in the world, that is a fact, and if you are that concerned about it, buy a filter. “But Trevor, they clean the water and it is healthier.” No, it is not.  In fact, in a bit of irony, cavities, you know those holes where our teeth should be, have increased dramatically in the population since we have embraced drinking bottled water.  You see, one of the good things that many bottled waters filter out is fluoride.  Those evil old big government liberals in the 1950s made it mandatory that all drinking water be fluoridated. American’s teeth magically improved.  Take away the fluoride and we are back to having the chompers of a cast member in Deliverance-like reality show.  Drinking bottled water also makes you an environmental pig.  It takes almost seven times as much water to produce what you are drinking and 47 million gallons of oil are consumed each year in producing the plastic and trucking the water around the United States.  If Americans stopped purchasing this vanity drink that would be like taking 100,000 cars off the road and lessening our carbon dioxide output by 1 billion pounds. Let’s not even talk about how long it is going to take for that needlessly produced plastic to break down. Bring a jug or bottle you refilled at home if you need to wash down that Mars bar you just stuffed in your pie hole at the office. If you really need to throw your money away send it to me.  There is a blackjack table at Caesar’s calling my name.

            Water is important. It is essential for human survival. Human beings are 70 percent water. Droughts have led to the destruction of entire civilizations and too many wars to even begin to count. More than a billion people have no access to clean water. In turn, each year stagnant, disease infested, polluted water kills more people than war and AIDS combined.  It was one of the reasons I cringed a little bit when I watched our shock and awe bombing campaign a few years ago because I knew that more innocent Iraqis would die in the weeks and months following as a result of disease and dysentery than would ever get the thumbscrews put to them in Saddam Hussein’s torture chambers. As populations increase and global warming throws weather patterns off and heats up the earth like an easy bake oven, water rights and issues are becoming more important.

            In countries like India and Bolivia, major corporations like Coca-Cola have contaminated entire water supplies. Other corporations, like Vivendi-Universal, Suez, and Nestle have used their power and influence to lock up and control what used to be government controled waterways. Once privatized, these corporations are then selling the water back to the local population for a dramatic profit. The problem is often times the poor cannot afford what these multi-nationals are demanding. Even in a wealthy country like the United States, water issues are starting to heat up.  Scientists are starting to worry about supply issues for the western sections of this nation, some even fearing that major bodies of water like Lake Mead in Nevada are going to dry up.  In most states, sportsmen and women are advised not to eat more than a handful of the fish they catch because of the levels of mercury and other chemicals found in their tissues. Of particular concern is the pesticide Atrazine, which has been banned in the European Union, but of which 76 million pounds of which are applied to fields across this nation.  While the EPA has declared that it is “not likely to cause cancer,” in experiments with frogs in extremely low concentrations, it is shown to demasculate males. It is little wonder why Kermit shows no interest in Miss Piggy and loved to sing the Rainbow Connection, because of Atrazine his testosterone levels were below those of female frogs and his gonads are malformed.  Now that I made every male reader wince because of the universal brotherhood among all creatures of the XY chromosome, I do not want to even get into the fact that rocket fuel, yes rocket fuel, is showing up in the water supply in certain states and what that means.

            Director Irena Salinas tries to touch on as many water based issues as she can in 93 minutes and it is clearly from an activist position.  Some of her concerns are over blown, some will scare the hell out of you, and some will break your heart. Most people will not even bother with this documentary because it is a documentary and documentaries might mean learning something and learning is too close to school, which means boring.  Still, I have faith in the American people.  Much like when television cameras penetrated the South, which allowed Ma and Pa Middle America to see the injustices of Jim Crow and allowed the civil rights movement to blossom. I believe that we are basically a decent people and will not abide actions that go against our character.  One single image is worth more than an entire book and this is a movie filled with images that move the audience.  When we see what is going on, we react and do the right thing eventually. Evil can only continue in the dark alleys and backrooms of the world. The light of truth causes the cockroaches and leeches of humanity to lose their power and scurry for the shadows. I truly believe this, but there is a large chunk of our citizenry spending their hard earned dough on bottled water, because some p.r. firms have buffaloed them into believing they need to buy it even though the facts are out there showing how they have been sold some swamp land in Florida in a plastic bottle, so I could be wrong. Remember there is a reason that Evian is naïve spelled backwards. 

Verdict: A great documentary, and you are an idiot if you buy bottled water!