"FLOW: FOR LOVE OF WATER" The Most Important Documentary You'd be Lucky to Find in a Major Theatre

Water. Water Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink . . . .
By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith

Producer Steven Starr and co-producer Gill Holland had seen Irena Salina‘s documentary film, “Flow: For Love of Water,” at the Sundance Film Festival. They thought the film so important, they bought it for the San Francisco International Film Festival in early Spring. Unfortunately, it has not as yet been picked up for wider distribution.

The international cast of interviewees for this film about the privatization of the world’s water supply believe fights over water rights will trump the current oil wars. Advocates for so-called Third World or developing countries’ water rights spoke on several subjects: illness and death attributed to water-borne diseases, water scarcity due to global warming: droughts, floods, and crop failure, leading to famines and starvation; in addition, the fact that two million children in these countries die of water born diseases yearly. One interviewee stated the obvious; “Without water, the earth wouldn’t be what it is.” The makeup of animal life on earth is commiserate with that of earth: 70% water and 30% physical matter. Scientist and internationally known water expert, Dr. Peter Glieck explained the water cycle we all learned in grammar school. Now, with a nod to Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth,“ it is believed that global warming has caused erratic changes to this cycle. These changes cause lakes and rivers to dry up in certain areas,reducing the amount of water evaporation. This in turn results in lack of rainfall for crops and the for the filling of underground natural cisterns; also causing devastating deluges and floods, washing away precious topsoil.

In the film, scientists such as Dr. Glieck and UC Berkeley biologist Tyrone Hayes say that to believe that the water supply in the US is safe to drink or bathe in, is a fallacy. This so-called treated water contains pesticides which leach through our pores each time we shower. Tap water in the developed world also contains pharmaceuticals from pills flushed down toilets (or residue from urine), or dumped into landfills. As yet, there is no way to filter out these drugs. Five hundred thousand to 1,000,000 people sicken from the water supply in the US. Pollution not only alters hormones in fish and frogs, but also affects the chemistry in humans. Vandana Shiva, an ecologist and environmental activist from India, is shown speaking at international forums, and in “Flow,” she talks about the plight of babies born with birth defects because their mothers had drunk ground water “ruined by pesticides.” She says that industrial toxins are found in the flesh of ruminating animals who drink runoff from fields that leach into streams and is collected for domestic stock. Tyrone Hayes spoke of the evils of the widely used pesticide atrazine which is manufactured by Syngenta, in Sweden. The EU has banned atrazine outright, yet Sweden sells it to its eager buyer - - the US. US big agro uses it on two-thirds of all the corn fields, sorgum, soy beans; 90% of sugar cane fields, and municipalities spray it on lawns, golf courses, and Christmas tree farms.

In one startling scene, the camera focuses on a sluggish, blood red stream in Africa. Maude Barlow, Chairperson for the Council of Canadians, who was involved with the 2003 documentary, “Corporation,” approaches the stream with villagers who tell her that blood from a nearby slaughterhouse is channeled into the river. Downstream, where it has diluted some, people drink the water, bathe, and wash clothes in it because they don‘t have access to clean water. Many sicken and die as a result.

A CEO from Suez Corporation, Gerard Mestrallet, admits that his company is “active” in the water “business.” He believes that for the welfare of the people in undeveloped nations, they should buy into Suez’s proposal to own the water, arguing for equal distribution for a price - - a price beyond villagers’ dollar-a-day income.

“Flow” includes clips from the documentary film about the victory over water privatization in Cochabamb, Bolivia, featuring Bolivian activist and protest leader Oscar Olivera. Activist/author Jim Schultz, founder of the Democracy Center based in Cochabamba, provided a voiceover. An interview with Schultz revealed that in 1997 the World Bank forced Cochabamba’s water privatization by Aguas del Tunari, a private company owned by London-based multinational International Water Ltd. The people couldn’t afford to buy water, whose costs had risen beyond their means, so dipped water from polluted streams. Several people demonstrating against the privatization were killed by Bolivian police and the military. Still, the people prevailed and won.

In a village in Africa, the water can be purified with a tablet provided by the Suez Corp, which people must buy, yet cannot afford. A tour bus of various concerned Anglo-European corporate officials in suits and ties traveled around sweltering Africa on a “fact-finding” mission. Stepping off the bus for less than a minute, they were swarmed by curious and complaining villagers. The officials promised to get them water. In Chatsworth, an Indian community in Africa, one village leader explained that they knew that these water privatization corporations were created by banks, the World Bank, in particular. Suez Company’s Mestrallet complained that the company can’t turn a profit once they privatize an area’s water unless they charge enough to make a profit to satisfy their shareholders.

One interviewer, Dr. Ashok Gadgil, a biochemist at the University of California at Berkeley, devised a simple water purification system powered by water that captures the sun’s UV rays. He and his team installed it in an area of India where tens of thousands had sickened and died from polluted water. Now, more than 500,000 rural Indians obtain their drinking water after it is triple-filtered, carbon-treated and disinfected, for 2/10th of a U.S. cent per liter. Soon not only did people’s health begin to improve, but that of a chicken breeder’s flocks. Previously, the chicks had also suffered from deadly water-borne bacteria.

The world‘s water supply is not infinite. Climate change affects all natural bodies of water, as well as snow packs, and glaciers. Big corporations buying and selling water is immoral. Take the bottled water industry; it is huge. Yet scientific research into the makeup of bottled water has proven it’s no safer than tap water. Penn Jillette of the comedy magic team Penn & Teller provides some comic relief to this sobering film with a spoof on the bottled water myth: A specialty restaurant serves allegedly pristine, exotic water from all over the world. Its menu describes water the way wine is marketed. Affluent white people sit at well-appointed tables and select their water. Jillette then cuts to a view of the rear of the restaurant where Teller is seen slopping tap water, gushing from a garden hose, indiscriminately into empty bottles. The bottle and wine glasses are then carried ceremoniously on a tray to the duped “diners” who sip their water and extol its palate. After seeing this film, people with any conscience should be embarrassed to be seen carrying bottled water.

In her book, “Blue Gold,” Maude Barlow compares the fresh water supply with that of oil reserves. She was interviewed for “Flow” and said that the buying and selling water will become as controversial as the oil business today. The film includes a clip from “The Third Man,” showing Harry Green (Orson Welles) pitching his scam to Joseph Cotton. Looking down from the apogee of a Ferris-wheel at people crisscrossing the fairgrounds below, Green asks him something like, “Would you really care if those little crawling ants down there die?” thus comparing Green to the CEO of a huge greedy pesticide producing corporation like Monsanto.

Water advocate William Mark, also interviewed for the film, once rode horseback on a two-year, 7000 mile journey across the United States investigating, reporting, and lecturing on water management systems in the US. He also traveled extensively in other countries and in the Middle East studying water systems dating back to the Byzantine era. He wrote “The Holy Order of Water.” In “Flow,“ he says, “Water is a transient gift for life, like the sun.”

Patrick McCully, exective director of International Rivers Network, spoke about the impact of dams on the environment. He points out that organic matter builds up behind dams, creating methane gas which contributes to global warming. The area around the highland village of Lethoso in Africa, had been reduced to desert due to poor water management and droughts. People had to depend on food aid. Water had to be trucked in or women and children walk miles to fill five-gallon containers and carry them back on their heads. Added to this insult was that eventually the people were forced to move because, as a villager said, “they were building a dam.” They have absolutely no legal recourse. The film depicts several dams built over the past fifty years: Three Gorges Dam* in China is the latest. Besides the deaths of dam workers, there have been massive landslides which have buried adjoining villages, killing inhabitants. Also, dam building displaces thousands of people who are forced to pack up their meager belongings and move from ancestral lands to shabby slums on the outskirts of large towns and cities. No longer are they able to farm or fish for food, or depend on existing streams and rivers for water. They can’t find work so are reduced to pawns of big government, begging for sacks of food thrown from backs of trucks.

In Africa, women and children stand in long lines, waiting to fill containers from a spigot in the ground, controlled by Suez Corporation. Sometimes “they” allowed water to flow twice a day, sometimes once. There were days when people waited all day for water. Someone forgot to turn it on. Other sources required the insertion of a coin and people had to decide between buying food or water. Dr. David Hemson, of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, discovered that while the post-apartheid government has expanded water service, the price increased above the reach of many rural South Africans. The poor resorted to fetching water from cholera-laden rivers or lakes. Yearly, more than 18,000 South African poor die from diarrhea or dysentery. costing the country approximately four billion rand annually to deal with the effects of these diseases.

An authority from Suez Corp, tried to tell Shri Rajendra Singh, a cheerful Indian activist, that water from streams and rivers around his village was not his. Rain was not his. Singh could only laugh. In 1985, Mr. Singh and a NGO official, Tarun Bharat Sangh, traveled to Alwar, one of the poorest provinces in India. Water was scarce, cattle were dying on parched land declared by the Indian Government as a hopeless Black Zone. “Flow’ documents Singh’s work with villagers. With a local elder‘s advice, Singh organized villagers to restore old “johads (water harvesting structures),” a simple, yet labor intensive, years-long project, in order to return the land to its original pastoral state. The film, beautifully shot by cinematographer Pablo de Selva and Irena Salina, shows a before-and-after evolution. Today, two decades later, there are 8,600 “johads” in over a thousand villages spread over 6500 square km. Now, in one village, a paradisiacal scene opens on a pond, trees, birds, and enough running water to grow food. The people Singh had trained have gone to other villages to help create more watersheds.
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Here in the US, the Nestlés Corporation had built a water bottling plant in Michigan to bottle water pumped by the thousands of gallons a day from existing rivers and aquifers. A ridiculous situation, says Sweetwater Alliance member, Michigan resident, and author, Holly Wren Spaulding. Nestlés bottles this water, ships it all over the US, imports it, and sell it back to Michigan residents. The townspeople, led by Attorney Jim Olson brought a suit against Nestlés to shut it down. They succeeded to a degree. Nestlés agreed to reduce the number of thousands of gallons it pumps per day. That wasn’t good enough. They want it shut down permanently and are still working with Olson to achieve that goal.

A scene in the film shows a hundred or so women in Kerala, India, sitting for days, weeks, and months, under a canopy. By holding this silent vigil, they managed to close a nearby Coca Cola bottling plant. Along with the women, well-known ecologist, and environmental activist Vananda Shiva helped shut the plant down. Town officials saw Shiva and the women were serious, and acted. They took up the cause and in 2005, the plant was closed. Now the famous logo on the rusting plant is fading. And, when Vananada Shiva discovered that a water stand was closing, she went to the people and with them marched to the local government in such force the stand remained open. Shiva, who was featured in many of the segments on India in the film, is a strong advocate for people power to protest wrong-doings and winning their cause.

Also featured in “Flow“ was a former water privatization company CEO turned activist. Jean-Luc Touly had been an administrative manager at France’s Veolia Water. He was let go by the Ministry of Labor in 2006 for co-authoring the book, “Multinationals and Water: The Unspeakable Truth.” He is now a trade unionist and labor arbitrator, and President of ACME, the French chapter of the Association for a World Contract on Water, which works to resist water privatization and business influence on water management.

Anti-water privatization activist organizations, Vivanada Singh strongly urges people to speak out and march, as they did in Bolivia and are doing in Michigan, or protest silently. It worked in Kerala, India.

Find the availabiltiy of "Flow" via the Internet. Google the complete name of the film for informaton.

* "Up the Yangtze" a documentary film about the impact of the building of Three Gorges Dam will open soon in the Bay Area. Watch for it.