This is a product of a request to propose an amendment with a shorter and more concise presentation. Mato SkaGP San Francisco
From: m_zehr(a)hotmail.comTo: jellingston(a)greens.org; catalyst(a)actionpa.org; wrolley(a)charter.net; hunter(a)pjsnet.deSubject: Water Amendment Version 4Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 19:47:35 -0600
G. Water
Water is essential to all forms of life. The Green Party calls for an international declaration that water belongs to the Earth and all of its species. Water is a basic human right! We face a worldwide water crisis. According to the United Nations, more than one billion people lack access to safe drinking water. If current trends persist, by 2025 as much as two-thirds of the world's population will be living with a serious scarcity of water.
In impoverished nations with poor public water infrastructure, the rich will have plenty while the poor will be left with little but polluted water, and short term profits will preclude any concern for long term sustainability. We must oppose international efforts to privatize before the infrastructures become so established that it will be impossible to avoid a disaster of epic proportions.
Current expenditures have done nothing to reassure the public regarding the depletion of groundwater and continue to minimize the real costs of research and development to assure adequate supply to regions. Large water users need to begin to be appropriately charged for withdrawals that lower the water table. Many high-tech mega-corporations do not contribute their fair share for the cost of the infrastructure and development needed to meet the delivery of the resource to local residents. Private companies, who sell bottled water, do so at the expense of the hydrological systems of the neighboring communities, and as such should be required to report annually to the local communities and be held responsible for such withdrawals to local municipalities.
Urban planning decisions need to be based on a plan that integrates land use with water use. Political bodies, such as municipal water authorities, need to reflect more than the interests and concerns of real estate and development interests. We oppose private water banking because it prevents consistent bioregional public planning policies towards water withdrawals by private interests that seek to reallocate the resource where it is most profitable and avoid regional priorities for stakeholders, We support mandatory conservation requirements in urban areas, as needed, to assure the geological stability of aquifers and end aquifer depletions that are faster than their recharge.
We support the recognition of the principle that all stakeholders should be included in water-planning processes.' We oppose disproportionate influence of major economic or political interests that will impact on others. We are opposed to the exploitation of another country’s natural resources, whether water, oil or gold without fair and just compensation and review of the extraction process by those impacted.
We need strong national and international laws promote conservation, reclaim polluted water systems, develop water-supply restrictions, ban toxic and pesticide dumping, control or ban corporate farming, and bring the rule of law to transnational corporations that pollute water systems. Mining and depleting the present underground aquifers must be severely restricted. We encourage the use of wetlands, improving the utilization of updated technologies in treating water for pharmaceuticals and preventing the introduction of radionuclides and perchlorate into the surface and ground water. We support legislation that establishes and enforces standards beyond the Clean Water Act regarding the impacts of mining, quarrying and tunneling industry operations on available ground and surface waters and the regions impacted by the consequences of such mining operations. We encourage local municipal support for transitioning local economies away from high-tech industry, military bases and national laboratories that withdraw disproportionate amounts of water and pollute public waterways. We support the highest federal standards for the public water supply and federal funding support for water quality including for the local implementation of the arsenic standards.
New forms of international, bioregional, and community organizations, watershed/ecosystem-based, must be created to monitor and equitably distribute the fresh water necessary for all life on our planet. Decisions about water must be based on an ecosystems approach. These decisions can be reached and considered appropriate when stakeholders themselves participate in the planning. Such planning processes, that are open and inclusive, need to be given the authority of their respective states to establish regional water plans, public welfare statements and defined water bugets using the science available and the demonstrated values held by stakeholders. We support the establishment of small, local water governmental entities to give local people control over the administration and management of their water. Water can only be managed in a sustainable fashion at the local level. The creation of such institutions would promote democracy and give people the opportunity to acknowledge and accept the responsibility all of us have to manage our water.
Climate change is demonstrating the need to reorient our priorities in order to achieve a truly sustainable water policy. We must begin to understand and apply a holistic watershed approach to managing our water resources. The principle of bioregionalism (living within the means of a region's natural resources) should give direction to future water policies. We oppose the disproportional political influences of the mining, timber, real estate and development industries, and work to support family farms, open space, the protection of water quality in our rivers and the preservation of old growth forests. We uphold the water and land rights established under the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo and the sovereign claims of Native American nations, pueblos and tribes, as paramount to all other rights.
Conservation must be a component of any water policy. Water conservation also reduces energy consumption and pollution. Conservation needs to be utilized to reduce regional water consumptive use and not to redirect “saved” water for “new” users. The question of determining the public policy for conservation should include whether or not to make conservation measures mandatory or voluntary and should be pro-rated based on amount of use.
