Author Archives: ryan

Texas Billionaire & Water Entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens Finds Blue Gold Tarnished. Shuts Down Mesa Water LP.

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Pickens sells water rights to Panhandle authority

By TERRY WALLACE Associated Press © 2011 The Associated Press

April 7, 2011, 6:57PM

DALLAS – Billionaire T. Boone Pickens and a Panhandle water authority have reached a tentative deal for the sale of most of Pickens’ Panhandle water rights to the authority, both sides announced on Thursday.

The preliminary $103 million deal between Pickens’ Dallas-based Mesa Water LP and the Amarillo-based Canadian River Municipal Water Authority for the water rights to 211,000 acres in Roberts County in the Panhandle promised to end long-held concerns in the region that he would sell the water to downstate interests. Continue reading →

Nestlé uses World Water Day to Brand the World's Children

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What sounds more sweet and innocent than teaching children about the importance of fresh water? That’s the public relations message Nestlé is putting out in its press releases. But what message is getting conveyed to the world’s children when they learn about fresh water from a corporation which wants to sell them drinking water out of a bottle and charge them the market price? Nestlé water is for drinking and tap water is for washing, that’s the message. This is the same corporation which sold infant formula as a substitute for breast milk to poor mothers in developing countries where clean tap water was not available. Here’s Nestlé’s story. You can decide for yourself.

Nestlé celebrates World Water Day with children from 25 different countries

March 22, 2011 Around 10,000 children in 25 countries will be offered the chance to learn about the importance of fresh water at educational festivals led by Nestlé Waters in partnership with Project WET this week…. To support the initiative, Nestlé Waters has invited local school children and their teachers to attend ‘Together for Water’ festivals at its sites, or nearby locations, in countries ranging from the United States to France, Lebanon, Brazil, Pakistan and China…. While at Nestlé’s Henniez factory in Switzerland, staff will spend the day with groups of local school children, running Project WET exercises and explaining the company’s efforts to protect the mineral water’s natural source. Full story is here http://www.nestle.com/Media/NewsAndFeatures/Pages/Nestle-celebrates-2011-World-Water-Day.aspx


Critics question source of LePage’s opposition to BPA restriction

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By Steve Mistler, Sun Journal
Posted Feb. 24, 2011, at 11:49 p.m.

AUGUSTA, Maine — As Gov. Paul LePage continued to weather national fallout for recently saying women could develop “little beards” if exposed to bisphenol-A, or BPA, questions continue to mount about the motives behind the governor’s proposal to reverse a ban on the substance.

Questions also hover over the administration’s Wednesdaydismissal of Dr. Dora Anne Mills, the medical director of MaineCare and formerly the head of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year, as head of the CDC, Mills testified that BPA should become a priority chemical banned under the state’s Kid-Safe Products Act. Continue reading →

Free Movie night in Dexter March 4th

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Dexter Dover Area Towns in Transition’s (DDATT) film series on Food and
Farmers

Friday March 4th
7 PM at the Abbott Mem Library in Dexter

“The Real Dirt on Farmer John” is a 2007 movie made about a maverick
mid-Western farmer, an outcast in his community who bravely stands amidst
a failing farm economy, vicious rumors, and even violence.  By melding
the traditions of family farming with the power of art and free
expression, this powerful story of transformation and renewal heralds a
resurrection of farming in America.  It ain’t easy being green.

DDATT is a group of local citizens concerned about our dependence on oil
for nearly everything we do, and consciously making plans for when oil
becomes less and less easily available.  Local food supply is one of our
major concerns.

Come watch the movies with your friends, enjoy some light refreshments,
and stay after the film to join in the discussion!

Coming up in the series later this Spring:
April 1 will be Blue Gold, about the importance of global water issues in
the coming years.
May 6 will be Meet Your Farmer, a film about 8 Maine farmers made by the
Maine Farmland Trust.

dexterareatransition@gmail.com or 277-4221 for more info

Maine Beverage Industry Targets State's Groundbreaking Bottle Bill

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February 11, 2011

Maine Beverage Industry Targets State’s Groundbreaking Bottle Bill
Reported By: Josie Huang

Maine has had a bottle redemption law since 1976, one of only 10 states to have one. Consumers in Maine pay 5 or 15 cents per beverage, depending on the size, which they can recoup if they bring their bottles to a redemption center. That’s incentivized Mainers to recycle up to 90 percent of the bottles, keeping them off roadsides and out of landfills. That’s estimated to be about four times more than in states without a so-called bottle bills. But the beverage industry says the system is riddled with problems that costs distributors, and ultimately the customer. And they want the state to reconsider its bottle bill. Continue reading →

Presentation to Catarina de Albuquerque, Independent Expert on Human Rights Obligations Related to Access to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation

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Presentation to Catarina de Albuquerque, Independent Expert on Human Rights Obligations Related to Access to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation

By Ruth Caplan, National Coordinator,

Defending Water for Life Campaign

Alliance for Democracy

Washington DC, February 23, 2011

Before presenting specific examples in E below of how communities in the United States, with which we work, have acted to protect their right to water, I would like to set out what we believe are the underlying principles relating to the right to water which guide our work. Continue reading →

Fox News Reports House Urged to Cut Back After Bottled-Water Tab Nears $1 Million

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By Judson Berger

Published February 09, 2011

| FoxNews.com

If the Potomac River, which supplies water to the nation’s capital, had run dry, Congress might be able to explain itself. But it hasn’t.

And that has left one group calling out the U.S. House for spending $860,000 last year on bottled water — money it says could have gone toward installing fountains of perfectly potable water.

A report from the nonprofit Corporate Accountability International found that between April 2009 and March 2010, House lawmakers spent an average of $2,000 per member on bottled water. Continue reading →

Tribal People Win Community Right to Water in Kalahari Desert of Botswana Earth Times, Jan. 27, 2011

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Tribal People Win Community Right to Water in Kalahari Desert of Botswana

Earth Times, Jan. 27, 2011

www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/364580,grants-bushmen-access-water.html>http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/364580,grants-bushmen-access-water.html

Johannesburg – The Botswana Appeal Court on Thursday quashed a 2010 ruling that denied 650 Bushmen access to water on their ancestral lands in the Kalahari Game Reserve.

“The court has upheld our appeal and has found in our favour on every point,” Gordon Bennett, the lawyer for the Bushmen, told the German Press Agency dpa. “So they have decided that the Bushmen have the right to use the borehole inside the reserve.”

The 51,000-square-kilometre sandy reserve, the size of Belgium, has elicited an ongoing battle for ownership since 1997, when in three clearances since then virtually all the Bushmen were forcibly evicted from the land they have inhabited for some 30,000 years. Continue reading →

"When the Water Ends," a 16-minute video about the increasingly dire drought conditions facing parts of East Africa.

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\”When the Water Ends,\” a 16-minute video about the increasingly dire drought conditions facing parts of East Africa.

For thousands of years, nomadic herdsmen have roamed the harsh, semi-arid lowlands that stretch across 80 percent of Kenya and 60 percent of Ethiopia. Descendants of the oldest tribal societies in the world, they survive thanks to the animals they raise and the crops they grow, their travels determined by the search for water and grazing lands.

These herdsmen have long been accustomed to adapting to a changing environment. But in recent years, they have faced challenges unlike any in living memory: As temperatures in the region have risen and water supplies have dwindled, the pastoralists have had to range more widely in search of suitable water and land. That search has brought tribal groups in Ethiopia and Kenya in increasing conflict, as pastoral communities kill each other over water and grass. Continue reading →