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Our water infrastructure is crumbling. Across the nation, a $22 billion shortfall in federal funding for water infrastructure projects causes broken pipes to discharge sewage into our drinking water supplies, and forces communities to privatize their water systems. The town of Pierce, CO is one such community grappling with these challenges.
The people of Trenton, New Jersey have spoken. If you listen closely, you can hear the shouts of an emphatic, “No!” 79 percent of Trenton residents who voted on a referendum to sell the suburban portion of their water infrastructure to New Jersey American Water Company, have now made it quite clear that they are against privatization. The “no’s” won it 6,986 to 1,812. Read more…
A couple of weeks ago, a Trenton citizens group had a most resounding victory in the New Jersey Supreme Court. After a year of legal tussling, the highest court in New Jersey validated citizens’ right to choose whether or not to sell their public water utility to a private company. You might be thinking, “Isn’t that a basic American right – to have a voice when it comes to a public resource?” You’d be right to think that, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Read more…
Former fisherman Rhonda Maker protests against catch shares
Rhonda Maker, a former fisherman from Kodiak, Alaska was one of the thousands of people who traveled across the country to rally in Washington D.C. against ‘catch share’ programs last week. Strongly supported by the Obama administration, these programs create a market to allocate fishery access privileges - determining who can catch public fish stocks. While markets can be designed in a positive way to support jobs and a healthy environment (see our fact sheets on Cap-Rent-Recycle and Namibia), at present these markets are being designed to privatize control over access to public fish, and push small business people out of the industry. Familiar with this struggle in her own right, Rhonda once ran a small fishing outfit that was forced out of business thanks to the implementation of a ‘catch share’ program that heavily favored the interests of large fishing operations. Read more…
Our water infrastructure is crumbling. Across the nation, a $22 billion shortfall in federal funding for water infrastructure projects causes broken pipes to discharge sewage into our drinking water supplies, and forces communities to privatize their water systems. The town of Pierce, CO is one such community grappling with these challenges.
As corporations try to buy up the ocean and its precious contents, giant fishing trawlers that scrape the seas for fish are creating "an earthquake" amongst fishermen and fisher communities. Hear one fisherman tell the tale of what’s happening to his American way of life.