Poisoning the Water Supply: Fossil Fuel Edition

Across the nation, corporations are poisoning our water and conservatives want to help them out

Students and teachers are being sent home sick from West Virginia schools because of their drinking water. In order to bathe, people there have to melt snow. Their water still stinks a month after coal-cleaning chemicals spilled into the Elk River, poisoning the water supply. And now it’s been revealed a second chemical has also contaminated the water. The company responsible, Freedom Industries, has filed for bankruptcy protection. They have done little to help the situation they caused.

Nobody can say for certain what the ‘safe’ level of the water is because, well, contamination of this kind has never happened before. Legislators are stuck, unwilling to certify the water isn’t safe. Were they to do so, the government could conceivably be made responsible for bringing its people safe water from another source.

In the meantime, a significant number of Americans are at risk. Long-term effects of this contamination can only be guessed. Environmental disasters are never really over. Normally there is little follow up when one occurs and this once again seems to be the case. Nobody knows how the contaminants in the Elk River will affect the people of the region. Over 300,000 of them.

If it’s not really known how the contaminated water will affect people, how about livestock? How safe will milk be in the near future? Beef, pork, and poultry products? Eggs? Crops? All of them are dependent upon the same water source. Even more terrifying, what will surface down the road in children not even born yet?

Business as usual in the United States. This is how Americans want things to be, apparently. Again and again, voters put legislators in office that undermine or outright oppose regulations meant to protect their environment. Indeed, Republicans believe that the Environmental Protection Agency should be abolished, or at least made even more ineffective than it already is. The GOP’s candidates in the last Presidential Election heavily favored dismantling the EPA.

Now we have a spill in North Carolina to go along with Charleston. Oil pipelines continue to burst, spilling toxic sludge over the land and in our water. North Dakota. Arkansas, not to mention the big BP spill in the Gulf a few years ago. It’s all over the nation. But instead of dealing with this properly, America is pushing through a bigger and potentially more dangerous pipeline, The Keystone XL. To assume that this line won’t spill is utter folly.

The Koch Brothers stand to profit over one hundred billion dollars from Keystone, environmental dangers be damned. Just say that number out loud. One. Hundred. Billion. Do you see Dr. Evil when you say it out loud?

The EPA simply can’t keep up with violations of environmental law, even if it weren’t under constant assault from conservatives. They are increasingly forced to depend upon States and businesses to police themselves. This quickly deteriorates when you have an ex-con like Carl Kennedy II  in charge of something like Freedom Industries. When you put an unprincipled felon in charge of a chemical company, he gets rich while the countryside gets poisoned.

Corporations will continue to find their way around current rules and regulations. They run circles around the EPA, and the GOP helps them do it. In the end, it’s all about profit. This is what conservatives stand for regarding the environment. Lives are less important than money.

Water is becoming a rare commodity in the USA. California is experiencing a significant drought. So is Colorado. Indeed, most of the Southwestern area of the country is affected by severe water shortages.

How have Americans reacted to this? More signatures have been garnered on a White House petition to deport Justin Bieber than to take investigative action in West Virginia. Think about that for a moment. A teenage pop singer from Canada is considered a bigger national problem than companies poisoning the country’s water.

In the meantime, there’s a pretty blonde lady on every second national commercial, saying “America” and “Americans” as much as she can, assuring everyone that her company has the answer to our energy needs without really saying how. This is Brooke Alexander, former beauty queen, actress, and Fox News correspondent, fronting for energytomorrow.org.

This is a site intended to polish up the image of the American Petroleum Institute. API makes its money from fossil fuels, including natural gas, which uses fracking; the highly controversial mining process that endangers water supplies. Hence the vague commercials with the pretty blonde woman. To sum up the corporate attitude regarding water availability look to Nestle chairman Peter Brabeck, who believes “human beings have no right to water.” Nestle produces, among many other products, bottled water.

There is a war on water in America right now and it doesn’t involve battleships. It is being waged from all sides by corporations who’s profits are more important than the essence of life. The Koch Brothers, Nestle, big oil, countless others and Republicans want to make it easier for them.

Life can exist without fossil fuels, but it can’t without water. Natural gas will not hydrate you. Americans are fast losing their access to water, and without water, there is no life. Corporations feel humans have no right to water. Therefore, corporations feel you have no right to live. They are waging a war on water, and a war on you. And they are winning. What are you going to do about it?