The New “Water Barons”: Wall Street Mega-Banks Are Buying Up The World’s Water

[Ichingcarpenter]

A disturbing trend in the water sector is accelerating worldwide. The new “water barons” — the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires — are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace.

Familiar mega-banks and investing powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Macquarie Bank, Barclays Bank, the Blackstone Group, Allianz, and HSBC Bank, among others, are consolidating their control over water. Wealthy tycoons such as T. Boone Pickens, former President George H.W. Bush and his family, Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, Philippines’ Manuel V. Pangilinan and other Filipino billionaires, and others are also buying thousands of acres of land with aquifers, lakes, water rights, water utilities, and shares in water engineering and technology companies all over the world.

The second disturbing trend is that while the new water barons are buying up water all over the world, governments are moving fast to limit citizens’ ability to become water self-sufficient (as evidenced by the well-publicized Gary Harrington’s case in Oregon, in which the state criminalized the collection of rainwater in three ponds located on his private land, by convicting him on nine counts and sentencing him for 30 days in jail). Let’s put this criminalization in perspective:

Billionaire T. Boone Pickens owned more water rights than any other individuals in America, with rights over enough of the Ogallala Aquifer to drain approximately 200,000 acre-feet (or 65 billion gallons of water) a year. But ordinary citizen Gary Harrington cannot collect rainwater runoff on 170 acres of his private land.

It’s a strange New World Order in which multibillionaires and elitist banks can own aquifers and lakes, but ordinary citizens cannot even collect rainwater and snow runoff in their own backyards and private lands.

http://collectivelyconscious.net/articles/the-new-water-barons-wall-street-mega-banks-are-buying-up-the-worlds-water/

[Hydra]

1. As predicted here by me and others, water will be the new oil

And if we let them do this, they will truly have won.

[Finishline42]

2. And water is the one thing we can't live without.

[phantom power]

3. hydraulic empire

A hydraulic empire (also known as a hydraulic despotism, or water monopoly empire) is a social or government structure which maintains power and control through exclusive control over access to water. It arises through the need for flood control and irrigation, which requires central coordination and a specialized bureaucracy.[1]

Often associated with these terms and concepts is the notion of a water dynasty. This body is a political structure which is commonly characterized by a system of hierarchy and control often based on class or caste. Power, both over resources (food, water, energy) and a means of enforcement such as the military are vital for the maintenance of control.

The typical hydraulic empire government, in Wittfogel's thesis, is extremely centralized, with no trace of an independent aristocracy – in contrast to the decentralized feudalism of medieval Europe. Though tribal societies had structures that were usually personal in nature, exercised by a patriarch over a tribal group related by various degrees of kinship, hydraulic hierarchies gave rise to the established permanent institution of impersonal government. Popular revolution in such a state was impossible: a dynasty might die out or be overthrown by force, but the new regime would differ very little from the old one. Hydraulic empires were only ever destroyed by foreign conquerors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_empire

[happyslug]

4. Gary Harrington CAN collect water on his land, but he needed a permit...

http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/rainwater.asp

http://www.watercache.com/blog/2012/09/rainwater-collection-leads-to-jail-sentence-how-news-headlines-get-it-wrong/

He had 13 MILLION Gallons of water in three ponds, Oregon Water law said that water belonged to the City of Medford (Who have had a permit for it since 1925). He had the right to collect water for his personal use, but decided to make three three nice size ponds totalling over 13 million gallons. The State said that was excessive and refused to issue a permit and ordered him to leave the water flow freely.

Sorry, Oregon follows the "Western Rule" of water, the first person who used it had superior claim to any other user, even a upstream user. In effect he was "stealing" water, water that NOT only fell on his land as rain, but water the FLOWED through his land after falling as rain elsewhere. He was trying use the "Eastern Rule" of water in a Western state.

The Eastern Rule on water is upstream users have priority over down stream users. It is a good rule in areas with more then sufficient rainfall, but it was found to be unworkable in the more arid west, so the Western Rule was adopted in those Arid States.

http://www.oregon.gov/owrd/pages/mgmt.aspx

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Thank you for setting the record straight on that incident. n/t

[Nihil]

6. Harrington was a stupid example to use but doesn't negate the real issue being flagged here.

Corporations, banks & billionaires are deliberately buying up water around the world,
whether by use of "water rights" or land purchases or infrastructure takeovers.

They are doing this purely for greed: personal profit through corruption, organised theft
and gross exploitation.

THAT is the crime against humanity that is being waged every day and which needs
to be shut down immediately.

[RiverLover]

7. This is truly despicable. /nt

[ZakCarter]

8. Yikes..

The guys at enviro.international have water projects I'm going to look into more after reading this...