Clean Water

I woke up today thinking about how annoying it is that you have to buy bottled water in Latin America. It’s really annoying to have to go to a store, buy a jug of water, then carry it home. The water from your tap is basically poison to drink. In the United States of America, the most capitalistic country in The World, we get practically unlimited water, for free. Latin countries lean more socialistic, why don’t they have a similar luxury? Maybe it’s on purpose, because with clean water they may become overrun with gringos. But I’m pretty sure it’s an everyone thing. I googled “can people who grew up in latin america drink the water there” and the response is:

“while there is plenty of water in Latin America, most of it is contaminated and not fit to drink. But the people who live there have no choice. They must drink, bathe, and wash their clothes and dishes with water filled with trash and animal waste.”

There are vested interests in keeping water scarce. Water scarcity is a business opportunity, you don’t make money by fixing the problem and treating the water, you make money by selling bottled water for financial gain. There are probably more pressing concerns, afterall, this is solved by bottled water and government corruption will probably not be fixed in our lifetime.

So, if the goal is to fund wastewater treatment, where does the money, expertise, and political will come from? I suppose money can buy the expertise and the political will. But who would invest in something that is unlikely to return immediate benefits, if anything, it will just incur extra expenses as the years go by. It’s a recurring expense to have clean water, not a one time effort. So the real need is some kind of political organization promising fresh water. Probably won’t happen in the near future. On a brighter note, the World Bank approved $100M to work on potable water services in El Salvador, so maybe there is hope for some countries.

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