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(Fiji water is one of the main businesses of Bard College board of
trustee Stewart Resnick and his limousine liberal wife Linda Resnick.
Truly dreadful people.)
Goodbye Fiji Water? Bottling Company Announces it Is Shutting Down
By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
Posted on November 29, 2010, Printed on November 29, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/149013/
It seems there is trouble in paradise. The boutique bottled water brand
Fiji Water has announced that it is shutting down its operations in Fiji
after the nation's government proposed a tax hike -- from 1/3 of a cent
to 15 cents a liter. This comes just a week after one of the company's
top executives, David Roth, was deported.
Fiji is run by a military junta that has imposed martial law on the
country, something that Fiji Water never seemed to have a problem with,
until the rogue government went for the company's pocketbook. Since the
founding of the bottled water company in 1995, Fiji Water has worked to
brand itself as the premiere bottled water brand (and its sales have now
bested Perrier and Evian for the top bottled water import in the U.S.)
and even one that is green, despite the fact that it's shipped
thousands of miles and sold in single-use plastic bottles, which mainly
end up in landfills. The celebrity favorite, Fiji Water, is the baby of
Stewart and Lynda Resnick, co-owners of the company, and well-known
'limousine liberals' and agribusiness billionaires, who rake in millions
in water subsidies from the U.S. government.
In reaction to the announcement that Fiji Water was shutting its doors,
Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of Food and Water Watch, said she
hoped it was a permanent closure. Fiji Water exports bottled water to
the U.S., which enjoys clean and safe water from the tap, while half of
Fijians lack access to safe water, said Hauter. There is something
wrong with this picture. Water must be managed as a common resource, not
as a market commodity. Unfortunately, celebrities, sports figures and
American consumers pay a premium for the Fiji Water brand, buying it at
approximately 3,300 times the cost of U.S. tap water. According to the
EPA, a gallon of tap water costs consumers anywhere from .002 to .003
cents. A liter of Fiji Water costs approximately $2.19.
Of course if you ask Lynda Resnick about the quality of U.S. water
you'll get a different response. Anna Lenzer, in an investigative story
on Mother Jones last year shared a quote from one of Resnick's books
where she said, You can no longer trust public or private water
supplies, which I guess doesn't leave people with too many options,
other than importing water from halfway across the globe from an
impoverished nation run by a corrupt military junta, in which the
nation's own people are desperate for drinkable water. As Lenzer reports
about the town of Rakiraki, near Fiji Water's bottling plant:
Rakiraki has experienced the full range of Fiji's water
problems--crumbling pipes, a lack of adequate wells, dysfunctional or
flooded water treatment plants, and droughts that are expected to get
worse with climate change. Half the country has at times relied on
emergency water supplies, with rations as low as four gallons a week per
family; dirty water has led to outbreaks of typhoid and parasitic
infections. Patients have reportedly had to cart their own water to
hospitals, and schoolchildren complain about their pipes spewing shells,
leaves, and frogs. Some Fijians have taken to smashing open fire
hydrants and bribing water truck drivers for a regular supply.
Not exactly the image that Fiji Water has tried to project of their
company, but that's the nature of water commodification. Like oil in
the 20th century, water has become increasingly managed by corporate
cartels that move it around the globe, where it flows out of communities
and towards money, said Hauter. The commodification of water will
continue to contribute to human rights abuses around the world, whether
it helps bolster undemocratic governments or drives water from a
community where it is needed.
Whether or not this closure of Fiji Water is truly permanent or just a
little business posturing to negotiate a better deal, remains to be
seen. A few years ago the company temporarily shut down its operations
in protest to tax hikes as well. If the shut down is permanent, it's
likely that the company's owners will be on the hunt for new sources of
water to exploit for profit, and according to Lenzer, that could be in
New Zealand. As long as consumers continue to buy bottled water and give
in to marketing gimmicks from boutique brands bottled in faraway places,
there will always be companies hoping to cash in on our folly and there
will likely be
