Till the Last Drop: Exploring America’s Water Crisis Under Capitalism

By Erika Escamilla

Photo: Getty Images

When I visited my aunt in California during the summer of 2015, the state was going through one of their driest seasons since 1895. I remember her warnings that my showers should last no more than ten minutes, and that we’d need to find ways to limit our water usage throughout my vacation. 

Not only a year later, the media was flooded with news coverage about Flint, Michigan and their lack of access to clean water. The city of Flint decided to move their water supply from Detroit’s system, to the Flint river, creating a series of health consequences due to increased levels of lead and discolored water flowing through resident’s pipes. 

From that moment on, I became conscious of an overlooked national division of water disparity. The spectrum involved both Americans who had access to clean water, and those who had none at all. Two extreme ends for one of the world’s wealthiest countries. 

Income inequality in the U.S. has increased by 20 percent in the past three decades. An inverse relationship with water has developed in conjunction with this growth of wealth. There is an increasing demand for water but a decreasing supply. While residents of the rural U.S. experience frequent “only use water if necessary” alerts issued by their local officials, affluent Americans and large corporations have an endless supply of water at their disposal. 

 America, as a country, views water as expendable. The value of water is only recognized once a crisis hits and it is no longer available. The American water crisis has become somewhat of a background character in the greater global climate crisis. However, they are inextricably linked: droughts and low levels of rainfall, which are effects of the global climate crisis, only propel the American water crisis further.  

 I believe the blame is not shouldered by one particular place or group — instead, the fault lies upon the extremes of resource and commodity modeled by state and capitalist policy. What these extremes have left us with is a tough decision on where to allocate our resources and who to give it to. Mal Administered infrastructure, the privatization of water, and the unequal distribution of critical resources all drive this disparity. Water is essential to human life, but if we fail to acknowledge and take accountability for America’s water crisis, we as a species face an inevitable doom that is a nation without water. 

Water, Capitalism, and Infrastructure

Under capitalism, companies are able to use natural resources to any extent they want. Our current administration has minimal quantitative research on water quality across the U.S. Meaning that corporations are able to dump waste in water reservoirs without consequences because they own the means of production. Additionally, these corporations have lobbying power, and their ability to fund political entities plays an influential role in commoditizing the water industry. Through the exhaustive efforts of our capitalist system to commoditize a natural resource, what we end up with is water disenfranchisement.

 Leaving a natural resource like water in the hands of the private sector makes it a commodity item vulnerable to the free market. Poor cities are most damaged by private utilities providers because without the resources to fund their services, companies are less inclined to provide them with the proper infrastructure and access to water. 

 The best example of this is the case of Flint, Michigan. The city’s poor urban infrastructure left their resident’s vulnerable to the private sector to prioritize their corporate goals over the water quality of poor residents. When Flint changed its drinking water source from the treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River, which formerly served as an unofficial waste disposal site for local factories, General Motors, once the city’s biggest employer, shut down their plant and moved away. Flint was left with a plummeting population and a $25 million deficit. In an effort to cut city costs, Governor Rick Snyder and appointed unelected officials chose to switch Flint’s water supply to the river. Despite the new acidic levels, corrosion control chemicals were not being added by the city’s water department. This resulted in a series of water quality-related issues such as skin rashes, hair loss, and most importantly, increased lead levels. 

 There were a number of factors that contributed to Flint’s water crisis but the most detrimental one was that of a failed urban infrastructure which was built to serve the purpose of General Motors, not its residents. The river served as a waste dump for GM who for years disregarded its effects on the environment. A perfect example of how large corporations pollute resources without consequence. The issues that arise through the maladministration of infrastructure are related to issues of social welfare and economic deprivation, both of which are unaddressed in a capitalist system. Flint is a prime example of the consequences that can arise when we leave a natural resource like water and even water supply systems, to be commoditized and controlled by the free market.  

A Way Out: Market Socialism

Market socialism is the concept of maintaining the market while socializing the ownership of capital, a hybrid system of socialism and capitalism. One of the key ideas behind a market socialist policy is that companies failing to provide for the public — such as rail and transport companies and those within the banking and energy industries — would be socialized. Since water has been commoditized and run by the private sector, a market socialist approach would allow water utility to be publicly controlled and planned; the distribution of water would then be a public responsibility. 

 Power over natural resources is where we see the market fail to provide citizens their basic resources. Socially owned firms would generate profit that can be directly used and distributed to the public in a social dividend. When the public owns and has power over controlling and planning their utilities, such as water management plants, they are less likely to experience the infrastructural inequality that arises from a free market under capitalism. 

 Market socialism is compatible with the market. Private sectors of the market, such as those who merchandise and sell products that use immense amounts of water, would still be around — however, this system aims to close the gap of water inequality. Market socialism works with economic actors to ensure that we socialize capital ownership instead of being solely focused on capitalist production.

 The disparity of water access across America is not a single event but rather a consequence of systemic social injustice and welfare issues that have presented themselves in a capitalist system overtime. We have come to a point where we ask ourselves, who, then, is able to enjoy water? Both leisurely and essentially? Our nation’s priority to make water a commodity has limited access to water when it should be a clean and natural resource available to all. It’s been seven years since Flint has had clean water, further underscoring water inequality as a crisis not addressed under capitalism. Adopting a market socialist approach to water would allow public actors to own and plan the means of production; ensuring that we distribute natural resources more equitably. It’s time we stop our growing culture of water greed that has normalized water as a commodity and not as a resource. If water is only a resource that those who can afford it can enjoy, then we are truly just a nation that caters to the capitalist.