Tapped (2009): Democracy and Community Action Vs. Groundwater as Commodity

         A documentary focused primarily on the dangers of mining water to sell, Tapped (2009) addresses issues surrounding exploiting groundwater as effectively as does Gasland. Tapped establishes the problems related to our water use and their source, but also proposes a viable solution based in the premise that meaningful change comes from local grassroots movements. According to the film’s narrator, by 2030, two third of the world will lack access to clean drinking water because water is being treated as a commodity. When we treat water as a commodity, the film asserts, we end up with corporate control and thirty-nine billion plastic bottles of water per year in the United States alone. Representative Dennis Kucinich takes this premise further when he argues, “When we start commodifying necessities, serious political instability may result.” Tapped effectively illustrates some of the negative consequences associated with turning water into a product or commodity. 

            The first problem the film documents is the water mining itself. A case in Fryeburg, Maine serves as an ample example of how difficult it is for a small town to battle a large corporation over water rights. Scenes of a pristine lake and small waterfall highlight the idyllic Maine setting where Nestle, that large corporation, is bottling water nearly for free. The narrator explains that Nestle is mining water and compares Nestle’s exploitation of resources to the oil rush of the 1930’s. In Fryeburg, the town is waging a losing battle against Nestle because whereas surface mining of water is controlled, groundwater is under different rules. In Maine, the rule of absolute dominion is followed, so that the biggest pump takes the most water. No one was notified in town when Nestle arrived. They just bought land in places where they thought there was water and started pumping. Instead of working with the townspeople, Nestle refused to pay taxes at the wellhead of one cent per gallon. Because of the rule of absolute dominion—a rule based in the appropriative doctrine, Nestle has precedence over the town, even if aquifers that supply the town’s drinking water are in jeopardy.

            According to Tapped, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, and other states are affected by this greed for water, as well, because Nestle defines control of water in relation to these states’ laws and has overwhelming legal resources. The people in Fryeburg have been out of water for days when their reservoir ran low, but Nestle kept on pumping. Other documents reinforce the film’s arguments. A March 20, 2009 article in the Portland Press Herald, documents Nestle’s success at the Maine Supreme Court level: “The decision by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court clears the way for Poland Spring to build the facility that it had hoped to begin four years ago. The pumping station would be capable of filling up to 50 trucks each day with water piped underground from aquifers in Denmark,” Maine, a decision Fryeburg’s Western Maine Residents for Rural Living had been fighting for more than four years.

            To reinforce the repercussions of this ruling and others, the film asks, Is water a basic human right? According to the film, it should be. According to corporations such as Nestle, the narrator explains, water is a money-making commodity that should be mined and sold for, according to the film, 19 hundred times the cost of tap water. The World Bank estimates that water resources are worth $800 billion. Water is a commodity to those in power, even though climate change is causing more drought and deluge. We must protect our fresh water supplies, the film asserts. Other corporations mine water in similar ways, seeing it as blue gold. Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coca Cola’s Dasani are highlighted in the film. Because of their powerful advertising arm, these company’s bottled waters became increasingly popular with little criticism until recently, even though bottled water is rarely tested, and at least forty percent of bottled water is tap water.

            A second problem highlighted in Tapped is related to the plastics used in the bottles themselves. The plastic used in these bottles is stamped with a PET (Petrochemical) recycling code. Companies manufacturing these bottles use 74 million gallons of oil to make them and release benzene into the water and air around them. Eighty percent of PET manufactured in the United States comes from Flint Hills in Corpus Christi, Texas, and the effects of toxic waste in air and drinking water has been devastating. Cancer rates increased dramatically. Birth defects increased by 84%. Yet by law the EPA could not inform citizens they could complain, the film explains. Only one person oversees all of the bottled water at the FDA, so the production is virtually unregulated.

            Plastics used in large bottles and sports and baby bottles, polycarbonate plastics, are also critiqued by the film. These bottles contain BPA which acts like an estrogen and damages reproduction systems, even at low doses, affecting other cancers and obesity rates. According to the film’s narrator, there are 30 million bottles in landfills. We recycle only 20% of bottles in the United States unless states have return deposit policies. We use 80 million plastic bottles in one day in the U.S., so sand on beaches is now plastic, and, as of 2007, oceans have 46 times as much plastic as plankton, so fish are being poisoned and our food web is under attack.

            These problems seem overwhelming; yet, according to the film, we can take steps to change them. Activists around the United States are shown successfully battling big companies. Action in Corpus Christi prompted EPA action against the Flint Hills plant. Fryeburg, Maine residents are still fighting, as well, within the film’s context. And residents in rural Western Maine have won some battles against Nestle and Poland Springs. Residents of Shapleigh, Maine passed an ordinance that gives its citizens the right to local self-governance and gives rights to ecosystems but denies the rights of personhood to corporations. This ordinance allows the citizens to protect their groundwater, putting it in a common trust to be used for the benefit of its residents.  Other solutions include new bottle deposit laws, but democratic common trust rights serve as the ultimate goal of the film. According to Tapped, water is not a commodity. It is a basic human right.