Blue Gold: World Water Wars

Water. It comprises sixty-six percent of our bodies and aids almost every cell process with the body. The manifold uses of water ranges from life, recreation, to religious needs. The issue is that billion-dollar companies privatized water and are leeching the world’s most abundant resource and are slowly killing the earth in the process. Blue Gold: World Water Wars gives a glimpse into privatized water companies and the destruction being brought on by them because they believe is a private good.

The introduction to Blue Gold: World Water Wars is the most poignant to me as the narrator tells the story of Pablo Valencia and how going a week without water nearly killed him. The dialogue used was gripping, “Saliva becomes thick. Lumps seems to

Now that I have seen Blue Gold: World Water Wars, water belongs to privatized companies. When I a senior in high school, my teacher taught us that the Hoover dam was beneficial to the US economy since it provided thousands of men with jobs, electricity to people in the western and southern mountain region, and it was a safety net for periods of drought. As a seventeen year-old, I thought that was amazing that all of these advantages came out of this situation. What my high school teacher failed to mention was that dams affect the ecosystem. It was not until the film mentioned that large-scale concrete dams are like ‘stagnant soup’ and that any nutrients get evaporated and what is left is accumulated mercury amongst other

This film was made seven years ago and the same problem stands: California is running out of water. It was only in the last year that I was aware of California’s own water crisis. One of my uncle’s used to live in California in the mid-70s and recalled how everyone’s lawn was like straw due to lack of rain. Their obviously was not as many people then as there is now, so the ten years he stayed in California, he said that water conservation methods that were enacted seemed to turn around the drought.

I feel like this documentary filled in certain gaps in my brain that I have about the rest of the world. For example, I did not know that Bolivia was in a tug-of-war with their citizens over the privatization of their water supply. Oscar Olivera is truly courageous for organizing such a rebellion against Bechtel. So many people were injured, detained, and killed for the Bolivian government to rule in their favor.

The fact that George W. Bush’s own daughter showed interest in purchasing Paraguayan land by dams is saddening. In my mind, I think the US government have realized that they along with other privatized companies have pushed the limits of earth too far and now want to secure water sources around the world. The film mentioned that most of these greedy actions are for power gain and I believe that statement to be