I am back from Uruguay now and trying to think about how we can incorporate lessons learned from the Uruguayan campaign on the right to water into our own work at the Council of Canadians.

I have been extolling the merits of the referendum that lead to the recognition of public water as a human right, but as someone commented on one of my previous blogs, referenda are not necessarily a magical solution for positive change.

Not even in Uruguay.

According to Luiz Garcia, the issue of water really radicalized vecinos in the region of Maldonado. The region where Luiz was born and raised has grown in the last 15 years from a small town of subsistence fisherpeople to an internationally coveted tourism hot spot where Hollywood stars and affluent foreigners own stunning beachfront properties and fill the cafe bars that come alive in summer months from January to March.

When I told my Spanish class that the government in Uruguay had gotten rid of private water services, the teacher was quick to correct me : “the people of Uruguay got rid of private water” he insisted.

In the history of Uruguay the people have used referenda several times to protect the public interest. They even used it to get rid of military dictatorship. According to Carmen Sosa from FFOSE the water worker's union, in the 90s, an era of privatization run amok in Latin America, the Uruguayan people protected public services from being privatized through a referendum. Just prior to the referendum on water, the privatization of the oil sector was also prevented via referendum.

I am in Montevideo for four weeks to study the right to water campaign which led to a national policy against water privatization in Uruguay. When I tell people who ask me what I am doing in Montevideo one of the first things they tell me is that water can be drunk straight from the taps here. Over and over again, on the streets, in cafes or stores people inform me with pride that they have clean in drinking water. It's quite a contrast to Canada where we either take our drinking water for granted or have bought into the myths propagated by bottled water companies that our public water is sub par.

The Blue Summit, a water conference that took place November 27-29, concluded with a declaration demanding a national water policy that recognizes water as a human right and a public trust. The full declaration can be read here.

Ever since Coca Cola set up shop in the Mehdigani area of Varanasi India, villages surrounding the plant have groundwater shortages. According to the India Resource Centre, levels have dropped six metres in in six years, creating the worst water conditions in the entire district of Varanasi. Over 5,000 villagers will take their grievances against Coca Cola to the streets on Monday Nov. 30, in a protest demanding that the plant be shut down.

BLUE OCTOBER

In October 2004, the people of Uruguay voted to have water officially recognized as a human right within the constitution. Despite much pressure from the IMF and French multinational water corporation Suez, Uruguay went a step further than most countries by recognizing the need for water and sanitation services to be publicly owned and operated. Since then, the month of October is celebrated around the world as "Blue October" - an opportunity for water activists around the world to assert a vision of water justice centered on public control over water resources and services.

We are yet to see the details, but Jim Prentice warned Canadian municipalities in early August that they would have to bring their sewage treatment plants up to snuff under new regulations that would be announced later this year. The environmental movement has been calling for national sewage standards for decades now. Improving Canadian wastewater treatment should be a priority given Canada currently dumps billions of litres of raw sewage directly into our waterways. The worst offenders are coastal cities. Victoria, the worst offender, discharges all its raw sewage untreated into the ocean.