BRATTLEBORO — Many people believe that access to clean drinking water is the single-most-important environmental and social issue facing the world. Two films in the Brattleboro Film Festival touch on the topic and how multinational corporations have and continue to simultaneously pollute and profit from water.
Hot Water, a film by Lizabeth Rogers, explores the legacy of uranium mining and the nuclear industry in the United States.
The genesis of the movie occurred when Rogers was working on a story about Native American sacred sites in South Dakota.
During an interview with a biologist, she learned that there are more than 1,000 abandoned uranium mines in the area. The toxic mix of radioactive materials left behind at those mining sites is open to the elements, and their runoff is contaminating the water supply. Yet people are drinking the water.
Rogers stumbled upon a huge story involving several states, multinational corporations, the U.S. government, and critical waterways - a story that needed to be told on its own.
The drinking water of approximately 38 million people in the Western United States is being threatened because of mining activities, atomic testing conducted by the U.S. government, and the absence of adequate storage for the radioactive materials left behind by both of these activities.
“Why did I make the film in the first place?” she says. “It pissed me off. Finding out what we found out pissed me off.”
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The Swiss documentary Bottled Life focuses on the giant Swiss-based food and beverage corporation Nestle, which is reaping huge profits in the bottled-water industry worldwide. You will probably never look at a bottle of water the same way after you see this movie.
Nestle controls more than 70 of the world's bottled-water brands, including Poland Springs, which comes from Maine. The movie highlights the battle over water rights in that state and exposes how multinational corporations - in this case, Nestle - manipulate the system and people to get what they want, which is whatever resource you or your town might have that will make them money.
The movie portrays two towns in Maine and how their battles with Nestle end up very differently.
Nestle is not the only game in town when it comes to large-scale global water extraction. The commodification of water is in full swing, and visionary corporations with the time and resources to get into the business are doing so at an alarming rate.
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These two movies are both frightening and enlightening. No matter what side of the issues you are on - whether you are for or against the nuclear industry, for or against global business interests - no one is going to say they are for “radioactive waste seeping into our waterways” or for “corporations shirking their clean-up responsibilities.”
There must be some middle ground where we can protect our precious resources, our health, and our planet. In the end, we all live downstream.
Multinationals did not invent the regulatory process here in the U.S., but they might as well have, because it works in their favor almost every time. They have the financial and legal resources to endure the often-long-and-drawn-out regulatory processes.
Bottled Life provides a glimmer of hope that there is a way to stand up and win against these powerful businesses, as one group of local activists in Maine discovered. Hot Water will give our community plenty to think about as we reckon with radioactive pollution and the decommissioning of Vermont Yankee in the days to come.