New Jersey

Water System Troubles a Troubled City
2/12/2003 - Camden is the poorest city in the state of New Jersey, and one of the five poorest in the nation. It sits on the banks of the Delaware River, a mere shadow in the glittering Philadelphia limelight. Camden was home for a time to 19th century poet Walt Whitman, and was once a bustling, industrial hub. But over time, business fled across the river to Philadelphia, taking with it more than one-third of Camden's population. Camden suffered through race riots in the 1960s and, in the 1970s, man... 

Johannesburg and New Jersey
had no idea that water privatization in the U.S. had gone so far. Bergen County's water had actually been privatized in the early 1990s. In 2000, French based Suez, the largest water company in the world, bought the much smaller U.S. based United Water Co. and acquired Bergen County in the deal. Though it's major operations are in the third world, Suez supplies water to 8.5 million people in the U.S. and Canada, operating water systems in 17 of the United States. That's why some of our signs read "STOP WATER PRIVATIZATION IN SOUTH AFRICA AND NEW JERSEY."

Thirst Among Equals
As world leaders (except Dubya, of course) are gathering in South Africa for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, one of their prime topics is water. Protecting public water supplies from pollution? Well, that's not going quite as well as the booming profits of water purveyors. Water is being corporatized, conglomerated, shipped around the world, and marketed heavily to the affluent. We're being deluged with water, it seems. Manufactured water, that is.