We can all agree that we have a right to clean, safe, and affordable water. Yet as obvious as that seems, clean water is often less available to—and more expensive for—some of our poorest communities.

Fortunately, people like Debbie Davis and her colleagues at the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water are fighting vigorously to address those inequities.

Davis, a legislative analyst for the EJCW, reveals how clean water is not only an environmental concern, but a matter of basic human rights. She tells Simran Sethi how the coalition empowers low-income and minority communities in California to tackle a host of water-related issues directly connected to matters of social justice: community displacement as a result of dam construction; encroaching on water sources sacred to indigenous populations; and preventing industrial dumping in the water supplies of housing projects, to name just a few.

In the process, she discusses the disturbing trend that seeks to fully privatize water—the very life-source that comprises roughly two-thirds of our planet and even a higher percentage of each human body. By outlining the dangers of privatization, she explains how poorer communities with unsafe tap water are forced to buy the more expensive bottled water, which leads to additional waste, which, in turn, ends up polluting the water supply for everyone—rich or poor.

As Davis puts it, it is a matter of simple economics: “As long as water is a commodity it will go to the highest bidder and disadvantaged communities will never be the highest bidder.”

While proponents of privatization seek to make water as valuable a commodity as oil or gold, Davis reminds us that we must fight to ensure that water is considered a public trust resource, one whose beneficial use is inherent to all. Or as she succinctly puts it: “Fundamentally, there should be safe drinking water for everyone.”

By Ranjit Arab