Bottled water: misplaced outrage?

The coming of autumn seems to have dissipated the anger over water shortage that accompanied the summer heat and erratic rainfall patterns this year.This may partly be a result of well-constructed optics that seems to suggest that dam building is already underway. For the sceptics amidst us though, the debate over the future course of water policy must continue, on the “off-chance” that the magic bullet peddled by the more charitable Pakistanis fails to resolve the crisis.

Last month, land’s highest court took a suo moto regarding “selling of bottled water extracted from the ground without any charge and its fitness for human consumption”. The notice laudably managed to highlight that the bottling companies, with plants located in major urban centers, pay nothing except electricity cost for extraction of water from the ground, and that the practice has continued for years.

While not really a well-guarded secret, the news highlights the stark contrast between residents of several water-scarce urban localities who pay thousands of rupees every month for water tankers, and businesses who make a profit by selling water extracted from the ground for free.

While the hearing is set for upcoming week, it remains to be seen what legal course could be taken under law. More appropriately, are bottling companies engaged in illegal profiteering? Sadly, while the practice may be unfair, it is not illegal. In a column published in these pages last month, BR Research noted that colonial era laws entitle landholders to water abstraction from “stationary” water bodies or reservoirs under their land, without any restriction.

This means that unlike cellular phone data packages, water abstraction is not regulated under any “fair-use” policy. Therefore, bottling companies have the right to abstract as much water as their plant capacity allows. This, of course, is a ridiculous policy; and a relic of our colonial past that smart businesses continue to profit of. While the court has precedence in the case of Nestle versus SIUT, in which Sindh High Court ruled against Nestle’s plan to set up a commercial facility in a land marked for Karachi’s education city, the judgment stopped short of questioning the underlying law that allows bottling companies to undertake unabated abstraction in the first place.

Then there is the second part of the notice that questions whether the water is fit for human consumption. The cold hard truth is that bottled water is not a pharmaceutical or heath good; and apart from big new names, most midsized players do not even brand themselves as such. More importantly, if tested against the quality of potable water supplied by local government-controlled boards, chances are most brands of bottled water will fare better.

However, there is a silver lining in this mess. The suo moto offers a great opportunity for our environmentalists and water experts who have been harping about subjects as wide as whether clean drinking water is a right, pricing of water used for domestic and industrial purposes, abiana charges, and of course, environmental degradation caused by plastic bottles used by bottling companies.

No matter the extent of their extraction, bottling companies will use the occasion to argue that the actual waste of water occurs in agriculture, the sector using 90 percent of country’s water supply. And the courts in all likelihood shall admonish the government for its failure to promote efficiencies in the sector. It is up to the water experts to highlight other equally important facets of the debate which lie not in assigning blame but by undertaking hard research and advocating clear policy goals. Tick tock.