26 ms·

A Coca-Cola plant in Mexico uses 1.08M liters of water per day as wells dry up

340 points by colinprince 9y ago

SKYRHO_ 9y ago
PEPSI
- sctb 9y ago
  Please post substantively here or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
_h_o_d_ 9y ago
Why did somebody just change the title here on HN from the original 'Coca-Cola Sucks Wells Dry in Chiapas, Forcing Residents to Buy Water'?
- conanbatt 9y ago
  Hopefully because its a gross title. It should be more like "Local government sells to coca-cola most of its water forcing residents to buy water"
- mnx 9y ago
  HN has a rule against sensationalised headlines.
patorjk 9y ago
I have some family in McCloud, CA. Apparently this was a big concern when Nestle came to town and wanted their water. There ended up being a big legal battle, but in the end the town won [1]. I forget all of the details, but there was some shadiness on Nestle's part. They initially told people the new water plant would bring jobs back to the town, but when residents looked into it, they discovered almost everything would be automated, and only a hand full of new jobs would be created. [1] http://www.alternet.org/story/142645/after_6-year_battle%2C_mccloud%2C_ca_defeats_water_bottling_giant_nestle http://www.alternet.org/story/142645/after_6-year_battle%2C_...
- amelius 9y ago
  > They initially told people the new water plant would bring jobs back to the town, but when residents looked into it, they discovered almost everything would be automated, and only a hand full of new jobs would be created. Why didn't they just make it part of the contract?
- croon 9y ago
  Speaking of Nestle and water, I'm reminded of this old interview with their (then) CEO Peter Brabeck: https://youtu.be/GmOZL-jNH-s?t=124 https://youtu.be/GmOZL-jNH-s?t=124 (english subs)
- nso 9y ago
  Difference in this case being that government officials in Chiapas are corrupt as f, and there is basicly no recourse for the public. Chiapas also head to head with Oaxaca in the race to be the poorest state in Mexico,. Some of the towns most affected by the disaster are being described to me as "looking like it's been shelled to shit" by my doctor friend who travelled there to help out however she could. I will probably head over there next week with provisions, as there is no government help at all.
grecy 9y ago
This exact situation in Venezuela made me think Hugo Chávez was not always completely nuts with some of his ideas. He was sick of multinationals like Coke buying water for a couple of cents a mega-liter. Coke would then add some sugar and color to it before selling it back to the people for dollars per liter. The expensive purification of that water was paid for by tax revenue. Chávez decided this was not right, and put an extremely heavy tax on multi-nationals buying "resources" from Venezuela and doing that. Personally, I think the world would be a better place if that was the law everywhere. On a related note, Juneau, the capital of Alkasa needs a new water purification plant, theirs is running beyond capacity. The proposal was to increase tax so everyone pays for it. It came to light Holland-America (cruise line) buys millions of gallons for a tiny, tiny fraction of the price that locals pay. When it was suggested to Holland-America they should pay a little more to help fund the new purification plant, Holland-America simply threatened to stop bringing cruise ships to Juneau. So now the residents pay more tax so that Holland-America can continue to buy millions of gallons for much cheaper than the locals pay!
- soneca 9y ago
  He identified a real problem (that part is not hard as no country is short of easily identifiable problems), the problem was he using it as base/narrative to gain more personal power and influence, instead of solving the problem for the country's benefit. The problem with third-world countries is not that the political elite fails to identify problems, it is that they use this to gain more power through populism or they use it to gain more money through corruption.
  - stun 9y ago
    Yeah populism in third world counties. What do you call whats happening in the US and Europe.
    - sol_remmy 9y ago
      In first world countries, populism is often triggered by government overreach. In third world countries, populism is often triggered by promising people finances from government coffers. That is why you see populism in Brazil, Venezuela, etc cause the government to overexpand, grow corrupt, and eventually start to implode. First world countries have self sufficient people who would prefer more freedoms, third world countries have people who rely on the government to meet their basic needs.
mad_tortoise 9y ago
So where I'm from we have a similar problem yet no end in site. After last years summer we had one of the worst droughts this region has ever had, but then it went into winter. It didn't rain much this winter and now we're back in summer... With water restrictions starting the summer as bad as they were when we ended it. To the point of this though. One of the worlds largest breweries is situated in my city. My country has a horrendous alcohol problem, to the extent where paying farm labourers in booze only got outlawed just over 20 years ago. Anyway this brewery makes most of the beer in the Southern Hemisphere, yet it was able to get so large because it is right on top of one of the biggest springs, and they claimed riparian rights many years ago. My problem being is that up until this year, for the past 3 years, the public was allowed access to the spring on their land. Now they are denying the public access while we go through a drought and they continue to produce beer for next to nothing as they don't pay a cent for their biggest ingredient. Now I want to stop them making beer while we are in a drought, but in a country run by alcohol makers that will surely either be an impossible task or end up getting me killed.
- _h_o_d_ 9y ago
  Can you name the brewery / city?
  - mad_tortoise 9y ago
    Cape Town, South Africa. SABMiller, which was recently bought for £69 billion by Anheuser-Busch InBev.
    - theoh 9y ago
      Specifically this brewery, I'm guessing: http://www.sab.co.za/the-sab-story/the-story-of-newlands-brewery/ http://www.sab.co.za/the-sab-story/the-story-of-newlands-bre... http://www.702.co.za/articles/250909/sab-urges-members-of-the-public-to-stop-abusing-source-of-free-water http://www.702.co.za/articles/250909/sab-urges-members-of-th...
      - 9y ago
xabi 9y ago
Same in India: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/18/indian-officals-coca-cola-plant-water-mehdiganj https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/18/indian-o... everywhere!
gus_massa 9y ago
The article is not very clear. It looks like most of the problem is caused by population grow, without good infrastructure. Not by Coca-Cola. Also, this is misleading: > FEMSA reports that it uses 56.9 billion liters of water a year in its operations across Latin America. In Mexico, the company holds 40 water permits. The 56.9 billon liters seams to be a lot and it is a lot, but it's the total in Latin America. But this number is not related to the problem in Chiapas. How much water does the plant in Chiapas use?
- tech-no-logical 9y ago
  from the article : > The plant consumed over 1.08 million liters of water per day in 2016.
- saganus 9y ago
  It says: "The Chiapas branch of Conagua confirmed to Truthout that the company has permits for two wells to extract a total of 499,918 cubic meters of water per year, or 499.9 million liters. In 2016, the company extracted 78.8 percent of the permitted total." (Conagua is the National Water Comission)
mtgx 9y ago
While Coca-Cola deserves a great deal of blame for this (obviously), surely the bigger part of the blame should go to the local government for allowing them to do this? Isn't the people, and therefore the government, sovereign? Or are there some laws/constitutional issues that would prevent the government from restricting Coca-Cola in taking all the water? By the way, this is why corporate-written and corrupt treaties such as TPP and TTIP can be so dangerous if they end-up preventing national governments from putting such restrictions against multi-national companies. Another thought: expect more of this to happen when corporations start being run by AI - a lot more. A corporation is already an inhuman entity that's highly biased towards "increasing profits at all costs" without regard for much else. An AI-run corporation would be a supercharged version of that. People who also "can't wait to be governed by their AI overlords" should take the same thing into consideration.
- vertex-four 9y ago
  The issue is that Coca-Cola et al, in practice, have enough power that they can cause problems for Governments which don't allow them to do what they want. Concentration of money is nearly precisely equivalent to concentration of power. And then you have international trade agreements and Governments willing to back this status quo up.
- simion314 9y ago
  This reminds me about the banana industry, I read about governments being changed by US but I can't find anything now on google since there are tons of articles about the "banana wars" where poor countries are exploited by big corporation that are aided by US gov(because politician get lot of donations from banana industry. My point is that even non-corrupt countries could be fed by companies.
pdog 9y ago
Water is a scarce resource. A market system is the objectively the best mechanism for allocating scarce resources. (Of course, if you object to a pure market system, the government can regulate the market and subsidize residential tap water.) Why isn't water priced accordingly?
- conanbatt 9y ago
  > Water is a scarce resource. Water is not scarce! We got plenty. The model of water being a limited resource we have to save does not represent an economic reality. We have an entire planet worth of water and we are not shooting it out to space. We know how to use it, how to clean it, etc. We will never run out of water. We might run out of 'free' water, but thats the whole point of using a resource, consuming it.
  - pdog 9y ago
    If water isn't scarce, why complain that Coca-Cola is using so much?
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      I wonder what could someone extract from coca-cola for their own self interest.
  - LyndsySimon 9y ago
    Water may not be scarce (with some exceptions), but potable water certainly is. In most of the world and throughout most of history, potable water has always been a very valuable commodity. Particularly in the case of aquifer depletion, it's a very real issue. There may well be a large reserve of potable water available, but once it's used it may take hundreds, thousands, or millions of years to naturally replenish. Aquifers are often not a renewable resource on human timescales.
- rbanffy 9y ago
  > Why isn't water priced accordingly? Are you OK with your family dying of thirst if you can't pay for water?
wyc 9y ago
> ...the company has permits for two wells to extract a total of 499,918 cubic meters of water per year, or 499.9 million liters. In 2016, the company extracted 78.8 percent of the permitted total. So the government gave Coke the permits, Coke used under 80% of the agreed amount, and now it's a crisis? It has the markings of some severe utilities planning blunder. > "The city has been growing significantly since the 1970s," he says in an interview at his office, which has a view of Huitepec mountain, where Coca-Cola extracts its water. "But in San Cristobal, there was no urban planning. And that's been aggravated by public policies that don't pay attention to the Indigenous people of the state." That sort of gets at the real problem. There are a lot of questions. Would things would actually get better if Coke were to shut down operations? How many people would stop drawing salaries? How much tax revenue loss does the government face with halted operations? Would the freed up water volume be enough to avert disaster? Does the drought affect everyday citizens or farmers the most? Are there any other environmental externalities that result from the Coke plant? These are some of the tough questions that we need to answer before we can readily assign blame to megacorps. It's easy to hate large companies, and I dislike my fair share, but boiling this situation down into a headliner shaming corporate avarice may not be the best way to make progress. Maybe they should shut down the plant, or maybe they shouldn't--I don't know, and it shouldn't be for armchair economists thousands of miles away to decide. It just seems more complicated than the solicited visceral emotions may suggest.
- clarkevans 9y ago
  In many cases, getting a government permit doesn't necessarily mean assent of the population. This divergence of representation is a pretty important problem. How could we use technology (and/or novel organizational structures) to help... without making things worse? Could we, for example, have a "PolicyBook" that connects people to their representatives in a way that gives responsible politicians (who aren't corrupt) credibility, and makes those who play for private benefit of their friends easily recognizable?
  - koolba 9y ago
    > In many cases, getting a government permit doesn't necessarily mean assent of the population. That's the real problem in a lot of these situations and really with any long term obligation or resource grant bestowed by a government to a private entity. It doesn't necessarily reflect the will of the people in the future or, in many cases particularly in the third world, the present. Short of restricting the maximum duration for such a grant, I don't see many ways to avoid this situation. Even that may have negative consequences as a company wouldn't want to invest in a municipality if the resources it'll be leveraging may not be available in the future. The uncertainty may make it a non starter.
3pt14159 9y ago
Water is a tricky thing. Take almonds for example. One almond takes about 4 liters of water to produce. With 1.6 billion pounds of almonds grown per year we're looking at almost 2.5 trillion liters of water. This is just one nut. Pistachios and walnuts use similar amounts of water, so do other things we eat like broccoli. I blame Coca-Cola and their ilk for the obesity epidemic, but water shortages are more caused by farming and climate change than they are by breweries or bottling plants.
- bpicolo 9y ago
  > One almond takes about 4 liters of water to produce How long does it take for that water to re-enter the ecosystem in a usable way? Water isn't just destroyed, yeah? Water planning is definitely worthwhile, but seems there are a few other variables in play.
  - bzbarsky 9y ago
    > How long does it take for that water to re-enter the ecosystem in a usable way? It depends on where you got the water from. If you got it from a river or lake, probably "until the next time it rains". If you got it from an aquifer, then it depends on how long it takes water to filter down into the aquifer, assuming it can do so at all. > Water isn't just destroyed, yeah? In the case of aquifers it actually can be, effectively. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer#Human_dependence_on_groundwater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer#Human_dependence_on_gr... second paragraph: Fresh-water aquifers, especially those with limited recharge by snow or rain, also known as meteoric water, can be over-exploited and depending on the local hydrogeology, may draw in non-potable water or saltwater intrusion from hydraulically connected aquifers or surface water bodies. This can be a serious problem, especially in coastal areas and other areas where aquifer pumping is excessive. In some areas, the ground water can become contaminated by arsenic and other mineral poisons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer#Aquifer_water_balance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer#Aquifer_water... is a worthwhile read with specific numbers for a specific aquifer that illustrates some of the possible problems. All of which is to say that in some places (and in particular in much of the Western US) water may closer to a non-renewable resource than a renewable one if it comes from an aquifer. At least on years-to-decades timescales.
efa 9y ago
Resist the Right-Wing Machine!!
CoreXtreme 9y ago
This is exactly, why I use functional programming language and prefer Pespsi even tho it tastes bit worse. The facadian distance between Pespsi and Cocola water molecules is about 10nm which makes Pepsi efficient in terms of water requirements. If only Coke fans got that right, maybe one day...
corpMaverick 9y ago
This article is just exploiting our desire to hate corporations. What ever amount of water Coca-cola is taking it is surely a drop in the bucket compared to other uses of water. More likely it is a problem of water being contaminated for other causes. Chiapas is in the middle of the rainforest. They get 120 inches of rainfall a year. In any case their problem is that they get too much rain.
- benjaminl 9y ago
  This is exactly what it is. 1.08 million liters of water, sounds like a lot, but needs to be put into context of other uses of water. Agriculture is one of the biggest uses of water. The average US irrigated farm uses 1.6 [0] acre-feet of water per acre of land. Since 1.08 million liters is ~0.9 acre-feet of water. Coca-Cola is using 319.6 acre-feet of water a year which is equivalent water usage, in average, to an 178 acre farm. This is a very modest farm. This wasn't Coca-Cola we were talking about, but a small 178 acre family farm. This discussion wouldn't be happening. If you want to complain about Coca-Cola, fine. Perhaps attack it business practices or its contribution to obesity, but it is disingenuous to attack its use of water, when the amount of water used is a very small fraction of farm and industrial uses of water. [0] - https://ageconomists.com/2015/04/20/acres-and-acre-feet-a-look-at-irrigation-trends-in-the-us/ https://ageconomists.com/2015/04/20/acres-and-acre-feet-a-lo...
  - corpMaverick 9y ago
    Thanks to put it in numbers, I didn't know where to start. But I know that I use a LOT more water than what I drink. Certainly their contribution to obesity is major reason to complain about Coca-Cola.
richardknop 9y ago
Isn't this also related to climate change? Given the rate climate is getting warmer, it has been long predicted there will be shortages of drinking water and wells will be drying up as well as vast green areas of today will turn into desserts. Water will be cause of military conflicts in the future I believe. It will be more valuable than oil.
t1o5 9y ago
This. The southern Indian state of Kerala successfully resisted and shutdown this company for good. Even the state made legislation to sue the company for those affected by its ruthless exploitation of ground water. The factory was in the Palakkad district of Kerala which has historically low levels of ground water. The company was extracting more water than agreed to. The politics behind approving this plant in an already water deprived area is another story. The villagers were experiencing health problems, water depletion in their wells. I would say the politicians approved this plant and the people shut it down. Even there was a smear campaign in the state against Coke depicting it as an effective insecticide so that people would stop consuming it. This is not an isolated incident of foreign companies exploiting a third world country. I do not understand what companies means when they say "responsibly sourced". People need jobs and salaries, but not at the cost of their own environment & health. http://www.righttowater.info/rights-in-practice/legal-approach-case-studies/case-against-coca-cola-kerala-state-india/ http://www.righttowater.info/rights-in-practice/legal-approa...
aaron695 9y ago
I get this is a mindless junk article, but this statement is ridiculous right? "Surely the earthquake damaged underground caves in the aquifer, which could impact aquifer recharge in the future," You could give them the benefit of the doubt on a translation error, but no mainstream paper would be this sloppy.
rbanffy 9y ago
At least it has electrolytes.
epx 9y ago
Do you really want to live in a world without Coca-Cola? -- WW
tryingagainbro 9y ago
Can an engineer chime in? I'm sure Coca Cola doesn't want this bad publicity and I assume that if a few dozen villagers gather at the plant every day it will get worst for them. My question, is there any way to estimate the ground water? Why did the build there, or is the rate of extraction is really high? edit: apparently over there they get some 3000mm a year rain!!
__warlord__ 9y ago
Another big issue is that Coca-Cola is an addiction in Mexico, The government knows it, Coca-Cola Inc. knows it but it seems that our people don't seem to care, taxes had been imposed on sugar watered beverages but nothing change, actually, the consumption went up (I don't have the numbers right now), so, as long as we still have this idea that this kind of beverages are "ok" we are still empowering companies like this to do as they please with this resources. I'm not very fond of the Mexican government, and believe me, if companies approach them they will be willing to sell even the air we breathe. But we have to put our part to stop empowering this multi-nationals to do as they please.
Animats 9y ago
Could be worse. It's not like a golf course resort is sucking up the water supply. Most of the water that goes into a Coke plant comes out in the product.
warmfuzzykitten 9y ago
No problem. They can water their plants with Gatorade.
Dowwie 9y ago
I drink your milk shake.

340 points by colinprince 9y ago

SKYRHO_ 9y ago

PEPSI

sctb 9y ago
Please post substantively here or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

_h_o_d_ 9y ago

Why did somebody just change the title here on HN from the original 'Coca-Cola Sucks Wells Dry in Chiapas, Forcing Residents to Buy Water'?

conanbatt 9y ago
Hopefully because its a gross title. It should be more like "Local government sells to coca-cola most of its water forcing residents to buy water"
mnx 9y ago
HN has a rule against sensationalised headlines.

patorjk 9y ago

I have some family in McCloud, CA. Apparently this was a big concern when Nestle came to town and wanted their water. There ended up being a big legal battle, but in the end the town won [1]. I forget all of the details, but there was some shadiness on Nestle's part. They initially told people the new water plant would bring jobs back to the town, but when residents looked into it, they discovered almost everything would be automated, and only a hand full of new jobs would be created. [1] http://www.alternet.org/story/142645/after_6-year_battle%2C_mccloud%2C_ca_defeats_water_bottling_giant_nestle http://www.alternet.org/story/142645/after_6-year_battle%2C_...

amelius 9y ago
> They initially told people the new water plant would bring jobs back to the town, but when residents looked into it, they discovered almost everything would be automated, and only a hand full of new jobs would be created. Why didn't they just make it part of the contract?
croon 9y ago
Speaking of Nestle and water, I'm reminded of this old interview with their (then) CEO Peter Brabeck: https://youtu.be/GmOZL-jNH-s?t=124 https://youtu.be/GmOZL-jNH-s?t=124 (english subs)
nso 9y ago
Difference in this case being that government officials in Chiapas are corrupt as f, and there is basicly no recourse for the public. Chiapas also head to head with Oaxaca in the race to be the poorest state in Mexico,. Some of the towns most affected by the disaster are being described to me as "looking like it's been shelled to shit" by my doctor friend who travelled there to help out however she could. I will probably head over there next week with provisions, as there is no government help at all.

grecy 9y ago

This exact situation in Venezuela made me think Hugo Chávez was not always completely nuts with some of his ideas. He was sick of multinationals like Coke buying water for a couple of cents a mega-liter. Coke would then add some sugar and color to it before selling it back to the people for dollars per liter. The expensive purification of that water was paid for by tax revenue. Chávez decided this was not right, and put an extremely heavy tax on multi-nationals buying "resources" from Venezuela and doing that. Personally, I think the world would be a better place if that was the law everywhere. On a related note, Juneau, the capital of Alkasa needs a new water purification plant, theirs is running beyond capacity. The proposal was to increase tax so everyone pays for it. It came to light Holland-America (cruise line) buys millions of gallons for a tiny, tiny fraction of the price that locals pay. When it was suggested to Holland-America they should pay a little more to help fund the new purification plant, Holland-America simply threatened to stop bringing cruise ships to Juneau. So now the residents pay more tax so that Holland-America can continue to buy millions of gallons for much cheaper than the locals pay!

soneca 9y ago
He identified a real problem (that part is not hard as no country is short of easily identifiable problems), the problem was he using it as base/narrative to gain more personal power and influence, instead of solving the problem for the country's benefit. The problem with third-world countries is not that the political elite fails to identify problems, it is that they use this to gain more power through populism or they use it to gain more money through corruption.
- stun 9y ago
  Yeah populism in third world counties. What do you call whats happening in the US and Europe.
  - sol_remmy 9y ago
    In first world countries, populism is often triggered by government overreach. In third world countries, populism is often triggered by promising people finances from government coffers. That is why you see populism in Brazil, Venezuela, etc cause the government to overexpand, grow corrupt, and eventually start to implode. First world countries have self sufficient people who would prefer more freedoms, third world countries have people who rely on the government to meet their basic needs.

mad_tortoise 9y ago

So where I'm from we have a similar problem yet no end in site. After last years summer we had one of the worst droughts this region has ever had, but then it went into winter. It didn't rain much this winter and now we're back in summer... With water restrictions starting the summer as bad as they were when we ended it. To the point of this though. One of the worlds largest breweries is situated in my city. My country has a horrendous alcohol problem, to the extent where paying farm labourers in booze only got outlawed just over 20 years ago. Anyway this brewery makes most of the beer in the Southern Hemisphere, yet it was able to get so large because it is right on top of one of the biggest springs, and they claimed riparian rights many years ago. My problem being is that up until this year, for the past 3 years, the public was allowed access to the spring on their land. Now they are denying the public access while we go through a drought and they continue to produce beer for next to nothing as they don't pay a cent for their biggest ingredient. Now I want to stop them making beer while we are in a drought, but in a country run by alcohol makers that will surely either be an impossible task or end up getting me killed.

_h_o_d_ 9y ago
Can you name the brewery / city?
- mad_tortoise 9y ago
  Cape Town, South Africa. SABMiller, which was recently bought for £69 billion by Anheuser-Busch InBev.
  - theoh 9y ago
    Specifically this brewery, I'm guessing: http://www.sab.co.za/the-sab-story/the-story-of-newlands-brewery/ http://www.sab.co.za/the-sab-story/the-story-of-newlands-bre... http://www.702.co.za/articles/250909/sab-urges-members-of-the-public-to-stop-abusing-source-of-free-water http://www.702.co.za/articles/250909/sab-urges-members-of-th...
    - 9y ago

xabi 9y ago

Same in India: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/18/indian-officals-coca-cola-plant-water-mehdiganj https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/18/indian-o... everywhere!

gus_massa 9y ago

The article is not very clear. It looks like most of the problem is caused by population grow, without good infrastructure. Not by Coca-Cola. Also, this is misleading: > FEMSA reports that it uses 56.9 billion liters of water a year in its operations across Latin America. In Mexico, the company holds 40 water permits. The 56.9 billon liters seams to be a lot and it is a lot, but it's the total in Latin America. But this number is not related to the problem in Chiapas. How much water does the plant in Chiapas use?

tech-no-logical 9y ago
from the article : > The plant consumed over 1.08 million liters of water per day in 2016.
saganus 9y ago
It says: "The Chiapas branch of Conagua confirmed to Truthout that the company has permits for two wells to extract a total of 499,918 cubic meters of water per year, or 499.9 million liters. In 2016, the company extracted 78.8 percent of the permitted total." (Conagua is the National Water Comission)

mtgx 9y ago

While Coca-Cola deserves a great deal of blame for this (obviously), surely the bigger part of the blame should go to the local government for allowing them to do this? Isn't the people, and therefore the government, sovereign? Or are there some laws/constitutional issues that would prevent the government from restricting Coca-Cola in taking all the water? By the way, this is why corporate-written and corrupt treaties such as TPP and TTIP can be so dangerous if they end-up preventing national governments from putting such restrictions against multi-national companies. Another thought: expect more of this to happen when corporations start being run by AI - a lot more. A corporation is already an inhuman entity that's highly biased towards "increasing profits at all costs" without regard for much else. An AI-run corporation would be a supercharged version of that. People who also "can't wait to be governed by their AI overlords" should take the same thing into consideration.

vertex-four 9y ago
The issue is that Coca-Cola et al, in practice, have enough power that they can cause problems for Governments which don't allow them to do what they want. Concentration of money is nearly precisely equivalent to concentration of power. And then you have international trade agreements and Governments willing to back this status quo up.
simion314 9y ago
This reminds me about the banana industry, I read about governments being changed by US but I can't find anything now on google since there are tons of articles about the "banana wars" where poor countries are exploited by big corporation that are aided by US gov(because politician get lot of donations from banana industry. My point is that even non-corrupt countries could be fed by companies.

pdog 9y ago

Water is a scarce resource. A market system is the objectively the best mechanism for allocating scarce resources. (Of course, if you object to a pure market system, the government can regulate the market and subsidize residential tap water.) Why isn't water priced accordingly?

conanbatt 9y ago
> Water is a scarce resource. Water is not scarce! We got plenty. The model of water being a limited resource we have to save does not represent an economic reality. We have an entire planet worth of water and we are not shooting it out to space. We know how to use it, how to clean it, etc. We will never run out of water. We might run out of 'free' water, but thats the whole point of using a resource, consuming it.
- pdog 9y ago
  If water isn't scarce, why complain that Coca-Cola is using so much?
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    I wonder what could someone extract from coca-cola for their own self interest.
- LyndsySimon 9y ago
  Water may not be scarce (with some exceptions), but potable water certainly is. In most of the world and throughout most of history, potable water has always been a very valuable commodity. Particularly in the case of aquifer depletion, it's a very real issue. There may well be a large reserve of potable water available, but once it's used it may take hundreds, thousands, or millions of years to naturally replenish. Aquifers are often not a renewable resource on human timescales.
rbanffy 9y ago
> Why isn't water priced accordingly? Are you OK with your family dying of thirst if you can't pay for water?

wyc 9y ago

> ...the company has permits for two wells to extract a total of 499,918 cubic meters of water per year, or 499.9 million liters. In 2016, the company extracted 78.8 percent of the permitted total. So the government gave Coke the permits, Coke used under 80% of the agreed amount, and now it's a crisis? It has the markings of some severe utilities planning blunder. > "The city has been growing significantly since the 1970s," he says in an interview at his office, which has a view of Huitepec mountain, where Coca-Cola extracts its water. "But in San Cristobal, there was no urban planning. And that's been aggravated by public policies that don't pay attention to the Indigenous people of the state." That sort of gets at the real problem. There are a lot of questions. Would things would actually get better if Coke were to shut down operations? How many people would stop drawing salaries? How much tax revenue loss does the government face with halted operations? Would the freed up water volume be enough to avert disaster? Does the drought affect everyday citizens or farmers the most? Are there any other environmental externalities that result from the Coke plant? These are some of the tough questions that we need to answer before we can readily assign blame to megacorps. It's easy to hate large companies, and I dislike my fair share, but boiling this situation down into a headliner shaming corporate avarice may not be the best way to make progress. Maybe they should shut down the plant, or maybe they shouldn't--I don't know, and it shouldn't be for armchair economists thousands of miles away to decide. It just seems more complicated than the solicited visceral emotions may suggest.

clarkevans 9y ago
In many cases, getting a government permit doesn't necessarily mean assent of the population. This divergence of representation is a pretty important problem. How could we use technology (and/or novel organizational structures) to help... without making things worse? Could we, for example, have a "PolicyBook" that connects people to their representatives in a way that gives responsible politicians (who aren't corrupt) credibility, and makes those who play for private benefit of their friends easily recognizable?
- koolba 9y ago
  > In many cases, getting a government permit doesn't necessarily mean assent of the population. That's the real problem in a lot of these situations and really with any long term obligation or resource grant bestowed by a government to a private entity. It doesn't necessarily reflect the will of the people in the future or, in many cases particularly in the third world, the present. Short of restricting the maximum duration for such a grant, I don't see many ways to avoid this situation. Even that may have negative consequences as a company wouldn't want to invest in a municipality if the resources it'll be leveraging may not be available in the future. The uncertainty may make it a non starter.

3pt14159 9y ago

Water is a tricky thing. Take almonds for example. One almond takes about 4 liters of water to produce. With 1.6 billion pounds of almonds grown per year we're looking at almost 2.5 trillion liters of water. This is just one nut. Pistachios and walnuts use similar amounts of water, so do other things we eat like broccoli. I blame Coca-Cola and their ilk for the obesity epidemic, but water shortages are more caused by farming and climate change than they are by breweries or bottling plants.

bpicolo 9y ago
> One almond takes about 4 liters of water to produce How long does it take for that water to re-enter the ecosystem in a usable way? Water isn't just destroyed, yeah? Water planning is definitely worthwhile, but seems there are a few other variables in play.
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  > How long does it take for that water to re-enter the ecosystem in a usable way? It depends on where you got the water from. If you got it from a river or lake, probably "until the next time it rains". If you got it from an aquifer, then it depends on how long it takes water to filter down into the aquifer, assuming it can do so at all. > Water isn't just destroyed, yeah? In the case of aquifers it actually can be, effectively. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer#Human_dependence_on_groundwater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer#Human_dependence_on_gr... second paragraph: Fresh-water aquifers, especially those with limited recharge by snow or rain, also known as meteoric water, can be over-exploited and depending on the local hydrogeology, may draw in non-potable water or saltwater intrusion from hydraulically connected aquifers or surface water bodies. This can be a serious problem, especially in coastal areas and other areas where aquifer pumping is excessive. In some areas, the ground water can become contaminated by arsenic and other mineral poisons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer#Aquifer_water_balance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer#Aquifer_water... is a worthwhile read with specific numbers for a specific aquifer that illustrates some of the possible problems. All of which is to say that in some places (and in particular in much of the Western US) water may closer to a non-renewable resource than a renewable one if it comes from an aquifer. At least on years-to-decades timescales.

efa 9y ago

Resist the Right-Wing Machine!!

CoreXtreme 9y ago

This is exactly, why I use functional programming language and prefer Pespsi even tho it tastes bit worse. The facadian distance between Pespsi and Cocola water molecules is about 10nm which makes Pepsi efficient in terms of water requirements. If only Coke fans got that right, maybe one day...

corpMaverick 9y ago

This article is just exploiting our desire to hate corporations. What ever amount of water Coca-cola is taking it is surely a drop in the bucket compared to other uses of water. More likely it is a problem of water being contaminated for other causes. Chiapas is in the middle of the rainforest. They get 120 inches of rainfall a year. In any case their problem is that they get too much rain.

benjaminl 9y ago
This is exactly what it is. 1.08 million liters of water, sounds like a lot, but needs to be put into context of other uses of water. Agriculture is one of the biggest uses of water. The average US irrigated farm uses 1.6 [0] acre-feet of water per acre of land. Since 1.08 million liters is ~0.9 acre-feet of water. Coca-Cola is using 319.6 acre-feet of water a year which is equivalent water usage, in average, to an 178 acre farm. This is a very modest farm. This wasn't Coca-Cola we were talking about, but a small 178 acre family farm. This discussion wouldn't be happening. If you want to complain about Coca-Cola, fine. Perhaps attack it business practices or its contribution to obesity, but it is disingenuous to attack its use of water, when the amount of water used is a very small fraction of farm and industrial uses of water. [0] - https://ageconomists.com/2015/04/20/acres-and-acre-feet-a-look-at-irrigation-trends-in-the-us/ https://ageconomists.com/2015/04/20/acres-and-acre-feet-a-lo...
- corpMaverick 9y ago
  Thanks to put it in numbers, I didn't know where to start. But I know that I use a LOT more water than what I drink. Certainly their contribution to obesity is major reason to complain about Coca-Cola.

richardknop 9y ago

Isn't this also related to climate change? Given the rate climate is getting warmer, it has been long predicted there will be shortages of drinking water and wells will be drying up as well as vast green areas of today will turn into desserts. Water will be cause of military conflicts in the future I believe. It will be more valuable than oil.

t1o5 9y ago

This. The southern Indian state of Kerala successfully resisted and shutdown this company for good. Even the state made legislation to sue the company for those affected by its ruthless exploitation of ground water. The factory was in the Palakkad district of Kerala which has historically low levels of ground water. The company was extracting more water than agreed to. The politics behind approving this plant in an already water deprived area is another story. The villagers were experiencing health problems, water depletion in their wells. I would say the politicians approved this plant and the people shut it down. Even there was a smear campaign in the state against Coke depicting it as an effective insecticide so that people would stop consuming it. This is not an isolated incident of foreign companies exploiting a third world country. I do not understand what companies means when they say "responsibly sourced". People need jobs and salaries, but not at the cost of their own environment & health. http://www.righttowater.info/rights-in-practice/legal-approach-case-studies/case-against-coca-cola-kerala-state-india/ http://www.righttowater.info/rights-in-practice/legal-approa...

aaron695 9y ago

I get this is a mindless junk article, but this statement is ridiculous right? "Surely the earthquake damaged underground caves in the aquifer, which could impact aquifer recharge in the future," You could give them the benefit of the doubt on a translation error, but no mainstream paper would be this sloppy.

rbanffy 9y ago

At least it has electrolytes.

epx 9y ago

Do you really want to live in a world without Coca-Cola? -- WW

tryingagainbro 9y ago

Can an engineer chime in? I'm sure Coca Cola doesn't want this bad publicity and I assume that if a few dozen villagers gather at the plant every day it will get worst for them. My question, is there any way to estimate the ground water? Why did the build there, or is the rate of extraction is really high? edit: apparently over there they get some 3000mm a year rain!!

__warlord__ 9y ago

Another big issue is that Coca-Cola is an addiction in Mexico, The government knows it, Coca-Cola Inc. knows it but it seems that our people don't seem to care, taxes had been imposed on sugar watered beverages but nothing change, actually, the consumption went up (I don't have the numbers right now), so, as long as we still have this idea that this kind of beverages are "ok" we are still empowering companies like this to do as they please with this resources. I'm not very fond of the Mexican government, and believe me, if companies approach them they will be willing to sell even the air we breathe. But we have to put our part to stop empowering this multi-nationals to do as they please.

Animats 9y ago

Could be worse. It's not like a golf course resort is sucking up the water supply. Most of the water that goes into a Coke plant comes out in the product.

warmfuzzykitten 9y ago

No problem. They can water their plants with Gatorade.

Dowwie 9y ago

I drink your milk shake.