"A riveting and engaging account of one of the most important environmental issues of our time: Will corporations or citizens control our water?"

—Carl Pope, executive director, Sierra Club

From the Publisher:

Is water a human right or a commodity to be bought, sold, and traded in the global marketplace? Will it become the oil of the twenty-first century? Is it a source of profit for those in control and a commodity available only to those who can afford to pay?


Out of sight of most Americans, global corporations like Nestlé, Suez, and Veolia are rapidly buying up our local water sources—lakes, streams, and springs—and taking control of public water services. In their drive to privatize and commodify water, they have manipulated and bought politicians, clinched backroom deals, and subverted the democratic process by trying to deny citizens a voice in fundamental decisions about their most essential public resource.

The authors' PBS documentary Thirst showed how communities around the world are resisting the privatization and commodification of water. Thirst, the book, picks up where the documentary left off, revealing the emergence of controversial new water wars in the United States and showing how communities here are fighting this battle, often against companies headquartered overseas.

Both fast paced and sharply observant, Thirst exposes corporate attempts to take over municipally controlled water in communities around the country, to buy up rights to groundwater in the United States, and to create and corner the market on bottled water.

It also shows how people in affected communities are fighting back to keep water affordable, accessible, sustainable, and public by creating new methods to challenge the corporate juggernaut in an age of globalization.

We are at the tipping point in the new global water wars. The United States is ground zero. What happens in the next few years will determine the fate of water and our basic democratic rights here and abroad. Thirst is a battlefield account of the conflict.