Is the United States Selling Water to China?

"I heard that the United States is selling water to China.  Is that correct?"  The staff of the Newton Falls Public Library was unfamiliar with this, but always enjoys discovering answers and learning something new.

Putting the terms "US selling water to China" into a popular search engine brought up a variety of website links. One took us to the article Sell China water from Great Lakes?  by Kathleen Story of Green Living Examiner.  According to the article, "a loophole in the 2006 Great Lakes Compact allows the water to be called a product and sold off outside the [Great Lakes] basin."  It seems that while the water is from the Great Lakes, it is not actually being sold by the United States but rather by private companies accessing the resource.

The article, There Will Be Water by Susan Berfield on June 11, 2008 in the online Bloomberg Business Week Magazine, refers to water as blue gold and as the new oil.  In reading the article, it does not appear that the United States government is selling water to China.  However, foreign companies such as Canadian River Municipal Water Authority,  Royal Dutch Shell, and multi-national water bottlers like Nestlé are purchasing land, water or ground water rights in the water rich areas of the United States and are selling the water.

If our patron wished more information, he could borrow the documentary Blue Gold: World Water Wars and the book, Blue Gold: The Battle against Corporate Theft of the World's Water by Maude Barlow.  Both of these are available through the shared Clevnet catalog.