announcer: funding for this program was provided by the minerva nolte estate. [music playing] woman: people are getting water in their home. [man speaking spanish] woman 2: we need gender equality, and we need this reflted in nional priorities. narrator: in india, millions of city residents don't have running water in their homes. narrator: in west virginia, drinking water is threatened by chemical spills, mining, and hydraulic fracking wells. woman: this is my water from this morning. narrator: on the other hand,

cities across europe are buying back municipal water supplies from global corporations. around the world, there is a growing movement to legislate safe water as a basic human right... now, on the "global mosaic." narrator: zulekha sayyed is a filmmaker from mumbai who's produced videos about water issues since she was a teenager.

narrator: paul brown is a photojournalist who directs a nonprofit focused on water and environmental issues throughout west virginia. paul: from the air, it's all very clear, like, "oh, wow, look. you can see this operation." you could even see it draining into this community. mountains, for us, are living, breathing entities. this photography, this storytelling has taken me al over the world. was an amazing thing, but what was even more amazing was to wake up one morning and realize that one of the biggest human rights stories of my life was happening right in my own backyard, in my own state, west virginia. narrator: looking for successful strategies to secure water rights, paul reached out to zulekha in mumbai. [computer chimes] zulekha: namaste. am from india. zulekha.

paul: hi. how are you? zulekha: i'm fine. how about you? paul: very good, thank you. was just very inspired when i saw the work that you had done and the community organizing and the way you got all these people together. so what got you started, what got you concerned about water? you've done some amazinghings.

paul: i'm so sorry. zulekha: what is the water paul: where i live, the water has been terribly polluted by industry; by fracking and by coalining, in particular, so lots and lots of chemicals and heavy-metal poisonings, things like that. won: ♪ west virginia ♪ [vocalizes] [singing continues indistinctly] paul: makes me happy being here. i love to walk through the forest and just put my hands out and touch the trees and touch the leaves. living off the grid is wonderful. i wanted to inspire people that it is ...and use it to power

the studio. man: mm-hmm. paul: generations of people came to this state and looked around and said, "wow! look what's here: coal, timber, natural gas," and if all tt wasn't enough, hard-working people to do the dirty work. sure, coal has provided jobs. i mean, they always talk about the lavish feast that's been on our table as a result of the money from coal, but it's always a smokescreen to detract from the fact that they've poisoned the vessel that we drink from. news anchor: ...chemical spill in kanawha county has people wondering what's in the air and what could be in your water. and right now, we are staying on top of this water crisis that is affecting up to 300,000 people in west virginia. ray tomblin: do not drink it. do not cook with it. do not wash clothes in it. do not take a bath in it. woman: this is my water from this morning.

woman 2: oh, my... woman: my daughter and i are having nightmares over this. news anchor: when is that water going to come back online? i'm just going to be brutally honest with you. we don't know. man: we've become a sacrifice zone. we're dying here. we're being poisoned to death by our own industries that employ us, and the message is not getting out to the rest of the nation. charlotte pritt: here in west virginia, my own party is a part of multinationals coming in, blowing the tops of mountains, fracking, and destroying the groundwater for greed. thomas linzey: the corporate boys' quest for energy sources is coming to a point where it means extracting stuff from places where they haven't been before, and now those harms are coming face to face with the communities that are trying to stop them. one of the big issues today is hydrofracking for natural gas. they drill underground, and then they horizontally drill across. tanker trucks haul in 2 to 10

million gallons of water per well, then mix it with a proprietary cocktail of over 500 chemicals. they inject that mixture at high pressure through the pipe to create fractures in the rock, which then releases the gas for extraction. this can lead to contaminated private wells and public aquifers. in appalachia, the marcellus shale contains radon that gets released when the rock is fracked, so you have this sometimes radioactive water coming back up from the drill into ponds and dumped on roadsed and all kinds of pces. ether you're talkingbout mountaintop removal in west virginia, whether you're talking about this frack water that's being pumped out of the holes by the natural gas corporations, you're talking about stuff that ruins the environment forever. you're talking about aquifers that are polluted, which you cannot fix. woman: they passed the marcellus horizontal well act, but before they did, the governor took out

a lot of the protections that were there for surface owners, just took them right out 'cause we're all write-offs. we're all collateral damage, and that's what it's all about. woman: it's a giant flame, like a torch. woman 2: yeah. woman: that's getting all the impurities out of the gas so that the gas runs nice and clean, so then they can go ahead and start hooking it up to the pipe. woman 2: yeah. woman 3: when you see what is allowed by the epa, it just scares you to death. you can't imagine all those things going up into our air. woman: everybody'll be exposed to this eventually, and if they're not, they're going to be exposed to the water. this water table covers the southeastern part of the united states. eventually, somebodyomewhere else is going to be drinking this water. paul: well, let's go see mr. mckinley... jesse: yep. paul: our favorite west virginia scientist, the one whose 4-year engineering degree means he's smarter than 97% of the climate scientists in the entire planet. that is a brilliant man. woman: ♪ all right ♪

jesse: thank you, sir. paul: perfect. [distant, indistinct chatter] man: ok, but what group came up with this, uh, this before? paul: i came up with this, but the reports have been published in numerous scientific journals. i mean, there's 24 reports. they're not from one person. man: allight. thanks for stopping by. paul: thank you. jesse: happy west virginia day. man: yes, you, too. thank you. paul: yep. man: bye-bye. paul: great. woman: ♪ ...all i need we keep dying of the same disease ♪ paul: this is how we've gotten to where we are, when corporations control the government, and the government's watching out for the corporations, rather than the citizenry.

zulekha: so what are the challenges you've faced? paul: the people in west virginia, we don't--we don't control our water. you know, we don't own the water. that water is owned by corporations, and the water is supposed to be protected by the government, but it's not because the government is there to serve the corporations. so these are the big challenges for us. it's about educating people that they should have the right to clean water and that the government should protect that right, and the corporations should not be allowed to come in and destroy our water, take it away from us. maude barlow: water has been discovered by the private sector. long before most of us understood the extent and the nature of the crisis in which we're now living, a number of corporations around the world started collecting the ways and thinking of the ways they were going to commodify the world's water because those who control the world's water systems in the near future are going to be

the most powerful among us. that's why i call water "blue gold," both because it is precious to all of life and precious to all of us, but it has been discovered as the most important commodity to be bought and sold on the open market. in bolivia, when they privatized water, they actually said, "we're also going to charge you for the rain that falls on cisterns, in your wells, and your roof." i do not make that up. you couldn't. barlow: this notion that it's only in the global southhat these cutoffs are taking place-- in detroit, ey have cut off the water services to close to 100,000 people because they can't pay, mostly african americans, single mothers, elderly people. and they go out and they have buckets and they go to local parks and they turn the water on and they lug the water home, just like people in the global south do. you know, this notion

that it's far away and could never happen here is not true. as we become more divided by rich and poor, as people find that more and more of their basic food and shelter is taking up all of their income, and we're going to start to see water prices rise. what is at dispute now is whether water is a fundamental human right or a human need, and you may think that's semantic, but it's not. the world bank says that it's a human need, and therefore it can be delivered by corporations. we say it's a fundamental human right, andou cannot buy and trade or give away a human right. paul: i don't think a corporation should have the right to own the water. i think it's a natural part of the earth and it's not something that someone should have a right to profit from. what is yours? what is your biggest challenge there?

paul: really, that much? it's very expensive? and what about the--the organization that you made the video about? paul: what do they do?

paul: that should feel good, that you made a film and it's helping with that. zulekha: yeah. paul: yeah. zulekha: hmm. paul: so do you know the expression "high five"? [zulekha laughing] paul: high five. heh heh! woman: y'all got water? paul: when the water crisis hit, most of our legislators tucked tail and left town. one...stood for us. mike manypenny, will you come up and accept this, please? [cheering, applause, and whistling]

mike: the ones that deserve this award are every one of you. you're the voices that come down to charleston and tell the legislature that you're not going to stand for this anymore. the biggest part of my platform has always been to fight for clean water. until we get rid of big money in politics, we're not going to change anything because they'll fund a campaign against somebody. i mean, the coal association put a lot of money in the last election to unseat me. each of those mails cost about $10,000 apiece. "mike manypenny--bad for west virginia." "mike manypenny is hurting west virginia's job growth." and here one of my favorites: "meet the we virginia extrem team--obama and mike manypenny." ul: i'm sure that mike manypenny was targeted because of his outspoken nature regarding the health and the well-being of all people of this state.

mike: i have had death threats. i've had people chasing me down the road in pickup trucks, flashing their lights, honking their horns, wanting me to pull over. i was even offered from the coal association a free pass if i would withdraw all of the legislation that would hold them accountable for polluting our streams and rivers, and they said, you know, "well, if you take this legislation off the table, we'll make sure you'll never have to worry about getting re-elected again." mike: we've got a mentality to allow industry to pollute for profit over protecting the health and well-being of our citizens and our environment. prt: when we talk about campaign spending, you don't have to be really, really intelligent to know we need a limit. if i give you a million dollars, everybody knows, "you're my girl" or "you're

my boy." [car horns honking] [computer chimes] paul: hi, zulekha. zulekha: hi, paul. paul: good morning to you. zulekha: good evening to you. paul: so much has changed in the world since we last oke. seems le a lifetime ago this article that i read about says, "how do you wash your hands to fend off coronavirus if water is scarce?"

paul: at least some good news from the covid crisis.

paul: oh, wow. [chuckles] it's so inspiring to see what happens when people are committed. for years, people around the world have been demonstrating against the privatization of municipal water systems, and that's producing results, especially ieurope. barlow: we're beginning to see quite a turnaround. many, many municipalities around the world are taking back their public water services from private companies. it's happening so quickly in europe, which is really interesting, and in france, particularly, that there's a whole website on the re-municipalization of water services. so what i call for now is what i call a new water ethic, where we put water in the center of our lives and we ask ourselves, for all policies and practices, be it energy, food production, you name it-- economic policy, whatever, social policy--what's the impact on water? and if it's hurting

water in a world running out of water, where the demand is going straight up and the supply is going straight down, you better re-evaluate. woman: protecting our water is the most important thing we can do. it trumps everything else. man: we can't live without fresh water. paul: it must be clean. our bodies depend on it being clean. woman: we need water! now! [crowd shouting] woman 2: we will not take this sitting down. we are going to organize and make certain that people's voices are heard. 2/3 goat: ♪ oh, oh stream of conscience hear my cry i don't want my hills to die pour on me your sanctifying truth it's your home, too it's your life to choose ♪

woman: this is a wonderful opportunity for those of us who care about this country and about the state to unify in our resolve. mike: we need to fd that balance where we can have jobs and a clean and healthy environment to live in. paul: imagine what it would have been like if we hadn't been fighting. imagine what it would have been like if they had just run rampant without any resistance. so have we been successful? yes. have we stopped them? not by a long shot. move mountains can real love would keep them there your runoff runneth over and out my sink but your runoff is not fit for me to drink ♪ ♪ for some clean water, man i'll lay my body down for my coal-stained fathers i will lay my body down for all these nations i'll lay my body down for my unborn children i will lay my body down

oh lay my body down oh, lay your body down before it's gone ♪ [birds chirping] [theme music playing] announcer: funding for this program was provided by the minerva nolte estate.■ú

o o 8 - chloe maxmin is the fabled political unicorn of these times. coming from a background as a progressive activist from an early age, she won her 2020 race for maine state senate against a formidable opponent, the incumbent republican leader of the state's senate. she did so in district 88, that also voted for senator susan collins. chloe first spoke at bioneers in 2014 when she had recently launched, divest harvard.