July 29, 2011

One year ago today, the United Nations General Assembly adopted an historic resolution recognizing the human right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation. Two months later, the Human Rights Council adopted a second resolution affirming that drinking water and sanitation are human rights, and setting out the new obligations and responsibilities all governments now carry to develop appropriate tools and mechanisms to progressively achieve the full realization of these rights. Together the two resolutions represent an extraordinary breakthrough in the international struggle for the right to safe clean drinking water and sanitation and a crucial milestone in the fight for water justice.  

“We’re a disaster area,” Alexis Bonogofsky told me, “and it’s going to take a long time to get over it.”

Bonogofsky and her partner, Mike Scott, were all over the news earlier this month, telling the world about how Montana’s Exxon Mobil pipeline spill has fouled their goat ranch and is threatening the health of their animals.

But my conversation with Bonogofsky was four full days before the pipeline began pouring oil into the Yellowstone River. And no, it’s not that she’s psychic; she was talking about this year’s historic flooding.

“It’s unbelievable,” she said. “It’s like nothing I’ve experienced in my lifetime. It destroyed houses; people died; crops didn’t get in the fields…. We barely were able to get our hay crop in.”