Some people are fighting back. In Bolivia, for example, the World Bank demanded that the city of Cochabamba sell the public water utility to the private sector. The largest American water lord, Bechtel, won the contract in l998. It immediately doubled the price of water, making water cost more than food.

Bolivians founded the Coalition in Defense of Water and Life. Thousands marched in 2000. A general strike and transportation stoppage shut down Cochabamba. Despite mass arrests, violence and several deaths, people stood their ground. Bechtel was forced out of Bolivia. A new public company now runs the water supply.

In the final section of their book, "The Way Forward," Barlow and Clarke, detail various successful citizen-based efforts to fight privatization of water, such as the anti-dam movement in India's Narmanda Valley. They point to the good work of groups such as Pesticide Action Network (PAN), a network of over 400 organizations working in 60 countries. In the U.S. the Water Keeper Alliance was launched by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to support various local water efforts.

"Water for profit takes a number of forms," Barlow and Clarke note in a September cover article in "The Nation."

"The bottled-water industry is one of the fastest-growing and least regulated industries in the world, expanding at an annual rate of 20 percent."

Profits from last year's sales were $22 billion for this highly polluting industry, which is dominated by companies such as Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi.

Barlow and Clarke conclude, "The commodification of water is wrong - ethically, environmentally and socially." They call for "a new water ethic" and assert that "water must be declared and understood for all time to be the common property of all."