Already, a common front of environmentalists, human rights and antipoverty activists, public sector workers, peasants, indigenous peoples and many others from every part of the world has come together to fight for a water-secure future based on the notion that water is part of the public commons. We coordinated strategy at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, last January. We will be in South Africa for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in September and in Kyoto, Japan, next March, when the World Bank and the UN bring 8,000 people to the Third World Water Forum. There, we will oppose water privatization and promote our own World Water Vision as an alternative to that adopted by the World Bank at the Second World Water Forum in The Hague two years ago. We will stand with local people fighting water privatization in Bolivia, or the construction of a mega-dam in India, or water takings by Perrier in Michigan, but now all of these local struggles will form part of an emerging international movement with a common political vision.

Steps needed for a water-secure future include the adoption of a Treaty Initiative to Share and Protect the Global Water Commons; a guaranteed "water lifeline"--free clean water every day for every person as an inalienable political and social right; national water protection acts to reclaim and preserve freshwater systems; exemptions for water from international trade and investment regimes; an end to World Bank and IMF-enforced water privatizations; and a Global Water Convention that would create an international body of law to protect the world's water heritage based on the twin cornerstones of conservation and equity. A tough challenge indeed. But given the stakes involved, we had better be up to it.

i think only part of it can be theres i mean you can not keep people from drinking it or stealing it and i don't think that you can own water unless it is own your land like a pond not no lake

Pirates!

Water needs to be managed like air... namely, it has to be a common resource, or the cost of administering management of the legalities of the ownership of the resource becomes to high, plus you're just asking for trouble, because everyone needs it.

That being said, In the US that is a problem, because in the US, individuals *can* own water. They can own lakes and streams... they can own just the surface with someone else owning the subsurface water... they can have it be that one person owns the surface, another owns the top five feet, a third owns the water to the bed of the lake or stream, and fourth own the lake or stream bed... which means it gets nuts over issues like who owns the fish, and who's land is a duck trespassing on when it dives.

In Canada, like most places, they kept it simple... the Crown owns all rivers, lakes and streams, plus five feet on either side of a lake or river or stream, so if you want to fight about it, go talk to the Queen. That has made it much simpler, easier, and cheaper to control the management and licensing of water rights...

That's how it's done most everywhere... water is a community resource, and has to be managed according to community standards, for the benefit of the community.

That being said, if you're in Michigan, and if you're thinking about Great Lakes water, and if you're thinking about dropping pipes into it and sending water to California, well... you can't, because half the Great Lakes are owned by Canada, which means, because it's water, it's owned by the Crown, which means, if you try to take any without Her Majesty's consent, then she will bitch-slap you.

If, on the other hand, you're thinking about water in Michigan lakes and streams and rivers, well... are you sure it's clean enough that anybody would want to buy it?

On a philosophical level, nobody can really *own* a river or lake, because you're not really in control of it.

You can own a bottle of water, because you have complete control over where you store it, and when you take off the lid to drink some or let some evaporate, but you can't own a river unless you can control the weather that rains and snows to keep it replenished, nor can you say you own it unless you can control evaporation to stop it from drying away, which means... US law allowing for "ownership" of rivers and lakes flies in the face of what most every philosophers understands the definition of ownership to be, but hey, it's the US, which has always justified everything it's done with the generic write-off term of "because it's the American way".

So, to answer your question... Everywhere else in the world except the US, nobody owns the water... it's a community resource. In the US, individuals can own natural water ways as long as it's not on the border with Canada or Mexico, so go to your lands office and look up to see who's the owner of whatever body of water you're looking at... and if it's open for claim, go ahead and claim it, and be prepared to pay the land taxes as the owner, and then see if you can find a buyer willing to take it in whatever contaminated state you've found it, unless you can afford to purify it and still make a profit, all of which would be interesting, given that the US is a net importer of water, so who are you going to sell it to?

You're thinking California, right? Or are there other dry-spots closer to Michigan that would buy it?

Every body who have money and ability to take water
in her hand have been owns the water!!!!!!!!!