Major water shortages in Chile are a direct result of the free reign given to mining and logging companies by the Chilean government over the country’s dwindling water supplies, more than 100 environmental, social and indigenous organizations and over 6,000 protesters warned at a rally in Santiago this week.

On Monday the groups demanded that the state regain control of the country’s privatized system of water management, Marianela Jarroud reports for Inter Press Service and the Guardian, and delivered a letter to President Sebastián Piñera.

The letter slams the current water code, adopted by Augusto Pinochet in 1981, which, Jarroud reports, “made water private property by granting the state the right to grant water use rights to companies free of charge and in perpetuity. The code allows water use rights to be bought, sold or leased, without taking into consideration local priorities for water use, the organizations complain.”

“We have discovered that there is water in Chile, but that the wall that separates it from us is called ‘profit’ and was built by the [1981] water code, the constitution, international agreements like the binational mining treaty [with Argentina] and, fundamentally, the imposition of a culture where it is seen as normal for the water that falls from the sky to have owners,” the letter says.

“This wall is drying up our basins, it is devastating the water cycles that have sustained our valleys for centuries, it is sowing death in our territories and it must be torn down now,” it adds.

Click here for the full story.