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March, 2010
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Villagers in Tanzania drink clean water from a well that was funded by the Sisters of St. Francis.
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The water that comes from each faucet in homes, schools, offices and assorted places is a service that someone has to provide. It is something we take for granted, even as we pay a monthly water bill. We need quality water services delivered at affordable prices. As long as that continues to be the case for us, there doesn’t seem to be a problem. However, that is not the case for much of the world. Nor is it the case in many parts of the United States.
In the US, some cash-strapped municipalities, mostly in poorer areas, frequently look to offload the responsibility for water services to the private sector. Indeed, numerous corporations are managing every aspect of water and making a very sizeable profit in doing so. The industry is growing. It is building new technologies to recycle our dirty water and sell it back to us. It extracts and moves water through large pipelines from aquifers and watersheds to large cities and industries. Water is bought, traded and sold on the open market like any other commodity. It is in the interest of these corporations to have governments deregulate the water sector and to allow the market a free hand in setting water policy. Internationally, a powerful corporate water cartel is extracting huge profits.
But water is not a commodity independent from the welfare of the human family. It is our life-blood and our future. Private investment in water must come under strict public oversight and government accountability. In 2006, the UN World Water Development Report stated: “To provide the poorest sections of society with adequate water services is typically viewed as a high risk enterprise that largely lacks opportunities for economic return. It is high time to bring the governments back in.”
Some of the experiences with water privatization in the US have not gone well. Atlanta, Georgia, canceled an extensive contract it had with a private water provider because of failure to comply with agreed upon terms, poorly provided infrastructure, and, in the end, unclean water. Both Laredo, Texas as well as Stockton, California canceled contracts over economic struggles with companies who tried to extract greater profits than local citizens anticipated having to pay. In Felton, California, citizens were so dissatisfied with privately provided water services that they actually voted to raise their own taxes in order to retrieve their water and have it returned to public domain.
There is a growing awareness of the need to protect water services from vulnerability to for-profit manipulation. Water as a resource is a public trust and privatization of related services needs to be managed with an eye towards assuring equitable access by those with economic resources and those without.
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