Excerpted:
“Corporations and investors are ramping up a concerted, multi-pronged effort aimed at forcing governments to privatize public services and to commodify water in the global commons. Already, much of England and France have privatized water systems. The result has been rate increases, deteriorating service, loss of local control and increased corruption. Since water services were privatized in France, customer fees have increased by as much as 150%. A number of public officials have been convicted of accepting bribes from companies bidding on public service contracts and sentenced to time in prison.
Private corporations seek to increase profit margins by cutting costs; hence lay-offs and inferior services almost always accompany privatization. In England, private companies fired nearly 25% of the work force, approximately 100,000 workers, when they acquired rights to the water system. Delays in service and accidents routinely follow the firing of often the more experienced personnel. Since 1999, Thames Water, the largest water and wastewater company in England, has been convicted of environmental and public health violations two dozen times and fined roughly $700,000 after allowing raw sewage to flow into open waterways, over streets, onto people’s lawns and over children’s toys—even into people’s homes.
The same multinational corporations aggressively taking over the management of public water services around the world are now vying for the lucrative U.S. market, one of the world’s largest with annual revenues estimated at $90 billion. A change to the U.S. tax code in 1997 opened the way to greater private sector involvement in the U.S. water delivery and treatment business. Companies are now able to bid on 20-year contracts that include the operation, design of new plants or upgrades, maintenance and even complete transfer of ownership of water systems to the private sector. Until now, mainly small public utility operators have controlled the U.S. water industry. In rural areas, small, privately owned utilities were common, but multinational corporations are rapidly buying even these out. These companies have weaseled into venues like the U.S. Conference of Mayors where they peddle privatization as a simple, cost-saving solution to cities’ aging infrastructures and regulatory compliance headaches.
On a global scale, water privatization is being pushed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in dozens of financially-strapped countries, where global water conglomerates are dramatically raising the price of water beyond the reach of the poor and profiting from the Global South’s search for solutions to its water crises. Corporations, such as Vivendi, Suez, RWE and Bechtel, cherry pick the profitable urban water systems while letting shantytowns and rural areas fall by the wayside. The World Bank has made privatization of urban water systems a condition for receiving new loans and debt cancellation. In Ghana in 2001, the World Bank required urban water rates to be increased 95% to prepare for privatization by making the water system appear more lucrative for international bidders. Following these rate increases, a number of people were jailed for being unable to pay their water bills. Many people who live in urban slums without access to tap water pay even higher prices for water delivered by private tanker truck operators. The poor, particularly women or girls whose traditional duties include collecting water, and babies suffer considerable hardship, illness and even death when they are forced to consume unsafe water after public supplies become too expensive.”
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/Water/activist/articles.cfm?ID=9589
This is a large article but well worth reading. Please note the comment that corporations have only one duty…..to make money. Privatizing our water supplies is not in the interest of the public.
The PPJ Gazette 