A very good example of why water should NOT be privatized:

[Dover]

The people along with city officials have been up in arms.
It will be very interesting to see how they fare with the laws/legal system.
It may be a matter of who has the deepest pockets to wage the war, but I'm
placing my bets on the people ultimately winning this one, some way or other.
It is pathetic that this practice is not forbidden at the national/federal level.
This could get really ugly. 'For profit' companies have no place in water
utilities. This is, no doubt, a battle that will be waged repeatedly until
this collective resource is taken out of the hands of private ownership.
A perfect example of the new "unregulated capitalism".

===

Water hike pits city against company
Pflugerville votes against large price jump

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/williamson/water-hike-pits-city-against-company.

===

Water rate raise rankles residents.
Monarch could jump prices more than 40 percent!

http://impactnews.com/round-rock-pflugerville/146-news/15103-water-rate-raise-rankles-residents


==

Pflugerville joins Coalition of Cities to protest Monarch Utility rate increase

http://www.digitalpflugerville.com/newsarchives/archivedetails.cfm?id=1069

[PDJane]

1. There is no benefit in privatizing the commons.

Even my very conservative son has come to this conclusion; he is now of the opinion that all of it, water, energy and resources, should be under the control of the commons, since it is a security issue.

[Dover]

3. Well "unregulated capitalism" has already been let out of the barn.

It will be quite a battle to get them back in the barn, let alone find a willing 'regulatory posse'.
Better yet, and as you suggest, we need a new system with 'the commons' as the true center.

[bvar22]

9. Health Care also belongs in The Commons,

...as well as the Common Responsibilities.
None of the following should EVER be allowed, or receive a nickle of Public Money:

*Private Prisons

*Armed Military "Contractors" (Mercenaries)

*Private Intelligence Gathering Corporations

*Private "Charter" Schools

*Private Health Insurance Corporations

*Faith Based ANYTHING

*Privately owned Voting Machines, Vote Counting Machines, and Vote Compilation & Reporting Machines or Systems

In a democracy, ALL of the above should be Publicly Owned and Operated
with 100% transparency and accountability to the Public.
Any movement to privatize ANY of the above should be a HUGE RED FLAG.


You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their excuses.
Solidarity99!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[FBaggins]

2. There are good reasons why it should not be privatized... but I don't think this is one of them.

Note that people are protesting and reportedly the city is with them. When a private company provides the water supply, you can sue them of get the local government to regulate their behavior.

If it's the county that supplies the water... who do you sue if the rates go up too much?

[jeff47]

4. You don't have to sue.

There's these "election" thingies that come along regularly, which allow you to replace the people in charge.

Utility bills going up too much? Replace the county government next election, instead of waging a multi-decade legal battle against the private utility. As an added bonus, that's much, much easier then trying to come up with a legal justification for reducing rates.

[FBaggins]

7. Municipal utilities are not run by politicians

It takes a much larger abuse by a bureaucracy to get a politician kicked out of office than to get a protest started.

And politicians are more likely to pick up the phone and complain on behalf of their voters when it's a profiteering corporation rather than an internal department that they have to fund some other way if the fees aren't increased.

[jeff47]

10. They are not directly run by the politicians, but they answer to the politicians.

Meaning replacing the politicians can lead to replacement of the people running the utility. The "county water company" executives may be nominally independent, but they're chosen by the politicians.

"It takes a much larger abuse by a bureaucracy to get a politician kicked out of office than to get a protest started."

They don't have to be 'kicked out'. Elections mean they have to please the majority of voters or lose their job. Lots of politicians fail to get re-elected, especially at the local level. (Getting to state-level office or higher is such a big deal to local politicians precisely because of the reduced accountability)

"And politicians are more likely to pick up the phone and complain on behalf of their voters"

Their complaints land in the same circular file as the complaints from the public. Issuing a 'strong statement' decrying the higher rate isn't going to do anything about the higher rate. It's a county supervisor. They can't do much to the utility, since they're regulated at the state and national level.


How, exactly, do you expect a lawsuit to succeed against a private utility due to "overcharging"? The accounting to justify the increased charges is not difficult to do. In fact it's already done by the time the increased rates are forced on the public. So you sue, they show their books, and then what? The numbers add up, so you can't challenge that (we assume said utility isn't as dumb as Enron). "That's a lot more money" isn't going to stand up in court.

Let's assume you're hoping through discovery to demonstrate their books overstate their costs. And let's assume your requests stand up to the utility's challenges and you find their real costs were much lower. Well, you still haven't won. They can claim the costs were just estimates, and they were high due to volatility in (insert place here) or maintenance turned out to be cheaper than expected.

So let's pretend further that you've managed to prove it was actual fraud. Which is a major leap, btw. You still haven't won. You weren't suing over inaccurate books. A decade has passed, and you've reached the point where the IRS or similar entity is going to investigate the utility's accounting system. Oh, you do have a huge bank account to pay for years and years of legal fees, right?

In the absence of a law explicitly limiting the profit of the utility, you still haven't proven that you were illegally harmed. And in most places I'm aware of, there is no explicit limit on profit - only that it must be 'reasonable'. Which means they only have to convince the judge that their profit is 'reasonable', which isn't that hard to do. They can point to the oil companies and show much larger profits, so theirs are 'reasonable' in comparison.

On the other hand, you've gone through 2 to 5 elections during the same time frame.

[wtmusic]

13. Should be noted that the city can deny the rate increase.

If so, Monarch would have to appeal to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

This is as it should be - turning lawyers into cops is extremely inefficient for preserving an overarching social need. Everyone wants access to clean, healthy water. Everyone needs it.

We learned our lesson with Enron.

[CreekDog]

15. PG&E (private) vs. my muncipal water company (run by elected officials-yes you're wrong)

as usual. :eyes:

[FBaggins]

16. You're absolutely right

Except for the "as usual" nonsense.

It turns out that there are areas where the Mayor is the CEO of the water "company" and the City Council is the board of directors. Seattle appears to be one such.

[CreekDog]

19. not here, we have an elected water district board

and that's not as uncommon as you make it sound.

[Nederland]

12. Exactly

The best protection against price gouging is competition, not government control.

On the flip side, the best guarantee of price gouging is a private monopoly.

[wtmusic]

14. Yes and no.

Who owns the pipes and pays for maintenance? Is there really competition when residents have no individual choice, and the city is locked into a multi-year contract? What are the costs of switching to a new provider?

[Nederland]

17. A good point

In an ideal world, pipe and the water distribution system would be state owned or a regulated monopoly, but residents would have choices of various providers of water. Much like how in many places residents can choose to buy wind power over some other source of electricity.

[wtmusic]

18. My utility allows me to pay extra for 60% renewable electricity

but electrons are electrons. If I paid extra for good water, I'd still get the mix everyone else gets (it sounds like this utility was providing poor-quality water).

A very, very thorny issue. Just finished this book, an overview of the business of electrical power:



The general impression it creates is that the grid is held together by Scotch tape and glue, regulation is all over the map, and we need some firm leadership from the top down.

[Nederland]

21. True

All the water would get mixed together, so there would be no point in choosing water that had better properties than others. However, it would still allow you to choose a supplier that had a better price (competition therefore keeping prices down) or a supplier that acquired its water in a way you deemed to be a more environmentally sensitive way. I think there is a benefit to offering customers both of those things.

[KansDem]

5. Better let the Bush Family know...

Paraguay in a spin about Bush's alleged 100,000 acre hideaway

Meeting the new couple next door can be an anxious business for even the most relaxed home owner. Will they be international drug traffickers? Have they got noisy kids with a penchant for electronic music? As worries go, however, having the US president move in next door must come fairly low on the list.
Unless of course you are a resident of northern Paraguay and believe reports in the South American press that he has bought up a 100,000 acre (40,500 hectare) ranch in your neck of the woods.

The rumours, as yet unconfirmed but which began with the state-run Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, have triggered an outpouring of conspiracy theories, with speculation rife about what President Bush's supposed interest in the "chaco", a semi-arid lowland in the Paraguay's north, might be.

Some have speculated that he might be trying to wrestle control of the Guarani Aquifer, one of the largest underground water reserves, from the Paraguayans.

--more--
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/23/mainsection.tomphillips

Perhaps the Bushes want to become the "Saudis of water."

[toddwv]

6. Nead Moar Deregulation

Unregulated privatization is better...ALWAYS*!!!







*except when it's not.

[valerief]

8. Nothing will stop the rich from getting richer at the expense of humanity. nt

[freethought]

11. Certain things should not be privatized....ever!

Specifically those things that whose presence/absence can mean the difference between life and death.

[The2ndWheel]

20. How far does that non-privatization extend?

Just humans to other humans, or humans to the rest of life?

Does the other 99% of life get to use the water when it wishes, or is it just at the whim of the Human 1%?