Taking back our water
Source: By Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman, USA Today, August 21, 2007
....... In July, the Stockton City Council voted unanimously to roll back the largest water privatization in the West. After four years, the $600 million showcase deal with a multinational consortium, OMI-Thames Water, has been scrapped in favor of a return to public control.
The decision came after repeated court rulings determined that the deal violated California's environmental law, but the legal issue was only the last straw. Noxious odors drifted regularly from the sewage treatment plant. There were sewage spills, fish kills, increased leakage from underground pipes, staff turnover and increases in water rates after years of rate stability.
........ Now, doubts about corporate water privatization are spreading from small towns such as Lee, Mass., to midsize cities such as Stockton and metropolises such as Atlanta, where water privatization failed miserably in 2003.
Even so, whenever a bridge falls, a levee breaks or a steam pipe bursts, we invariably hear renewed calls to privatize. Let Stockton's experience testify that privatization is not the solution.