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Our Precious National Fluids
Lest we get high and mighty about living in the
freest, best-est nation in the world--the Property
and Environment Research Center reminds us that our water is
basically communist:
It is one of the great ironies of America. In the most capitalist, free-market nation in the world, most citizens receive their water and wastewater services from government entities. Contrast this with the United Kingdom, where almost all water services are provided by private systems.
While more than half of drinking water utilities in the United States are privately owned (National Association of Water Companies, 2008), they provide only 13 percent of Americans with their drinking water. And about 3 percent of Americans get wastewater services from the 20 percent of wastewater utilities that are privately owned.
Former EPA water administrator G. Tracy Mehan reports on his thirst for freedom here [PDF].
Taktix®|3.28.08 @ 3:26PM|#
Perhaps that's why we're the largest consumer of bottled water
in the world.
Market forces at work, anyone?
DannyK|3.28.08 @ 3:28PM|#
Tell me how to privatize water services without leaving us open
to a massive Enron-style market manipulation and water speculation
racket, and we'll talk.
Otherwise, I think we should leave water the hell alone, at least
until January 2009.
Guy Montag|3.28.08 @ 3:30PM|#
Public water vs. British teeth. This is a horror of Socialism that I can live with.
BakedPenguin|3.28.08 @ 3:36PM|#
...the Property and Environment Research Center reminds us that our water is basically communist:
...H2O of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your
drains!
Ok, I'll leave now.
Guy Montag|3.28.08 @ 3:37PM|#
If you people would stick with rain water and pure grain alcohol then we would not be in this mess.
the innominate one|3.28.08 @ 3:40PM|#
hey, you haven't paid your oxygen bill!
remit the monies to me immediately, or I'll cut off your O2
supply
|3.28.08 @ 3:41PM|#
Maybe in principle water should be privatized, but there have
been enough instances around the world of large amounts of people
getting screwed when it happens.
Perhaps when we get out of Iraq and stop the billions in subsidies
to irresponsible banking we can set the priority to water.
Guy Montag|3.28.08 @ 3:54PM|#
Adamness,
Were you the staffer for Sen. Jobn F. Kerry during the
Swisse-cheesesteak incident in Philly a couple of years ago?
Kolohe|3.28.08 @ 3:54PM|#
I agree with Adamness. I like free markets as much as this next
guy, but public water/sewage is one of those areas where my small
'c' conservatism says 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
And water works has one of the better ROI's
anyway.
|3.28.08 @ 3:58PM|#
Perhaps that's why we're the largest consumer of bottled
water in the world.
Market forces at work, anyone?
Except we also have some of the cleanest tap water in the
world.
|3.28.08 @ 4:03PM|#
Perhaps that's why we're the largest consumer of bottled
water in the world.
Correct me if I am wrong, but don't a LOT of bottled water
producers merely bottle tap water?
I know for a fact that Aquafina (Pepsi) and Dasani (Coke) get their
water from municipal water sources and were forced via litigation
to have to put that on the bottle now.
|3.28.08 @ 4:05PM|#
Were you the staffer for Sen. Jobn F. Kerry during the
Swisse-cheesesteak incident in Philly a couple of years
ago?
Eh? No.
I do know that when you're in Philly, you get the Wiz. That alone
makes me more qualified to be president than Kerry.
Mike Laursen|3.28.08 @ 4:06PM|#
Water rights is one of the most inherently political areas of human society. Even if we were all living in a near anarchotopia, there would still be haggling over water.
|3.28.08 @ 4:07PM|#
I imagine that a privatized water system would be more effective
at sending market signals to low-income people who lack the
motivation to improve their lot.
Yay!
Mike Laursen|3.28.08 @ 4:11PM|#
I imagine that a privatized water system would be more
effective at sending market signals...
This much of your comment is actually correct. Right now, the true
price of water is obscured, often leading to wasteful usage.
|3.28.08 @ 4:17PM|#
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we don't pay for water. I thought we just pay for the service of bringing it back and forth from our homes. My mom told me that a long time ago, and I never really looked into it.
thoreau|3.28.08 @ 4:33PM|#
Actually, joe, I suspect that the biggest impacts of a privatized water system would be in the agricultural sector.
Gilbert Martin|3.28.08 @ 4:33PM|#
"While more than half of drinking water utilities in the United
States are privately owned..."
Yes and some of those are owned by the e-vil foreigners!
Several years ago, I owned some stock in what was then the largest
publicly traded water company in the U.S. - American Water Works.
It was bought out by a German utiltiy company (and I made a nice
profit on the shares).
There will be a lot more government owned water utilites that get
bought out going forward as well. There is huge amount of deferred
maintainence on water systems that governments either can't or
won't deal with themselves so they will sell out to companies to do
it for them.
Rolling up these utilities is the business model of water companies
like Aqua America.
Mike Laursen|3.28.08 @ 5:02PM|#
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we don't pay for
water.
It would really depend on the legal arrangements in the specific
place where you live. For example, some farmers in Indio,
California have sold their water rights to the City of San Diego,
so some part of your water bill in San Diego would be to pay for
that water. (Don't even know if I got the details right on that,
but it's just an example of the type of arrangements that are
made.)
Mike Laursen|3.28.08 @ 5:32PM|#
One of the places with fascinating water laws is New Mexico. They still have a system of community irrigation systems called "acequias". The community elects a respected member to be a "mayordomo" who makes a lot of the decisions about how the water is allocated.
|3.28.08 @ 5:42PM|#
sodium fluoride ingestion does not help cavities. Topical doses of sodium fluoride does. Sodium Fluoride is a serious poison, why do we ingest in completely arbitrary quantities? 1ppm of sodiuom fluoride is the most common target for public utilities....this means every liter of water has the same sodium flouride as a cubic centimeter of toothpaste.
Paul|3.28.08 @ 6:34PM|#
Tell me how to privatize water services without leaving us
open to a massive Enron-style market manipulation and water
speculation racket, and we'll talk.
I don't know, Danny, but I'm guessing that someone in the UK
does.
|3.28.08 @ 10:08PM|#
Tell me how to privatize water services without leaving us
open to a massive Enron-style market manipulation and water
speculation racket, and we'll talk.
The Enron-style market manipulation was not Enron-style, but
government-style, by favoring one particular company over true
privatization.
The way to privatize is to sell the assets on each region at
auction, and then let companies open their own water-distribution
system without requiring special licenses and other tricky
impediments invented by bureaucrats.
|3.28.08 @ 11:50PM|#
I live in Atlanta and earlier this decade our water system
turned operations over from the city to United Water. It wasn't
totally a private ownership - I still made my check out to the City
of Atlanta. They did an OK job, but ran afoul of the city workers.
Eventually, they were hounded out and turned it back over to the
City of Atlanta.
Since then my water bill has quadrupled.
To be fair, the water system was in poor shape and needs a lot of
upgrading. And I have a feeling there was no ay in hell a private
enterprise would have been allowed to raise prices that much.
Not really sure that private ownership of certain utilities is
politically viable in the current climate.
von Laue|3.29.08 @ 12:34AM|#
joe: is privatized natural gas and electricity distribution a
problem for you?
Oh wait, you were just trolling. Never mind. Go on with your bad
self.
Mike Laursen|3.29.08 @ 12:44AM|#
...to low-income people who lack the motivation to improve
their lot.
Oh, and this last part of your comment is true of some low-income
people. Not true of all. Oh wait, you were just trolling. Never
mind.
Divine Rod|3.29.08 @ 5:54AM|#
Am I the only one here with a well in the back yard??
Bunch of city slickers I guess...
|3.29.08 @ 10:48AM|#
public water/sewage is one of those areas where my small 'c'
conservatism says 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Unfortunately, the "ain't broke" part is not accurate. Water is not
priced properly, and consequently vast quantities are wasted.
Vermont Gun Owner|3.29.08 @ 10:55AM|#
Am I the only one here with a well in the back yard??
Bunch of city slickers I guess...
No, you aren't. Well water is far superior to town/city water. I
can't stand to drink the tap water at school with all its gross
additives.
Don't forget private wastewater services (septic systems).
Guy Montag|3.30.08 @ 5:51AM|#
Wow, all this bait for the Al Goreites to snap up and complain about "sprawl", but they jumped on a Ron Bailey thread instead. Alas, they are not as predictible as they sometimes seem.
Tom R|3.30.08 @ 10:51PM|#
My teeth lack the straightness of an American braced set but the water here is great!
|3.31.08 @ 9:32AM|#
"Tell me how to privatize water services without leaving us
open to a massive Enron-style market manipulation and water
speculation racket, and we'll talk."
Private water companies have always (or close to it) been heavily
regulated by state Public Service Commissions, Departments of
Health, Departments of Environmental Protection, Water Management
Districts, County Commissions and so on. It isn't anything like
energy markets.
But if you must know the one huge reason why private water would
never lead to Enron-style meltdowns: water systems don't require a
threshold amount of water to stay functional, whereas electric
grids do, thereby giving those who trade in energy significant
market power even with a small market share. There really are no
"spot markets" in water, but if there were, they wouldn't be prone
to such manipulation.
Bruce Majors|3.31.08 @ 12:59PM|#
There is an excellent way to save precious water resources and
it should be made mandatory:
http://www.superdeluxe.com/sd/contentDetail.do?id=D81F2344BF5AC7BBA570AF3E867D7ACCBB1D9B08C9E9F4CC
|3.31.08 @ 3:01PM|#
This is why I love libertarian websites. Privatize sidewalks!
You're water's communist!
This stuff was compelling to me when I was 13. I can't imagine how
anybody over that age can find this kind of rhetoric interesting or
persuasive.
|3.31.08 @ 3:18PM|#
Divine Rod: My grandmother has a well in her backyard, and it's pretty foul. It's barely good enough for showering, but they definitely don't drink it. I'll take my government water, thank you very much.
|3.31.08 @ 3:26PM|#
Privatization of public services has been a disaster in almost every circumstance - the only people who benefit from it are the profiteers and speculators, not the public who get degraded services at higher prices. Why would we want to try it again and hope for different results?
|3.31.08 @ 3:30PM|#
Vermont Gun Owner - we don't have too many backyard wells here in Brooklyn. But we do have damn good (public) tapwater thanks to the Croton resevoir and NYC's excellent water system.
|3.31.08 @ 3:30PM|#
If, by "privatizing water", you mean allowing private companies
to charge fees in return for the service of delivering potable
water to my house - then fine.
If you mean something akin to a deal like that of Cochabamba,
where Bechtel bought the rights to all water in the town and even
collecting rainwater in buckets was "theft" - then piss off.
|3.31.08 @ 3:57PM|#
ChicagoTom is correct. Most bottled water is tap water, i.e., from a government-controlled origin.
|3.31.08 @ 4:43PM|#
the innominate one:
Someone once said to me:
"Some Libertarians want space colonisation because they long for
the freedom and opportunities for technological development they
expect it will bring...other Libertarians want it because they
relish the thought of spacing people who can't pay for air."
(I tend to agree with the character in "The Rolling Stones" who
said, "An artificial colony has to have more regulations than a
girls' school," and I don't think a lax girls' school was
meant.)
|3.31.08 @ 4:44PM|#
Oh please. It's a natural monopoly. Market defects, price fluctuation, and other problematic effects associated with unrestrained capitalism can interfere with Americans' access to many products and commodities without causing much of a stir. However, when it comes to basic utilities, Americans like their state-owned monopolies. Case-in-point: California was pretty mad when Enron started playing games with energy, causing hug price fluctuation and brownouts. Water is the same. No one wants your stupid libertarian claptrap reform.
|3.31.08 @ 5:18PM|#
"Bless the Maker and all His Water. Bless the coming and going
of Him, May His passing cleanse the world. May He keep the world
for his people."
Fremen saying, recited by Liet-Kynes, in the presence of Paul
Atreides.
|3.31.08 @ 6:36PM|#
"If, by 'privatizing water', you mean allowing private
companies to charge fees in return for the service of delivering
potable water to my house - then fine.
If you mean something akin to a deal like that of Cochabamba, where
Bechtel bought the rights to all water in the town and even
collecting rainwater in buckets was 'theft' - then piss
off."
I think we mean the regulated US version. I'm glad somebody
realized that there is a difference though.
|3.31.08 @ 8:38PM|#
"While more than half of drinking water utilities in the United
States are privately owned (National Association of Water
Companies, 2008), they provide only 13 percent of Americans with
their drinking water."
Perhaps this is a matter of definition. Is an individual well a
"privately owned water utility?" If so, then a lot of "privately
owned water utilities" serve only one house.
|4.1.08 @ 12:20AM|#
Let's not forget that a lot of city utilities "subsidize" their water operations from tax revenues. That tends to encourage waste because improper price signals are sent. Not all, mind you. But some small towns have no business providing water.
Guy Montag|4.2.08 @ 11:16AM|#
We all missed the biggest point of all: The government puts DHMO in the water to control us.
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