Would You Rather Get Your Water From Your City Government - or From a Corporation?

Would You Rather Get Your Water From Your City Government - or From a Corporation?
Thursday, 11 December 2014 11:14
By Michelle Chen, The Nation | Report

In this uncertain economy, whether you think the glass is half full or half empty, you probably take for granted the fact you can fill it by turning on the tap. Last summer, that basic service vanished for Detroit’s working-class households: neighborhoods awoke to the humiliating reality that in the world’s richest nation, this impoverished city’s water had run dry—the city’s stopgap “emergency” response to fiscal collapse.

Detroit’s devastation seems freakish, but we may soon see more resource crises nationwide if pro-business officials decide water isn’t so much an essential entitlement as a commodity to be traded like corn and crude oil. According to research by Corporate Accountability International(CAI), the experience of dozens of communities that have experimented with privatizing their water infrastructures illustrates the danger of prioritizing cost concerns over human rights.

Water privatization in poorer countries has been criticized for leading to exploitation and destabilization of local infrastructures, particularly under “free trade” systems that encourage pro-market reforms. But in US cities too, water systems are being bled by market forces. And in nations rich and poor, when water is corporatized, CAI warns, injustice tends to flow freely:

Private water corporations frame water in business terms, placing economic outcomes over social objectives, preventing prioritization of the poor and vulnerable. Treating water as a mere commodity also relegates it to the whims of the market and bypasses the accountability and transparency of the public sector.