At World Forum, Support Erodes for Private Management of Water

By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: March 20, 2006

MEXICO CITY, March 19 — For more than a decade, the idea that private companies would be able to bring water to the world's poor has been a mantra of development policies promoted by international lending agencies and many governments.

It has not happened. In the past decade, according to a private water suppliers trade group, private companies have managed to extend water service to just 10 million people, less than 1 percent of those who need it. Some 1.1 billion people still lack access to clean water, the United Nations says.

The reality behind those numbers is sinking in. At the fourth World Water Forum, a six-day conference here of industry, governments and nongovernmental organizations, there is little talk of privatization.

Instead, many people here want to return to relying on the local public utilities that still supply 90 percent of the water to those households that have it. <snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/international/americas/20water.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

(In addition to their evil GM foods, they've been quietly buying up water rights all over the place.)

Corporations are good at providing things under competiton.
Water aint it.
They cannot make water.
Let the people own the water, let the people own the utility right of ways. Let the companies produce the pipes, the pumps, the filters, etc.

Where water is plentiful, water barely needs to be metered - it's the fixed costs of infrastructure that matter. This infrastructure enables land to be intensively developed, which benefits the relatively few landowners - hence, the cost of infrastructure should be borne by the the landowners in proportion to the benefit they recieve - a tax on the land value they own, value that was created by society.

In many places, once the infrastructure was in place and paid for, the actual cost of usage would be very low, lower than the cost of metering it.

In places with water scarcity, water could be metered as usual.

it is better for private water companies to steal
from the poor, and then pay gov't officials

...as oppossed to...
having the gov't officials steal directly

from the point of view of gov't officials