For those who think that privatizing our public water systems is a good idea, I offer this counterpoint...
Margaret Thatcher privatized all of the UK's water utilities in the 1980s, and now we see the consequences of decades of underinvestment, shareholders stripping dividends out while rates rise and improvements are ignored, and rising debt.
@chromebook Since you seem to be rejecting both private and public water systems, I'm not sure what you propose instead. But I also reject your flippant "none..." There are many well-run public water systems. They are all (public or private) monopolies, hence overseen by public utility commissions. But efficient, modern public water agencies exist and should be scaled and emulated. And they don't strip profits out of communities.
@petergleick Oddly there were several private water companies before that AND there still are in Yorkshire. Carlton I think has finished as mains has been installed but I think Redmire is still going. Village owned and run
@petergleick Not quite correct. Scottish Water wasn't privatized and remains in public ownership. Northern Ireland Water is a Government Owned Company (GoCo).
Don't say "UK" when you actually mean England and Wales.
@petergleick Thatcher, the root (route?) of all evil! I remember celebratory news stories in the 1970s declaring the Thames so clean that salmon had returned…… Privatisation of essential services is both foolish and dangerous!
@petergleick natural monopolies should never be privatised. Thatcher sold it as the route to a share owning UK - Bob & Mary at No. 53 with shares in water, etc. What we now have is critical utilities owned by big funds, many foreign, leeching money from Bob & Mary and delivering crap services (literally in case of water)
I used to manage the mains replacement, leak reduction, for Calgary, Canada. An article the other day indicated Thames Water has 20X as many per kilometre, as I know Calgary did.
It went around the industry when I was starting out, that the newly-privatized utilities were raising rates, approved to get money to fix up old, leaky infrastructure.
It went around more quietly several years later, that they kept the money, indeed, cut replacement budgets.
@petergleick We have a private water system for a small neighborhood in north Idaho and it has been great. But I'm not sure that approach scales up well.
@petergleick
I lived in a town in the US where the private water company was taken over by a public agency, with the promise of better infrastructure. Rates more than doubled but nothing was fixed and the money was ripped off by elected and appointed officials.
I support utilities being public agencies, but it's not foolproof.
@petergleick Whilst money was cheap these organisations were also loaded with debt which was used to pay dividends to shareholders, £72b. The debt was often linked to inflation and now inflation is hot and money less cheap the orgs are creaking. By rights shareholders should help. Suspect they won't. It'll fall to taxpayers again.
No utilities should be privately owned. Nobody should be profiteering off necessities of life. All utilities should be nationalized and turned over to local or regional governments.
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