Privatisation of water supply

[omon]

Whoever puts up the capital with the prospect to recover cost along with a chance to make a profit..

that is what i have a problem with, once profit isn't made, operations seize, so no water, no good, it might be ok, for cars, even gas, but not water.

Who runs the state? You? Me?.

whoever you and me vote for. or whoever is appointed by elected officials, hey you can govern too, become politician, and it will be you.

No, that's not how it works. The way it works now is I use however much I'm willing to pay, not however much I need.

Do I need to take a shower every single day? Yes. Do I need to take a 45 min shower every single day? Maybe. Who are you to tell me how much water I "need?" I "need" however much I am willing to pay.

that is what he and i meant, you use as much as you need\want, but you pay for it. nowhere he implied that anyone decided how much you need, and limits your usage. why would you even assume that?????
you arguing over wording, not paying attention to the context.

however i would not mind if during emergencies usage is enforced or even limited, i,ve seen ppl wash their cars with a garden hose and fill up their pool during drought, there are too many ignorant mofo with "i don't give a sh..t" attitude.

[Double Edge]

Water supply is a vital resource, too vital to be subject to market whims or control. I think water should be publically owned and administered, through a national utility company, with water charges to maintain piping and supply, based on usage. A flat fee is unfair, you should pay based on however much you need, which would encourage more prudent use as well. I doubt someone would leave the taps on all night (done in many parts of rural Ireland to prevent freezing) if they were paying for it.

A flat fee ? that would be quite a luxury.

Way it works here is they have a graduated scale, with bands. Depending on your consumption, you fall somewhere within six bands. Each band has an increasing per unit cost which is the kilolitre. The difference in unit cost between the lowest & the highest band is a factor of six (!). And thats just for domestic use, for commerical its another six bands again and the unit price there starts at the highest point where domestic leaves off. The system clearly penalises those that use more than others. And you pay more if you're a business. So wasting water comes with a penalty.

The water supply itself is intermittent. So ppl build storage tanks (usually underground) where water collects from the utility and then pump it above into smaller tanks situated at the top of the building for normal use.

So when gunnut makes the subtle point that its more to do with what you are willing to pay rather than what you need, i would agree. You might need anything but in the end you can only get what you can afford whose unit price is set by somebody else.

The source for this 'water rights' vocabulary, comes from a book called 'water wars' by Vandana Shiva. She creates this concept called 'water democracy'. Her background, a nuclear-physicist turned activist with a history of opposing mega-projects like dams due to the displacement and environmental damage that can occur if not properly planned leading to a tragedy of the commons, so to speak.

The Principles of Water Democracy
At the core of the market solution to pollution is the assumption that water exists in unlimited supply. The idea that markets can mitigate pollution by facilitating increased allocation fails to recognize that water diversion to one area comes at the cost of water scarcity elsewhere.

In contrast to the corporate theorists who promote market solutions to pollution, grassroots organizations call for political and ecological solutions. Communities fighting high-tech industrial pollution have proposed the Community Environmental Bill of Rights, which includes rights to clean industry; to safety from harmful exposure; to prevention; to knowledge; to participation; to protection and enforcement; to compensation; and to cleanup. All of these rights are basic elements of a water democracy in which the right to clean water is protected for all citizens. Markets can guarantee none of these rights.

There are nine principles underpinning water democracy:

1. Water is nature's gift
We receive water freely from nature. We owe it to nature to use this gift in accordance with our sustenance needs, to keep it clean and in adequate quantity. Diversions that create arid or waterlogged regions violate the principles of ecological democracy.

2. Water is essential to life
Water is the source of life for all species. All species and ecosystems have a right to their share of water on the planet.

3. Life is interconnected through water
Water connects all beings and all parts of the planet through the water cycle. We all have a duty to ensure that our actions do not cause harm to other species and other people.

4. Water must be free for sustenance needs
Since nature gives water to us free of cost, buying and selling it for profit violates our inherent right to nature's gift and denies the poor of their human rights.
Water is limited and exhaustible if used nonsustainably. Nonsustainable use includes extracting more water from ecosystems than nature can recharge (ecological nonsustainability) and consuming more than one's legitimate share, given the rights of others to a fair share (social nonsustainability).

5. missing entry (!)

6. Water must be conserved
Everyone has a duty to conserve water and use water sustainably, within ecological and just limits.

7. Water is a commons
Water is not a human invention. It cannot be bound and has no boundaries. It is by nature a commons. It cannot be owned as private property and sold as a commodity.

8. No one holds a right to destroy
No one has a right to overuse, abuse, waste, or pollute water systems. Tradable-pollution permits violate the principle of sustainable and just use.

9. Water cannot be substituted
Water is intrinsically different from other resources and products. It cannot be treated as a commodity.

This larger idealogy is being applied to the question of whether to privatise or not a city's water supply. Similar premise as ben's thread about garbage collection. Is water supply a right or a service

[crooks]

But it's ok for it to be subject to state whims and control?

It's not subject to state whim, it's got a guaranteed state supplier. You wanna moonshine your own water to show how badass libertarian you are? Feel free, but pay for it yourself. For everyone who can't afford to moonshine, public option and pipping is there. Water as a private consumer product (one we'd have no option about consuming) will see entire areas cut off daily. You're pretty smart, say I'm a private contractor who owns a lake and the piping, the sole lake and piping, that supplies an isolated region. Frankly, I can charge whatever the hell I want, there's no other major resovoirs, no incentive for someone to build pipes from further away to try and undercut me, due to initial capital costs. I am a water baron, and they've no alternative to me bar going down to the shop and buying bottles of Perrier for their showering which is hardly much better - in your system, who stops me (and in very lush areas, price gauging between companies)? Will your god (the holy market) save us from destitiution? Thirst tastes good in the name of neoliberalism, I'm sure.

Public is good. Of course what does that mean, exactly? We all get a say in what to do or how much to charge? Do we all get a vote? Or does "public" ultimately mean "state?"

Ironically, a socialist would argue for full democracy in public industry, glad to see you're moving left. Dogma can only get you so far, in your case, and indeed your lack of willingness to comprehend the idea of a public anything is a gaping intellectual hole, frankly. Of course we control it, even without a direct vote, because it's a public 'utility' (we don't have that word in European English) company, we vote what we want it to look like. State water to high? As Omon said, run for office on a water rights platform and change it. I've tried many times to get elected to the board of a big corporation that's raping my enviroment and polluting my water, I wonder why I keep failing?

Absolutely! I will be the one to determine how much you need.

No, I determine what I need. I then pay for it. Money goes back into maintaining high quality pipping. Simples and fair.

[crooks]

A flat fee ? that would be quite a luxury.

Way it works here is they have a graduated scale, with bands. Depending on your consumption, you fall somewhere within six bands. Each band has an increasing per unit cost which is the kilolitre. The difference in unit cost between the lowest & the highest band is a factor of six (!). And thats just for domestic use, for commerical its another six bands again and the unit price there starts at the highest point where domestic leaves off. The system clearly penalises those that use more than others. And you pay more if you're a business. So wasting water comes with a penalty.

The water supply itself is intermittent. So ppl build storage tanks (usually underground) where water collects from the utility and then pump it above into smaller tanks situated at the top of the building for normal use.

So when gunnut makes the subtle point that its more to do with what you are willing to pay rather than what you need, i would agree. You might need anything but in the end you can only get what you can afford whose unit price is set by somebody else.

The source for this 'water rights' vocabulary, comes from a book called 'water wars' by Vandana Shiva. She creates this concept called 'water democracy'. Her background, a nuclear-physicist turned activist with a history of opposing mega-projects like dams due to the displacement and environmental damage that can occur if not properly planned leading to a tragedy of the commons, so to speak.



This larger idealogy is being applied to the question of whether to privatise or not a city's water supply. Similar premise as ben's thread about garbage collection. Is water supply a right or a service

The point I was making was that I oppose a flat fee - this debate is being had here, I'm in favour of metering. I agree with virtually all the water democracy points as well (cept the missing one).

[Double Edge]

Oh ok, then you're proabably going to agree with Dr. Vandana in this speech she gave back in 2002. She's a believer in 'Earth Democracy'.

The joke about Hilary Clinton not having any cows had me in splits

[nvishal]

Not surprised. Any sector that begins to go private in india is met with a brick wall. The BJP govt tore through most of it during that only time they were in office.

The govt run sectors are brutal corrupt but the fact is that they "work". That seems to be the major perception here. A change is a risk which people are not willing to take. Someone needs to put the right wing parties back in office and have another round of disinvestments. IMO, only they have the will to survive a self-made tsunami.

[Double Edge]

Not surprised. Any sector that begins to go private in india is met with a brick wall. The BJP govt tore through most of it during that only time they were in office.

BJP is in power in my state. Let's say those jokers have not really met expectations with all the theatre we've had over the last cpl of years. I voted for them thinking they would be better than the previous govt that was useless. BJP has been different not necessarily better. Though they did get relected for a second term so some people think they should stay.

If you read my earlier posts, costwise, bills will go up for no perceptible improvement. There won't be any competition because just one private party will get it per town. That's the main point AFAICT otherwise i'd be more enthusisiatic.

The govt run sectors are brutal corrupt but the fact is that they "work". That seems to be the major perception here.

The main argument put forward by opponents of privatisation in this particular instance is..

Does private control have a role to play when the 'commons' are involved ?

[nvishal]

If you read my earlier posts, costwise, bills will go up for no perceptible improvement.

Fresh water is not abundant, its limited. 1/3rd of the supply is lost in distribution. Privatisation can help meet the requirement and improve things.

There won't be any competition because just one private party will get it per town. That's the main point AFAICT otherwise i'd be more enthusisiatic.

I do know why but maybe the govt wants control of it.

But. You do not pay for water. You pay for its purification and distribution. That is the cost.

Does private control have a role to play when the 'commons' are involved ?

Spare me the fancy words.
Will you go to the river everyday and fetch yourself the required water? Will you purify every amount of it? Does everyone live close to a river source?

What's established is that we need someone to deliver the water to our homes. Its either the govt or the private companies. Why does it have to be the govt which has to deliver it to us? Why can't the private companies deliver it to us? In this particular case, the govt is corrupt and very inefficient.

What do we pay for a months supply of municipality water? Rs 100-150? I don't know about bangalore but in mumbai, the water lines run through slums, crap and stuff like that. There are god knows how many major leaks which the locals make daily use of. I doubt if any private company will ever be willing to take control of the water dept. in mumbai.

[Chunder]

YAY.

Public ownership of the water supply has LONG since allowed government to form an ever increasing strain on individuals that do not use it nor own it.

Cop the following for a load of crap.

Last year I bought a property which has it's own water supply (and self sustained through the rain which fell on the roof). It has been this way for 30 years prior to when I bought it.

However, the Government, due to the deteriorating nature of the river that flows past my place, had decided to pipe water down from over 100 k's away, and when the pipe line was going past my town, they 'offered' to lay it through our township. Subject to conditions.

The Conditions were, that if you were not a pensioner, you had to pay 3 grand for the privilage to have it run past your property. If you were a pensioner, you didn't have to pay a cent, and when your property was sold, SA Water would recoup the cost from the sale of the property. They put it to vote, and of course, the pensioners voted for it, and the rest of us didn't. Well, the pensioners won.

Now, I had to find 3 grand to pay the government, to put the infrastructure infront of my property, which they own. Another 300 Dollars for the water meter, and every quarter I pay a service fee and save the River levy of some $52.00.

How much water do I use? NONE.

This doesn't happen when you don't use electricity, a fixed phone line or gas. Instead, I subsidise some department, by force, for something I neither want, nor use, yet 'democracy' has forced upon me.

Imagine if I private company, demanded money from you for running a gutter outside your place - how your might feel.

No, I didn't get charged when I signed up for a service, it was force upon me. So now, I subsidize, all these greedy old pricks, WHILST paying for the infrastructure the government keeps, and they have the GALL to charge ME with a 'Supply fee'.

Private.

[astralis]

gunnut,

Government screws up the market (Fannie/Freddie) and then blame the private players who played by the screwed up rules.

i still have yet to hear a convincing argument that Fannie/Freddie caused an international housing bubble in the US, spain, ireland, iceland, latvia...all at the exact same time. or why the bubble was primarily concentrated in relatively high-end housing in all the countries. also, not sure how Fannie/Freddie caused the commercial real estate bubble, which they don't lend to.

i have no doubt that Fannie/Freddie contributed to the crisis but they weren't main drivers.

anyway, back to the topic at hand. privatization of water supply will work well until the first major natural disaster in the country. under private control the costs of water will shoot up immediately, and -especially- bad for those at the disaster zone (costs go up most there; and ability to pay decreases the most). depending on the severity of the disaster, this will lead to widespread rioting, or an extreme backlash in the voting community of the disaster zone. the result will be the end of, or at least major curtailing, of privatization. you end up with a half-hybridized, sub-optimal result. we've seen this happen before. some things just do not privatize well.

[S65]

I see a theme discussing the unreliability of private companies in the face of adverse events and poor profits. This in of itself should not be an argument against privatization of water. Supply and demand in this context have very real results for those living under these scenarios, which are not necessarily undesirable. When referring to public property and services, I don't know of many instances where government's total cost is lower than private interests competing with each other.

Reductions in the supply of water would raise prices. This encourages conservation of this resource when it events have or are expected to reduce supply. Where I live, water's prices change seldomly by the government authority. We have drought alerts and etc. when snow levels are insufficient for summer, but I don't know of any drastic changes in the price of water which make it in the consumer's interest to conserve. Under this regime, consumers eventually do reduce consumption, when the taps are dry.

Crooks has a very valid point, that if the cost of water is heavily subsidized in some areas, private operation independent of these subsidies can cause prices to increase many times or no service for the moment in consideration. This would reduce the quantity of water consumed overall, and on an individual level, leave people with no water supplied. I am callously in favor of this outcome. Otherwise, assumptions exist that water is a right, individuals have the right to live wherever they choose, individuals have the right to be free of the actual costs of doing so, and individuals have the right to the productivity and efforts of others to reduce the costs of their choices. To the society that assumes these costs, the majority of whom are likely poor, freedom from acknowledging scarcity creates inefficiency in the allocation of their resources -- in other words, degrading their standard of living.

I am not opposed to privatization of this resource if government does its job in laying the ground rules for creating an open and competitive market.

In response to the listed principles that make water a right, that author seems to have gross misunderstandings of how markets work. If water was truly thought to be available in unlimited supply, no costs would be associated with it. The listed principles could easily have "water" substituted with any other naturally occuring item or phenomena -- calcium, minerals, phosphate, light, food, energy and so on, demonstrating how these points are not unique to water. Denying that it may be advantageous to pollute water for some people indicates misunderstanding of how relative prices work. These points do not add anything substantive to the discussion.

[astralis]

best solution is a national utility open to private investment to 49%. the pressures of stockholders would force efficiency and responsiveness into the system while ensuring a minimum of disruptive price jumps.

[S65]

Would these stockholders enjoy the benefits of dividends and increasing stock prices? This would imply the need for profit. Given that it is a national utility, would it receive money from the national budget? I recognize that stockholders are stereotypically concerned of the bottom line, as they should be. Forcing efficiency might be accomplished if its survival is directly related to performance, but it is a national utility to 51%. What powers would these stockholders have in directing the utility, replacing personnel and so on? What would attract their dollars to invest?

Would comparing water provisioning to government provided electrical generation and infrastructure be an apt comparison to gauge effectiveness? I know in my region, private and government providers of electricity sell to each other and to the final consumer. In areas that are poorly supplied with water, importing from distant regions is possible -- Los Angeles and Las Vegas come to mind. Government itself can be a consumer of water for local distribution, can't it?

[bolo121]

In the Indian Context, Privatisation would only make things worse. A private operator would invest as little as they could get away with, jack prices as high as possible and watch the dough roll in. Suitable sweeteners to state governments would ensure they did nothing.
The screws would be turned tighter each year with 'inevitable' inflation as the excuse for more and more hikes in charges.

[gunnut]

that is what i have a problem with, once profit isn't made, operations seize, so no water, no good, it might be ok, for cars, even gas, but not water.

If you want water badly enough, and there are no providers, then a profit potential exists. Someone will enter this market to provide a service that people want. That's how the private sector works.

whoever you and me vote for. or whoever is appointed by elected officials, hey you can govern too, become politician, and it will be you.

It could be. Do you really want me to be in charge?

that is what he and i meant, you use as much as you need\want, but you pay for it. nowhere he implied that anyone decided how much you need, and limits your usage. why would you even assume that?????

Because enough people believe water is a right rather than a commercial product.

you arguing over wording, not paying attention to the context.

What is the context? Water is a commercial product? Or water is a right?

however i would not mind if during emergencies usage is enforced or even limited, i,ve seen ppl wash their cars with a garden hose and fill up their pool during drought, there are too many ignorant mofo with "i don't give a sh..t" attitude.

Then raise the prices to control usage. Instead of $1 for a unit of water, make it $2 during drought. I'm sure the water providers will be happy to raise the rates when supplies are constrained.