It is no surprise that National Association of Water Companies (NAWC), representing private water corporations, eagerly seeks to discredit and obfuscate findings of the recent report released by Corporate Accountability International (CAI) and Public Services International Research Unit.

It is also no surprise that NAWC has cherry-picked arbitrary statistics from around the country when doing so. NAWC thereby props up a rickety defense, skewing public view of NAWC-member United Water’s intentions in New Jersey and New York. NAWC’s letter is right out of a corporate PR playbook.

Despite what private water would have us believe, less than 8 percent of water systems in the United States are operated and managed by private water corporations. As we've seen here in Rockland County, New York, when a corporation like United Water is involved in a water system’s management, the mandate inevitably shifts from one of equitable access and quality, to one of sheer profit at rate-payer and environmental expense.

For years, Rockland County residents had to fight multiple rate increases and an unwanted, unneeded Hudson River desalination plant proposed directly downstream of a nuclear facility's discharge. In April of this year, United Water requested an 8-plus percent rate increase to compensate it for the $56.8 million it claims to have spent developing the project, in addition to a separately-sought 28.9 percent major rate increase. The desalt plant would have ultimately doubled our water rates. In June, in response to the major rate increase request, New York’s Public Service Commission expressed concern with United Water’s decade-long track-record of increases, citing the need for a “basic reorientation of management and corporate culture.”

As if these unnecessary costs weren't enough, it is preposterous that private water claims to “partner” with municipal public water systems. In order to accomplish its goals, private water companies like United Water undermine democratic institutions with cash-on-the-barrel lobbying and political interference. Those campaign contributions are public record and on the Internet. The track-record of private water companies doesn't sell their projects. Rather, the industry’s political interference does. In New Jersey in 2012-13 alone, United Water opposed four bills that would have increased the transparency of its operations and enacted key protections for city governments and community members where it operates.

These problems are not unique to our community. As CAI’s report details, around the country, the private water industry has failed to deliver on its promises, causing surging rates, quality concerns, and labor abuses. In some cases, these events have forced costly contract buyouts, class action lawsuits, scathing audits, a few indictments, and public service board investigations like PSC's current investigation of United Water's "accounting irregularities" pending here in New York. Cities across the region should heed the warning that the CAI report represents and think twice before relinquishing any control or oversight of their water system to the private water industry. Water is far too important a resource to gamble.

http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/...t_quality.html


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