Review of Reading 31: Privatizing Water

To be completely honest, I read the title of this reading and I really was not sure what "privatizing water" meant and who was involved! So I'll define and explain a few things as I go about the review.

Water Privatization: is short for a private sector (a part of the economy which is both run for private profit and is not controlled by the state) participation where supplies of water services and sanitation are set aside and owned.

This chapter was a little hard to follow so bare with me here. What seems to be the issue is something we take for granite every single day of our lives, water accessibility. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (MIF) have encourage coutries in debt to privatize their water. Meaning the right we have as humans (getting adequate supplies of water) is being seen as an "Economic Good" by our world leaders, as of 1992.

The book went into a little detail about the troubles of Chochabamba, the third largest city in the country. Saying that they signed over control of their waterworks, but it rose bills by 35%. As a college student I couldn't possibly imagine paying that much more for water! The people disagreed with this move because it was a resource they just couldn't live without. There was much violence and many protests against it, which eventually led to the rescission of the water contract.

Privatization of water is seen by the World bank and IMF as an opportunity to lure investments from international coorporations to help these countries in debt. When in actuality, they're making something that is a public trust and right, that the goverenment should be in charge of (access to safe and adequate supply of water) into an opportunity for profit. The government is failing to provide over 1.1 billion people with adequate supplies of water. The questions arising are how can these numbers be decreased? Will these private sectors help? There are now 36 countries all in africa that do not have adequate amounts of fresh water to meet the industrial, municipal and food production needs of their people. It is also said that by 2015, seven more countries will join the water stressed!

While countries like the US, with generally well run water systems are slow to privatize water systems, many developing countires are faced with rapid deterioration of their water systems and are looking for this private sector assistance. Many of these countries rely on questionable water sources and expensive private suppliers. Some places like Bolivia, where poor families are paying up to 10 times more for their truck water tanks than the wealthier people with piped water. Due to these large companies being motivated by profit rather than public service, people around the world have been dealing with drastic rate increases, job cuts, dropped conservation initiatives, and health services.

The whole process of privatizing water has challenged my thinking. There was potential advantages explained when privatizing areas where the governments are weakest and failed to meet the basic water needs. But there also are risks when dealing with weak governments where public interests are usually the last thing that is protected. It seems like there is a lot of room for corruption. I think the main thing I got out of this was that if they do choose to continue privatizing water to make sure that the public service is #1 on the list rather than profit. It seems almost unreal to me, that so many people around the world are so deprived of clean water! Like I said earlier, it's just something that we all take for granted but I am very thankful for.

Municipal rate: is an administrative entity composed of a clearly defined territory and its population and commonly denotes a city, town, or village or a small grouping of them

Urbanization: the physical growth of rural or natural land into urban areas as a result of population immigration to an existing urban area.

Infrastructure: can be defined as the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.

Paternalistic Sector: Group of people that make decisions on behave of others

Just this past year for Dr. Tornabene's class we toured the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District (WLSSD). We got to see how our water around here is cleaned, tested, etc. There is a lot of things to learn from this cite I highly recommend going to it!