California: Less water, more saving - With the water surplus gone, the state will have to conserve

The Orange County Register ^ | Wednesday, January 1, 2003 | PAT BRENNAN

[Timm]

Corporate control of systems and delivery is bad. They do not allow historical public use of water. They can price water out of the reach of many consumers. They can control who gets it.

Such good points. They apply equally well to food. Private, "corporate" distribution of food is bad. Corporations could price food out of reach of many consumers. They can control who gets it. You wouldn't be able just to show up on public land and harvest food anymore. That's why it's such a good thing that the government controls food supplies and distributes them.

Oh, wait. Government doesn't control food supplies, and doesn't distribute them. And food is in abundance and quality in America like nowhere else in the world. So I guess you're wrong. Wow, go figure.

[hedgetrimmer]

Oh, you must own stock in RWE or one of those other global water corporations.

Oh, wait. Government doesn't control food supplies, and doesn't distribute them

Let's see, who puts the price on a carton of milk? The free market or the government? Who prices the wheat and corn and who pays farmers NOT to produce? Who gives away surplus cheese to the people it thinks ought to have it? Who regulates the trucks and trains that ship the product? What is the Dept of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration and what do they do? Who has recently told the farmer that they must get a PERMIT before they can even plow their land? Who has implemented laws to make it cheaper to buy apple juice concentrate from China, rather than use the product of our own fields?

You wouldn't be able just to show up on public land and harvest food anymore.

Farmers still own their land. Not for long, I know, with the push for global government, global corporate control of sovereign resources and world socialism. But until then, farming in this country is not done on "public property". But wow, I guess you're wrong. Go figure.

[Timm]

Let's see, who puts the price on a carton of milk? The free market or the government? Who prices the wheat and corn and who pays farmers NOT to produce? Who gives away surplus cheese to the people it thinks ought to have it? Who regulates the trucks and trains that ship the product? What is the Dept of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration and what do they do? Who has recently told the farmer that they must get a PERMIT before they can even plow their land? Who has implemented laws to make it cheaper to buy apple juice concentrate from China, rather than use the product of our own fields?

And all of this shows what? That the government really does own food and does distribute it? As excited as as you are about trying to show that I'm "wrong", you've forgotten what I said originally. "Regulation" is something different than the government owning and distributing food, as you of course know. And most regulation is aimed at keeping food prices up, not down. Most regulation is unnecessary to ensure wide and cheap distribution of food, in other words. What is necessary hardly constitutes government ownership.

But you're plainly infatuated with the idea that you've come across an "exception" to the efficiency of the market. You're not alone. The NYTimes writes an article a week explaining how education/health care/political consultation/advertising/power/phones/banks/pick anything is an exception to market economics. They've been wrong every time I've read the paper, and you're wrong about water. If food, gasoline, clothing, housing, and the other necessities of life can be efficiently privatized so can water.

[hedgetrimmer]

But privatization critics say the (World) Bank’s calculus (for privitizing water) is flawed on numerous grounds.


First, higher prices for water mean the poor have to use less or go without. In Ghana, for example, price increases have already forced many poor people to cut down drastically on their use of water. People often go to public places to fetch water for free or for a token fee, and children spend a lot of time fetching water and carrying it back to their parents.


The University of Ghana, which has adopted the philosophy of “struggle alongside the people,” permits community members to use the university’s water. People travel from all parts of Accra to the university to fetch water.


Public health officials recognize that serious health risks are imposed by the lack of access to clean water, including transmission of water-borne diseases such as guinea worm, cholera and other diarrheal illnesses. The World Health Organization estimates more than 2 million deaths annually from diarrheal diseases due to lack of access to adequate water and sanitation services. “The situation will get worse with the full cost recovery policies placed on the Government of Ghana as part of the World Bank loan conditions,” says Amenga-Etego


In South Africa, water charges imposed in 1999 forced some poor people in Kwagulu-Natal to rely on polluted river supplies for their water. Public health officials trace a 2001 cholera outbreak, which has killed dozens, to the water pricing policy.


In Latin America, cholera has returned to the continent after being absent for nearly a century.


In addition, increased consumer fees for water may also hurt those who are not even part of the formal water pipe system. In many countries, private tanker truck operators buy water from the public water utility. Increased wholesale water prices trickle down to the poor.


What is often referred to as “leaks” include illegal hook-ups and other informal survival strategies used by the poor. Thus, World Bank policies to reduce “leaks” can actually reduce poor people’s access to water, since households with “illegal” hook-ups may end up having to pay for services.


Finally, there is little evidence of the multinational water companies’ commitment to expanding service, especially to poor communities where the ability to pay increased fees is limited. Instead, the multinationals, which have only recently started their major moves into developing countries, have quickly racked up very poor social and environmental records. In Indonesia, Suez and Thames Water have both been charged with tampering with water pricing. In South Africa, protesters claimed that Suez was taking excessive profits, grossly overcharging for its services, and leaving the municipality unable to pay its workers a living wage. Saur (a subsidiary of Bouygues) is alleged to have made the largest of 12 bribes that are the subject of various investigations into corruption and political pay-offs in the World Bank-funded Lesotho Highlands Water Project [see “Falling for AES’s Plan?” Multinational Monitor, June 1999]. There are many other cases.

[Timm]

Guaranteeing minimal access to water doesn't bear on the question of privatization. Just as food stamps are distributed to the poor to be redeemed at private grocers so too might the state subsidize the payments to private providers of those who cannot afford water.

Whatever the merits of redistribution of this kind it does not require public ownership and management of water supplies. And, much like the case of food, advantages are likely to be had from private ownership and management of water supplies, even given a system of subsidies for the poor.

[hedgetrimmer]

You're not telling me any advantages.

In truth, wherever global corporations have taken over water, people go wanting. In truth, the world bank would like to have all water controlled by corporations. The world bank wants to see desalination plants everywhere because with them every drop of water generates revenue, there is no downstream usage, no fishing or recreational usage. In fact, if certain corporations are allowed to control the world water supply, then the water YOU use will be DRAMATICALLY reduced. The world bank, green cross international and the UN feel if the water supply is reduced, then people will have fewer babies. This plan includes the UNITED STATES and US water department managers are participating in forums to accomplish just this.

I have provided reports from several countries showing that the privatization of water has harmed people and the environment. Where are your facts that show otherwise?

[Timm]

It's not an open question whether market incentives are, other things equal, more efficient than centralized distribution. This has nothing to do with water in particular. What you want is evidence of the most obvious and uncontroversial facts of modern life? You need to acquaint yourself with two centuries of economics, not a smattering of articles about the World Bank.

The overwhelming success of free market provision of just about every good and service, vital or otherwise, is one of the most obvious facts about the modern world. That's all there is to it. Incentives work. Everyone knows this; it's no good pretending otherwise. Even the radical left (outside of China and Cuba) is too embarrassed to make a general case for socialism anymore. This is why the left pretends to favor markets in the abstract, but then claims that they are concerned about specific problems. It's not the market per se, it's "corporations", or specific corporations. They're not against private supermarkets, but they are against private doctors. They're not opposed to private colleges, private car manufacturers, or private housing, but they are opposed to private primary schools. They're not opposed to a free market, but they are against tax cuts on various spurious hypertechnical grounds. Etc. It's a pretty pathetic legacy for a political and economic movement that used to be so bold as to suggest that command economics would lead to greater growth and prosperity than an unregulated market. That water should be kept out of the hands of a private provider is just the latest in this tired series of tricks.

So, at any rate, the advantages you claim not to see in private water distribution are the obvious, familiar, and well established ones. We can expect greater supply, greater service, etc., in a market in which private providers compete to provide water as compared to centralized distribution. Just as we do in every other area with which we have any experience, as everyone knows.

Having said this, it is worth mentioning particular problems with water distribution. One is that a fixed delivery infrastructure is expensive, and perhaps not amenable to competitive installation. Perhaps. We had private railroads in the U.S. for many decades, each of which would build expensive rail infrastructure. We have competitive phone companies. So it's not clear why we couldn't have competitive water delivery. (We have competitive delivery of fuel oil and drinking water already, notice). I see no reason to conclude a priori that water distribution is a natual monopoly. Admittedly, if it were, there would be reason for stricter regulation of it (like cable T.V. or local phone). Even still, this isn't an argument against privatization, exactly. It's an argument for monopoly regulation, perhaps.

Poor countries have a host of problems. Poverty is the cause of them. That poor countries have, sadly, dirty or inadequate water is hardly an indictment of private provision of water. You might as well claim that famine in the most miserable areas of the world shows that the government should seize and operate grocery stores in the U.S. The phrase "global corporation", thrown around like some contemptuous epithet, doesn't provide any more power to your remarks, your expectations to the contrary notwithstanding.

[hedgetrimmer]

"That poor countries have, sadly, dirty or inadequate water is hardly an indictment of private provision of water."

It is. The people who have the money get the water. Others don't and have to eke it out from elsewhere. Remember the story about the Ghanians who were walking to the university to get water because they could not afford to get it from the "private distribution system?"

Recently Canadians were outraged when their water company ( a global corporation) decided to fill tankers with their water and ship it elsewhere because the market for it was better elsewhere. The corporations will take water out of an environment and move it somewhere to be sold because of "better profit". The Canadian people were outraged by this, because it was water originially captured by a municipal water system and was never designed to support a burgeoning human population elsewhere. Same thing happened in Gurneville, CA. Company wanted to harvest water from the river to sell elsehwere. Low water flows would have killed fish and harmed the tourism industry there. But the water corp didn't care about any of that because that wasn't the business THEY were in. In Virginia, customers of a formerly municipal water district had complaints about service and water quality. In our constitutional government they should be allowed to petition the governing board and effect changes, recalling board members if their decisions are particularly egregious. However, because the water is now "owned" by a global corporation, the rules no longer apply. They have ignored the peoples concern. The people can go to the NAFTA tribunal and complain, but do you know the names of the people on the tribunal? Do you have any power to remove them if they make decisions that are detrimental to your community? NO! Global corporations care only about acheiving global monopolies on products and nothing about sovereignty or local populations. This has been proved in a host of ways.

It wasn't until the UN started a drive to "commoditize" water that this effort to capture the global water supplies caught hold. Until then, and rightly so and best for humans, water was a public good.

The people who want to commoditize water and argue for it in the name of "free markets" are naive in thinking there will be a "free market" once ownership is taken out of the hands of the community. Those groups that buy into the UNs idea that water MUST be commoditized, are buying into an effort to reduce the world population by reducing the amount of water available to individuals, and to give complete control over all of us serfs to global bodies who do not care a whit for our concerns or needs.

[Timm]

It is. The people who have the money get the water. Others don't and have to eke it out from elsewhere. Remember the story about the Ghanians who were walking to the university to get water because they could not afford to get it from the "private distribution system?"

Ugh. Again, these worries don't have to do with privitization, per se. They have to do with subsidizing access by the poor. A public utility might charge something for water, and so exclude some people. This could be prevented through subsidy, one form of which would be a requirement to provide free water to the poor. Even publicly owned water suppliers, in other words, will not necessarily provide universal and free access. There will have to some redistributive measures to ensure such access. There's nothing importantly different about private providers in this respect, either.

Just look at food (again). Food is privately owned and distributed, and the cost to the very poor is subsidized. People do not starve in the U.S. or other food producing countries. And food is much more abundant, cheaper, and in significantly greater quality than would be true if the government farmed and ran food distribution centers. But this talk of access for the poor is just a non sequitur, and one we've already discussed at that. And now you're just repeating yourself from earlier messages anyway.

Again, some people are desperately poor-- that is precisely why water is not being sold to them. (And one must be very poor not to have enough money in one's budget for _water_.) The same goes for medicine, food, and anything else without active subsidies. But this problem hasn't raised calls for countries to socialize their food production and distribution. (Indeed, it is precisely private ownership of food producing farms that has given rise to the spectacular advances in food production in my lifetime. Similar increases in supply can be expected from private provision of water.) What has been demanded are redistributive measures, such as free provision of farming technology, food price subsidies, loan forgiveness, etc. There's just no reason to think that food and water are different in this respect.

[hedgetrimmer]

Its really a discussion of local control versus global control. Trying to correlate the food distrubution system with water doesn't fly because the methods of storing and distribution are completely different.

If you support freedom, then you must support local control of resources. If you support global control, then you advocate the so called "free market" commoditization of water, which will never be the product of a free market but under control of unelected bureaucrats for NAFTA, GATT and the World Bank. I for one prefer freedom.

[BullDog108]

Oh, and Lake Tahoe is not a natural lake, but rather a reservoir with a dam operated by the Federal Bureau of Reclaimation!!!

BS!

Lake Tahoe was there when the first "white men" came upon it, General Fremont. The water level may be maintained now by a dam, but the lake has existed for thousands of years....

[SierraWasp]

Judas Priest! I never said the BOR dam created the lake!!! It transformed it into a reservoir and that is NOT, I REPEAT, NOT BS!

[BullDog108]

Lake Tahoe is a NATURAL LAKE. It has been for thousands of years. It will be for thousands of years. Get a grip, dude.

[SierraWasp]

I never said it wasn't. You're the one that "lost it," by yelling "BS!" in a crowded theatre!!!

[BullDog108]

You're the one using exclamation points and screaming names similar to a terrible band. Lake Tahoe IS NOT A RESERVOIR. It is a lake. A natural lake. One of the most beautiful lakes on the planet. The dam is there only to control the outflow of the lake into the Truckee River to prevent Reno from washing down into Pyramid Lake every Spring runoff.

Have a good day.

[SierraWasp]

Have a good day, yourself!

For someone who introduces himself on a thread by trying to shout me down, it pleases me that I immediately "got your goat!!!"

All I had to do was simply find out where you tied it!!! (grin)

P.S. I'm going to watch the niners. Since you are "over the hill" in NV, land of hop-rabbits and pucker brush, I hope you can keep the alkalie dust and sand out of your keyboard. Say hi to Art Bell for me in the "Kingdom of Nye!"

[BullDog108]

Now I know why wasps are killed as pests.

I live in Idaho, clymer.

Hope the Niners get clobbered.

[BullDog108]

34 - 14 so far. Turning out to be a GREAT game. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

[BullDog108]

Oooooooooooops. Oh, well, NY deserved to lose after the way the niners came back in the last half. Great game. One of the best comebacks in NFL playoff history, IMO.

[SierraWasp]

Yup. Second best in the history of the NFL postseason, in fact.

Hey, sorry 'bout not lookin closely enough at you flag on your home page and puttin you in NV. I shoulda seen the reference to your proximity to Sandpoint and remembered where that is.

I had a great friend in Bonners Ferry and I've lost track of him. Ever heard of Ernie Giezelman? Enjoyed your pics of your heavy artillery. were you up there when the FBI was snipin citizens during the last Bush Administration?