The Cost of Water
Following up on yesterday’s post, clean water is a right for all people. But for many towns, achieving clean water is only one step in securing that right. Many towns are relinquishing water rights to private equity ventures. Believing they have insufficient resources to replace water infrastructures that often are the sources of polluted water, municipalities are selling the rights to water profits in exchange for the investors’ agreement to replace aging water systems.
The result is unaffordable water for many residents. A recent New York Times article highlighted the dilemma for individual residents. Focusing on Bayonne, N.J., where water rates have risen 28% since water management was outsourced, despite representations from city officials that water rates would be frozen for the first four years of equity management. Residents also used less water while being billed at dramatically higher rates.
Private investors taking over water resources creates an automatic diminution of human rights. While private companies more easily can manage pipe replacement and other infrastructure repairs, the nature of the investment relies upon profits being generated for the investors.
Humans can adapt to detrimental living conditions of all sorts. Dirty air can shorten our lives, but typically consequences are not immediate. But without water, death comes within a matter of days. The state’s obligation to provide healthy living conditions is incompatible with privatization. Short sighted municipal managers often see only the immediate benefits of privatization – cash with which the municipalities can pay down existing debt. Short sighted planning most likely resulted from mismanagement that responded only to immediate needs or crisis. The long term impact of decision making is often missing from local government thinking.
The best way to ensure sustainability in meeting basic human needs is for planners to engage seventh generation thinking. The Iroquois Confederacy is credited with naming this philosophy that has been adopted by other native tribes. The philosophy requires that leaders consider the impact of their decisions on the seventh generation to follow.
The Iroquois constitution was the greatest influence for creating the US constitution. Unfortunate indeed, that the seventh generation mandate was not absorbed into the white man’s founding document.