TFTT Report

In reading the article, “Flint crisis reminds us: profit motive has no place when it comes to necessities,” we were shocked by the egregious introduction of a red herring to draw the private sector into the Flint water crisis.

To be clear, no private water company had anything to do with the water contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan. Flint’s water system – a government operation for decades – lacked investment and operational expertise, leading to poorly treated water corroding dangerously old, lead pipes. Conflating Flint with privatization is nothing more than a scare tactic with zero supporting facts.

The author’s ridiculous attempt to smear American Water, an organization that has never operated in Flint in its 130 years of existence, is offensive and without merit.

In addition, the author failed to tell the full story on several other fronts:

• The author hails Trenton as a success story, yet ignores some key facts. For instance, after activists blocked private investment in the Trenton water system, in order to make up for lost revenue, the city significantly raised water rates and property taxes. And, ironically, Trenton’s water situation has become so dire that the city now has to buy water from New Jersey American Water, the very company that wanted to invest millions in the city’s infrastructure in the first place.

• As part of her bizarre complaint that citizens must pay for infrastructure improvements through their water bills, the author cites a Food & Water Watch study that is misleading. A key context is missing from this so-called study: water rates are a reflection of water utility investment. A utility that is proactively investing to maintain its system will have higher rates than a utility that defers investment. The easiest way to keep rates low is to not invest in a system, let it deteriorate, and risk Flint-like failures.

  This is not a public vs. private issue. For example, in the nation’s capital, the head of publicly-run DC Water has stated rates must go up to maintain the system and replace aging infrastructure. And rates have gone up, enabling the city to transform a badly deteriorating system into one of the strongest in the country. Bottom line, while the author wants to blindly chide any water rate increase anywhere, it is important to recognize that a Flint-like disaster is far less likely to occur in a system making necessary investments than in one that is deferring costs to keep rates low.

• Throughout the article, the author writes of “coulds” rather than reality: what “could suddenly become,” what “could get worse,” what “could result in.” Instead of relying on scare tactics to spin a story, we prefer to look at facts. And the fact is that 73 million Americans are served by private water, and private water contracts have a 97% percent renewal rate within the industry since 2000. The fact is that experts across the political spectrum – from the S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the Brookings Institute, dozens of academics, and even the President of the United States – agree that private water companies provide proven and important options for municipalities facing water infrastructure and operation needs.

Beyond these points, the author clearly demonstrates her unfamiliarity with water treatment and delivery, arguing it is a “bare bones business” that doesn’t require private sector involvement. This is a ludicrous statement to make as families are dealing with lead poisoning borne from water treatment failures. Treating and delivering safe water to the tap is a difficult, complex process with thousands of variables in play. And, as we have seen in Flint, it is a high-stakes endeavor with potentially severe real-world consequences.

While running a water system may be a “headache” for some governments (as the writer asserts), it is not a headache for the private water industry. Governments have other things to do, but treating and delivering water is our specific expertise and our core mission, and has been for hundreds of years.

We agree that many communities across the country face a water infrastructure crisis and need urgent investment. However, while the writer wants to live in a fantasyland where infrastructure investment magically takes place with federal funds that don’t exist or with money that appears without any rates going up, this is not reality. 

The reality is many communities do not have funds or access to capital to address their most pressing water infrastructure needs. The private water industry provides access to capital and operational expertise. The choice is clear – we must invest in our systems or suffer the consequences of neglect and mismanagement. In light of Flint, it is absurd that the writer would advocate limiting the scope of options available to municipalities to make the investments needed to provide safe and clean drinking water to residents.