TFTT Report
Food & Water Watch Spins False Narrative on Flint
When Food & Water Watch released their latest flawed report comparing water rates across the country – a bogus practice that experts reject as misleading and unwise – we immediately took note of the chart listing the “Most Expensive Water Providers” in the United States.
After all, FWW had found that Flint, Michigan – a government-owned, government-run system – was charging the most for water service in the United States, all while providing water that was unsafe to drink. And furthermore, the next two most expensive water systems after Flint were also owned and operated by local governments.
For a group that solely promotes government-owned, government-run water systems, this had to be a troubling finding. But, sure enough, FWW has found a way to spin the narrative.
FWW staffer Mary Grant repeatedly told media that Flint was “an indictment of running water systems like a business.”[i] She reiterated the talking point in her blog, Lessons from Flint and the Price of Water Privatization: “The situation in Flint is a warning about what is at stake when communities lose local control of their water and outside officials come in and run water systems like businesses.”[ii]
To be clear, Flint is not a failure of businesses or business incentives. Flint is a failure of politicians and political incentives.
As Politico noted in its recent article, “Flint’s other water crisis: Money”, local officials had been using water bills as a way to raise millions of dollars for the city’s general fund. Reporter Annie Snyder explains, “Michigan law restricts local leaders’ ability to raise property and income taxes … That left Flint’s water and sewer revenue as one of the few cash sources available. By 2011, about [$5.3 million each year] from the water fund was being sent to the city’s general budget.”[iii]
The Washington Post has noted the same phenomenon: “For several years, Flint had been operating the water utility primarily as a financial entity.”[iv]
The FWW claim that Flint is a failure of “running water systems like a business” is a thinly veiled swipe at privatization. Yet the fact remains that the private sector had nothing to do with Flint. In fact, had Flint been a privately-run utility, rates would have been regulated and approved by a state utility commission based solely on the cost of providing water service, and the operator would have had to prove its costs were necessary and just through a rate case. Obviously no such check existed in Flint.
This is just one illustration of what can happen when political interests interfere with running a water utility. Sometimes, like in Flint, Milwaukee[v], Austin[vi], Columbia, S.C.[vii], and other places across the country, politicians use water bills as a way to raise funds they can’t otherwise get through taxes. And other times, as experts have pointed out[viii], politicians feel political pressure to keep rates low, leading to lower bills for constituents but deferred maintenance and investment in the water utility.
Bottom line, FWW either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care to tell the full story when it comes to water rates. Once again, their version of events on Flint shows a stunning commitment to spin ideology and ignore reality.