The egregious incompetence of the public manager who took over and made decisions about the Flint water system should not be seen as an isolated issue of malfeasance. It needs to be considered in the context of the neoliberal movement to privatize public services, with water and sanitation systems prime targets around the world. I am familiar with these issues only because a family member had worked in the water industry, but an astute reporter should start looking into the larger picture. A good place to start might be the Wikipedia entries on “Water Privatization in the United States” en.wikipedia.org/... which provides some basic information about the “profit opportunities” that both domestic and international companies see in the prospect of privatizing more municipal and local water systems. A related article in Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/... makes clear that the drive to privatize public water systems is worldwide, with many similar issues in cities around the globe. A good reporter should also talk to people at the American Society of Civil Engineers who might know the larger picture or at the International City/County Management Association.
Evidently many municipal water systems in the U.S. had been private until the early 20th century, when the problems of cost, access, quality, and service led reformers to the creation of public utilities to provide water to local residents. The current efforts to re-privatize are an outgrowth of neoliberal politics, the attack on public employee unions, and the celebration of the market-- without the accountability that government oversight should provide. Privatization of water was one of the many efforts at privatization by Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. once she came to power. Note that control over the water system in Detroit has been a major scandal of the last decade, and it is one that is still not resolved. Efforts to privatize Detroit’s water system has also been under discussion in Michigan. Remember this is the system that had been providing water to Flint, but was deemed too expensive to continue.
Here are some of the issues: The interest in privatizing public water systems is part of the urban fiscal crisis. As city and county governments have suffered from decline of revenues, they have looked to ways to cut their costs, a major portion of which are salaries of public workers. With less leeway to cut salaries or resist negotiation demands of police and fire departments, cities have looked especially to the water and sanitation systems as places where they could cut costs by reducing employment and salaries. Proponents of privatization or public-private partnerships in which private firms manage the local systems which remain assets of the local governments have argued that private firms can manage the systems more “efficiently,” ostensibly because of their greater expertise. But the reality, according to the Wikipedia piece, has been cost savings by cutting the number of workers, substituting high skilled workers with lower skilled workers, and perhaps in some places breaking or renegotiating the union contracts of these city workers.
In addition, the investment in infrastructure, including the replacement of aging infrastructure has reached a crisis point as well, with the prospect of major financial outlays needed to address the needs. In this context, local governments have been attracted to the offers from private companies to provide large upfront payments that will enable infrastructure improvements, in exchange for long term cash flow from people paying their water bills. But, many analyses suggest that water has been underpriced for political reasons, meaning that the charges for water to local residents do not bring in enough revenue to cover both operating and maintenance costs in many water systems, especially infrastructure replacement. Water rates are regulated and any increases in charges have to be approved by public service commissions in most places. Once privatized, however, in some of these systems, rates have gone up.
Since one of the reasons that local water systems, especially in urban areas, have been under funded is because with the economy as it has been, many people are not paying their water bills. Delinquencies have been a major problem in Detroit, which has led to the city turning off water for those who do not catch up with their payments.
The situation in Flint isn’t strictly about privatization, but it reflects the sharp focus on local water systems as a place to save money for local governments. And, it is part of the same neoliberal thinking that has pervaded Republican politicians when they have had the chance to take over. The unimaginable incompetence, though, of not treating the water to avoid the kinds of toxins reaching the population, including so many children, should clearly lead to one or more people going to jail. This is not just poor judgment. It is criminal behavior.