Atlanta Water Department Woes Continue - No More Privatization To Blame

Atlanta's watershed commissioner resigns

In the wake of water bills that have been grossly inaccurate being generated from a new billing system and new metal water meter covers that have the wireless transmitters but which don't seat properly into the ground which has caused several injury lawsuits.  Several notable breaks in large water mains that have flooded nearby homes.  Even more reports of small water leaks that have been reported multiple times by the communities only to be met by an unresponsive Water Department.   All of these points shows that the Atlanta Watershed Department is in a world of trouble.  Its leader has been forced to resign.

This tale would be just a run of the mill series of events in a large city except that it comes about 7 years after the City of Atlanta terminated the privatization contract of "United Water" - the company that was contracted to run the city's water and billing system more efficiently.  The initial agreement came with great fanfare.  Its collapse was even greater as some chose to dance on its grave in celebration.

• 1998: Atlanta Signs The Nation's Largest Public-Private Partnership
• 2004: Public Citizen: The United Water Fiasco In Atlanta Shows The Flaw In Water Privatization Model 

Between back then and now though the same outcomes remain and the customers angry - don't wait for there to be an attack swarm from one segment of the news media and activist community.

You see - when United Water crashed and burned it was used as a poster child for the activists who sounded the alarms on "the conspiracy to profit off of water at the expense of the poor" and global anti-privatization efforts of government operations in general.  They said that capitalist entities have no place in core government operations.

The proper way to understand  how these two scenarios of failure will be reported differently is to consider the agenda of those who will do the reporting.   The pro-big government activists who believe they own the narrative of events in this space of two modes with regards to failure of civic services such as water and electricity:

• When it comes to problems after Privatization the profit motive from the capitalistic entities has greed replacing social justice in the exploitation of poor people who need the vital services.  As money is transfered from the poor into the bottom line of the company a great injustice is rendered
• When it comes to problems in traditional government run services the unsatisfactory results that are shown is a product of either the incompetence of political/ideological adversaries who need to be voted out of office OR the larger structural imbalances that are in place in this nation where the type of services in question do not receive enough funding from state and federal sources - again an element if ideological disenfranchisement being present

The underlying agenda in both cases are the same - POWER

The constant Private-Public ideological battle is a subset of the Capitalist-Quasi Socialist battle that is constantly with us.

The goal of either side is to cherry pick among the facts on the ground that fit their particular argument and promote those to make one's point.