Towns Try to Take Back Water Systems; Water Fights Are Simmering Across the Country as Municipalities Want to Regain Privately Owned Systems
Water fights are simmering in small towns across the country this summer, as rate increases irk residents and spur local governments to try to take over privately owned water systems.</br></br>Municipalities in Massachusetts, California and Texas have recently filed lawsuits or set ballot measures in a bid to gain control of their water systems. Private firms have defended their rate increases, saying they have had to spend money to improve the infrastructure and are entitled to make a profit.</br></br>Residents of Ojai, a small town in Southern California, will vote later this month on whether to fund the purchase of the water system serving them. In Blue Mound, Texas, the mayor has vowed to appeal a July court ruling that prevented his town from operating its water system. Also last month, a trial concluded in Superior Court in Worcester, Mass., in a lawsuit filed by Oxford, Mass., over the sale of its water infrastructure. A judge's ruling is pending.</br></br>In the 1980s and 1990s, private water companies pushed to buy or manage municipal systems at the same time the costs of maintaining these systems were rising because of age, which made sales attractive to cities, said Tony Arnold, a University of Louisville law professor who has studied water privatization. "In order to make a profit [and] invest in upgrades to the system, the companies [had] to raise water rates substantially and quickly," he said.</br></br>Joseph Zeneski, the town manager of Oxford, said he objects to residents having to pay a consolidated water rate that he said Aquarian Water Co. of Bridgeport, Conn., set for several towns. He thinks towns should pay varying rates because their water comes from different sources and that Oxford is unfairly subsidizing a water-treatment plant in another town. "They don't want to give up the Oxford water system," he said of Aquarion.