Wonder what happened to the Stockton case? The activists won, after all. A couple of months back, the Stockton City Council voted to end the Privatization Contract. Previously, two court rulings found that the deal 'violated the law'. Somehow, I'm not surprised, I had a feeling that they would pull it off eventually.
The end of the contract:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/05/EDC2RA7OG1.DTL
The first ruling:
http://www.arena.org.nz/water38.htm
The second one:
http://www.polarisinstitute.org/usa_judge_rejects_stockton_water_privatization_project
1 comment:
Prannoy - interesting article and thanks for this link. Here are a few things that sprung to mind when I read the article:
1. The writers are the producers of the movie "Thirst" that we saw in class :-) Certainly they are anti-privatization.
2. The city council in the movie voted 4-3 for privatization. Now they voted 5-0 against! How did this change? Well, at the time of the article, they had a new mayor and a new council! Talk about political risks.
3. Thames water was also very much to blame for their poor quality of service as the following excerpt shows - "In Stockton, citizen watchdog groups reported cutbacks in preventive maintenance, noxious odors drifting from the sewage treatment plant, increased leakage from underground pipes, sewage spills and fish kills. They protested the private consortium's failure - or refusal - to provide information about operations, profits and staffing. There were even questions about the design of construction projects that were expected to save the city millions. ". However, one gets the feeling that the citizens were watching the private company really closely - was the service truly better earlier? Rigorous research might be needed to answer this question!
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