My Sometimes Conservative Wife Just learned How Privatization works.

[Lasher]

48. Reminds me of the story of West Virginia American Water Company

In my area of West Virginia we once had smaller community owned and operated water systems. Each system had its own treatment plant. Everything was working just fine.

Then our County Commissioners bought into a proposal from a group of German investors. They sold our water systems to these investors, thereby privatizing them. Before long these and other smaller water systems were connected together until we had 300,000 people served by one big system. Separate treatment plants were closed in favor of one big one that draws its water from a single vulnerable source in the heart of West Virginia's Chemical Valley. Source reliability and diversity were sacrificed on the altar of privatization.

The rest of the story is by now well known. Our water was poisoned by a chemical leak. Freedom Industries has been harshly criticized for having leaked the chemical, and rightly so. But government officials don't seem to think WVAWC deserves any part of the blame. I think they must all be good friends.

We keep getting reassurances that our water crisis is behind us, but then we hear of yet another school that had to be closed because its water lines had to be flushed. Again. I've started to suspect we've been lied to all along.