Cholera and the age of the water barons
The explosive growth of three private water utility companies in the last 10 years raises fears that mankind may be losing control of its most vital resource to a handful of monopolistic corporations.
Canada
Hard water: The Uphill Campaign to Privatize Canada's Waterworks
Hamilton was the first privatized large water utility in Canada, a country where waterworks have been overwhelmingly a public affair – and where most people like it that way. The Hamilton experience was supposed to demonstrate an alternative, free market model, supposed to change public opinion. It has. But not as expected.
Australia
The big pong down under
Less than two years after turning control over to a privatized firm, Adelaide took on a certain stench.
United States
Low rates, needed repairs lure 'big water' to Uncle Sam's plumbing
By and large, Americans have a safe, plentiful and cheap water supply, but three days in 2002 were a case study in the nation's water woes. The country's geriatric water pipes need to be fixed or replaced, and government and industry studies have estimated that it will take between $150 billion and $1 trillion over the next three decades to do the job.
Indianapolis opts to control its water
City wanted to 'protect their most precious resource'.
Water system troubles a troubled city
Camden's poor fell victim in a water deal polluted by the city's chronic debt and rampant corruption.
Colombia
A tale of two cities
Coastal Cartagena was the first of about 50 cities and towns to privatize its water in Colombia. The capital Bogotá bucked the privatization trend, refused World Bank money and transformed its public utility into the most successful in Colombia.
Indonesia
Water and politics in the fall of Suharto
Two powerful multinationals deftly used the World Bank and a compliant dictatorship to split control of a major city's waterworks.
Philippines
Loaves, fishes and dirty dishes
Politically connected families and private companies split Manila in two to share turf. At first, the two companies brought miracles by bringing running water to thousands of poor people who never had it. Now the miracle has faded as one company bails out, leaving behind enormous debts.
Argentina
The 'aguas' tango: Cashing In On Buenos Aires' Privatization
Politically connected families and private companies split Manila in two to share turf. At first, the two companies brought miracles by bringing running water to thousands of poor people who never had it. Now the miracle has faded as one company bails out, leaving behind enormous debts.
South Africa
Metered to death
The biggest problem in this country ravaged by AIDS, tuberculosis and malnourishment, is water. Few can afford it. But with World Bank blessing, the government is trying to end water subsidies, forcing millions of South Africans to seek their water from polluted rivers and lakes. The result: one of the largest outbreaks of cholera.
France
Defending the internal water empire
While peddling the benefits of free-market privatization abroad, France carefully guards its own borders against foreign companies, claiming water is too important to be controlled by outsiders.
Water and power: The French connection
France is the birthplace of modern water privatization, but its leading companies have been rocked by scandals and allegations of influence-peddling.
World Bank loans
Promoting privatization
Despite World Bank contentions that it does not force privatization on the poor, research by ICIJ and the bank itself showed that privatization is playing an ever-increasing role in bank lending policies.
Data analysis
Methodology: The Water Barons
The ICIJ created a database of federal lobbying activity reports filed by water companies, utilities and their trade groups between 1996 and 2002. We acquired paper reports filed by these entities and then keyed them into an electronic database, which was used for the analysis.