Why public ownership is key: private water and the problems of sewage pollution and leaks.

Britain’s private water companies are yet again in the news. After reports on high and regular discharge of raw sewage into the country’s rivers (The Guardian, 31 March 2022), it is their high levels of water leakage, which make the headlines in the current drought. While 14 billion litres are the daily demand in England and Wales, another 3 billion litres are lost due to leaks (BBC, 12 August 2022). In this blog post, I will argue that the type of ownership is fundamental when thinking about how to tackle these problems.

Water privatisation? Finland says no!

In early January 2020, the municipality of Jyväskylä, located in the Central Finland Region, announced its intention to part-privatise between 30 and 40 per cent of its multi-utility company Alva, including water, energy and heating. Bringing in expertise from the private sector would better equip the company to tackle current market challenges, the municipality stated. Moreover, mirroring water privatisation arguments elsewhere, privatisation was said to promise increased efficiency and lower consumer prices. However, the announcement led to an immediate public outcry. Several critical opinion pieces appeared in various Finnish daily newspapers, and activists from the Left Alliance party launched a public petition to push the Finnish parliament into action. On 10 February, Jyväskylä announced that it had withdrawn its proposal. In this post, Dominika Baczynska Kimberley and Andreas Bieler trace the dynamics underlying this quick turnaround.

Water privatization in Jyväskylä, Finland?

Photo by Sampo Sikiö

Jyväskylä is the first Finnish municipality, which has decided to part-privatize its water services, intending to sell 30 per cent of the municipal company. What may look as an attractive option at first sight to generate finance for the municipality, is however a potentially highly dangerous initiative. The experiences of water privatizations elsewhere in Europe counsel caution.

Public Water for the Many

While Prime Minister Boris Johnson intends to turn the current general elections into a contest over Brexit, it is Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, which offers a real political alternative including wide-ranging plans for renationalizing key services such as the railways, energy, postal services and water. In this blog post, I discuss the lessons to be learned from struggles over public water across Europe.

Alternatives to privatising public services!

‘What we are for is equally important as what we are against’, declared Dexter Whitfield in his presentation ‘Capitalist dynamics reconfiguring the state: alternatives to privatising public services’ to a packed audience at Nottingham University on Wednesday, 16 September. Hence, when contesting privatisation of public services, it is not enough simply to resist these processes. It is also necessary to put forward concrete alternatives of how to organise and deliver these services differently from within the public sector. In this post, I will summarise some of the key points of the presentation, which was jointly organised by the Bertrand Russel Peace Foundation, the local University and College Union association and the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice.