Climate of Our Future

From: Sierra Club

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 18, 2007

City Council decided in favor of local control of water systems, after 7 year struggle from citizens

Stockton, CA- Marking a victory for the people of Stockton, the Stockton city council late last night decided unanimously to regain control of the city?s water systems. By a vote of five to zero, the city council agreed to end the appeal of a pending legal case, and abide by the San Joaquin County Superior Court’s decision to end the water and sewer services contract. The $600 million, twenty year contract with the giant OMI-Thames, was the largest water contract of its kind west of the Mississippi.

“Water management is too important to be left in the hands of private companies who answer to shareholders and not to the people whose water they control,” said Dale Stocking, Conservation Chair of the Delta/Sierra Group of the Sierra Club. “After seven years of fighting for local control of water, it is great to see such a victory for the people of Stockton, and we hope it will serve as an example and inspiration for communities across the country.”

Since 2001, the people of Stockton have fought for local control of the water system, as private companies rarely have the public interest at heart. Privatizing the water system opened the door to harmful environmental impacts to the surrounding water delta, and decreased the public?s say over how the systems were managed.

Featured in the documentary, “Thirst, Fighting the Corporate Theft of our Water,” the citizens of Stockton have been fighting to regain control of the local water supply for several years. “This was a David and Goliath fight. We were a small but mighty group of citizens and we stood up to a huge private company that wanted to profit from our water system,” said Sylvia Kothe, Chairperson of the Concerned Citizens Coalition of Stockton. “We are delighted that the city has agreed that the people should have control over their water supply.”

In 2003, the citizens of Stockton had fought for the right to vote on whether their water management services would be privatized, but the city council decided on privatization before a vote ever took place. The Concerned Citizens Coalition of Stockton, along with the Sierra Club, and the League of Women Voters of San Joaquin County, represented by the law firm Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, appealed to the courts, on the grounds that the city did not abide by environmental requirements before signing the contract.

In fact, the city did no environmental review at all, despite evidence for potentially severe environmental consequences. At a time when the Sacramento Delta water system is already polluted and highly fragile, OMI-Thames declared a “Run to Fail” operating mode, consciously deciding to neglect management problems until resulting in harmful infrastructure neglect. The company proposed severe budgets cuts that would have undoubtedly affected quality of services in several arenas, including maintenance of systems, disposal of waste, dealing with vermin, odor control, and sewage over flows. As a result, the court decided in the groups’ favor and called for the city to terminate the contract. Today, the city council agreed to withdraw its appeal, and abide by this decision, and will renew public operation and management of the water systems by March 1, 2008.

“We are thrilled that the people will once again have a say over the way the water is managed in our city,” said Diane Park of the League of Women Voters of San Joaquin County. “This decision truly is a victory for Democracy. It?s essential that citizens are able to hold elected officials accountable for decisions affecting the public interest.”

National Trend

For the past few decades, private water companies have been pressuring U.S. cities to hand over control of their water systems. In 1990, 50 million people worldwide got their water services from private companies, but by 2002 it was 300 million and growing, according to the authors of the book and the movie “Thirst.” These private corporations consider profits first, and answer to their shareholders not the public.

The people of several other major cities have also voiced concerns over privatizing water systems, including in Atlanta, GA, Lawrence, MA, New Orleans, LA and Santa Margarita in Orange County, CA, which in some cases has led to cities foregoing or rescinding their privatization contracts. In Atlanta, for instance, after privatizing the water systems, the quality of the drinking water degraded to such a point as to make it undrinkable. Suez, the largest private water corporation in the world, operated the water systems, and as a result, the rates increased, the water became brown and people were advised to boil the water before drinking.