Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The answer depends on whom you talk to, where they live,
whether they view water as a public or private resource, whether
they have enough water, and so on. “Accordingly” varies dra-
matically, too. The price of water is yet one more dispute swirling
around the nation's water supplies.
The debate over whether water is a public right or a private
resource isn't an either-or question, says Maxwell. A business- or
private capital-oriented thinker can't simply decide that if some-
one can't afford to pay for water, he or she doesn't get any. “Clearly
everyone needs water to survive, and as a society we have to fi nd
some way to provide that,” says Maxwell. “Likewise it's not necessar-
ily rational to say that there should be no role for private industry
or private capital in this business. If you look at the record of small,
struggling, bankrupt municipalities trying to provide water, meet
regulations, and stay up with technology, that's a pretty sad record,
too. So obviously it has to be some balance in the middle.”
It makes no economic sense, either, to have multiple water-
distribution infrastructure systems in a single neighborhood, says
Maxwell. “Water is clearly a natural monopoly that has to be regu-
lated by some sort of oversight—which is the way it works for private
utilities,” says Maxwell. “There has to be a better way to treat water
as a commodity and try to manage it as a commodity, utilizing mar-
ket forces overseen by regulatory agencies. That's working in many
parts of the world. It just hasn't worked very well here yet.”
One of the challenges is that people perceive water as a resource
that falls out of the sky and runs free. Why should they have to pay
for it, they ask, and particularly why should they pay higher prices?
That attitude, Maxwell says, stems in part from the massive feder-
ally funded—as opposed to locally funded—water projects that
have made high-growth cities in the Southwestern deserts possible.
Cities like Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Las Vegas would not be able
to sustain their booming populations without these federal water
projects.
“We are going to see more attempts to apply market forces to this
business and to ensure that people are paying what it really does cost
to get that water to them,” says Maxwell. “In areas where it doesn't
make a lot of sense to have huge concentrations of people—like in the
high deserts—people will ultimately pay a lot more for their water.”
