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After Water System Privatization, Consumers Get Hosed

https://substack.perfectunion.us/p/after-water-system-privatization

In Pennsylvania, residents are resisting a corporate takeover of their water system as state lawmakers attempt to change a law that incentivizes privatization.

After Water System Privatization, Consumers Get Hosed

In Pennsylvania, residents are resisting a corporate takeover of their water system as state lawmakers attempt to change a law that incentivizes privatization.

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ElectricCattleman

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My sister is a civil engineer in PA and is familiar with this situation. She told me that basically these municipalities did not take care of their pipes, refused to raise any money for them, then, when they got old enough that the situation became critical, sold it off. Now this company comes along, has to make required fixes to the pipes, and has to raise the money to do so. The private company gets to be the bad guy, while the local governments, who neglected the pipes for a decade or more, don't get heat.

All this said, if they weren't allowed to sell it to a private company, there would be no "get out of jail free" card and maybe they would have pushed harder to take care of them damn pipes.

Point is, I don't think it's quite as simple as it looks on the surface.

masquenox

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She told me that basically these municipalities did not take care of their pipes,

So it's bog-standard "let-it-break-and-then-sell-it-for-a-song" neolib shitfuckery.

Krauerking

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Yeah, man if Boomer's parents could see how they are running the government systems that were so carefully put in place there would be a lot of beatings again.

We really are in the "gut everything and fire everyone so that I can save a few more bucks for myself" endgame

IchNichtenLichten

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It's the same tactic for the NHS in the UK, the one remaining publicly-owned service the Tories can't get away with selling off, so they're letting it slowly die.

masquenox

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so they’re letting it slowly die.

It's the exact same thing here in South Africa with the electricity grid - popular resistance is too strong for the ANC-regime to just sell it off to billionaire parasites, so they are just "sabotaging it in place."

prole

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The state could have done any number of things to make sure a situation like this would never happen in the first place.

Not going to dox myself, but I'll just say that I'm familiar with how (functioning) state government agencies finance these types of infrastructure projects. Often, it's not even state money, they get it from the Federal government, and are responsible for administering it according to certain requirements.

In fact, Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided billions of dollars to states for this exact type of project. PA State government failed it's citizens. Again.

Dkarma

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This is a feature of corrupt state government in the US south. They abandon their infrastructure, pocket the cash, sell the infrastructure once it fails or do what Mississippi did and just make fema come in and replace it all.

Corrupt southern states hurt their own constituents for money.

pinkdrunkenelephants

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So what is the answer to that?

Clearly representative government simply doesn't work since even after a revolution, some unscrupulous evildoer can just fake their way into office and repeat the cycle all over again, so what will it take to fix the problem?

prole

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The answer was to go back in time and make sure we don't fuck up Reconstruction.

pinkdrunkenelephants

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But what do we do now?

Clearly we need a better way that ensures our basic needs are met and other people can't simply fuck it up or take them away from other people.

Zoomboingding

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Even typical infrastructure funding ultimately gets money from the EPA. Before it was just NEPA projects, but now we have BIL, ARPA, and WIIN grant projects.

prole

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Yeah, I mentioned that. People don't really have a concept of how much money the federal government is giving to states for infrastructure projects...

Zoomboingding

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I was on site for an ARPA project and the contractor was complaining that Biden never did anything for rural America...

prole

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Yeah, the cognitive dissonance is wild. Even in a blue state.