CBC’s Fifth Estate last week pronounced the privatization of water and wastewater utilities "Dead in the Water." In fact, such privatizations are alive and well. By the CBC’s own admission, private water companies now serve hundreds of millions of people around the globe.
How to win over environmentalists
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In this presentation to the Water Utility Executive Council of the National Association of Water Companies, Elizabeth Brubaker urges water services providers to embrace transparent and inclusive processes, to advocate tough regulation and strict enforcement, and to perform well. Continue reading
Enforcing laws protecting public health and the environment
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Four-hundred-and-seven. That’s the number of municipally owned water treatment plants that failed Ontario inspections in the year ending March 31, 2003. More than two years after contaminated water killed seven people and sickened 2,300 in the town of Walkerton, 61 percent of the province’s water plants got failing grades in training, sampling, disinfection, or water quality. Yet still – as has always been the case, whatever the party in power, and however desperate the need – the province hesitates to enforce its water laws.
Water and Wastewater Privatization in England and Wales: An Advocate’s Perspective
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A talk prepared for Water Utilities in British Columbia: Industry Challenges and P3 Experiences, a workshop organized by the British Columbia Water and Wastewater Association in Richmond, BC, on October 23, 2003.
Water and wastewater privatization in the United States and Canada: The new challenges, and how we can meet them
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In this speech to the Annual Conference of the National Association of Water Companies, Elizabeth Brubaker addresses both legitimate concerns about privatization — including several high-profile failures — and less legitimate political barriers to privatization. Continue reading
Revisiting Water and Wastewater Utility Privatization
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Prepared for the Government of Ontario Panel on the Role of Government. This paper reviews recent setbacks for privatization and explores the reasons behind Canadian municipalities’ reluctance to contract out operations of their water and wastewater utilities.
Public Goals, Private Means
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Presented to "Public Goals, Private Means" Research Colloquium
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, October 3, 2003
The New Environmentalists
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Tom Adams, Elizabeth Brubaker and Lawrence Solomon are three leading intellectuals in an umbrella organization – Energy Probe Research Foundation (EPRF) – that is influencing the views of a new generation of policymakers about a host of interrelated issues that include environmental protection, energy, urban planning and foreign aid. These folks can’t be dismissed as politically left or right of centre.
508 reasons to privatize water
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Four hundred and seven. That’s the number of municipally owned water treatment plants that failed Ontario inspections in the year ending March 31, 2003. More than two years after contaminated water killed seven people and sickened 2,300 in the town of Walkerton, Ont., 61% of the province’s water plants still got failing grades in training, sampling, disinfection or water quality. That’s an astonishing figure. And it’s proof that public water provision isn’t working in Ontario.
Private water runs dry
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Last month, Halifax Regional Council pulled out of a deal with a private consortium formed to curb the sewage pollution that has long soiled Halifax Harbour. The agreement’s unravelling – exacerbating a Canada-wide retreat from water and wastewater privatizations – spells bad news for the health of Canadians and the health of the Canadian environment. An anatomy of the breakup shows that Canada’s local governments have a long way to go before they reach the level of sophistication needed to chart their way in privatization waters.
Cleanup contract goes down the drain
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Halifax is walking away from its multimillion-dollar sewage treatment deal over concerns that changes its private partner wanted could cost the municipality more money.
Here’s a fine kettle of . . .
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William Forster Lloyd is not exactly a household name in St. John’s, but perhaps he should be. One hundred and seventy years ago, he introduced the notion known to economists as the "tragedy of the commons." In a 1833 book on population, the English mathematician observed that, if everyone had free access to a common resource, that resource would soon be exhausted.
Death of a fishery
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After decades of mercilessly laying waste to the East Coast cod fisheries, the federal government is poised to shut them down. The government has no choice: There is nothing left to plunder. It didn’t have to end like this.
Canada’s best public policy books vie for award
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The short list for the Donner Prize was announced yesterday, highlighting the year’s best Canadian public policy books including titles on global warming, drinking water, immigration, prisons and globalization. Environment Probe Executive Director Elizabeth Brubaker`s Liquid Assets: Privatizing and Regulating Canada’s Water Utilities was among those listed.
Beyond ideology: Doing whatever works to protect the environment
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Earlier this year, several days after a lengthy interview with a writer for a weekly news magazine, I received a puzzled e-mail. "How would you describe yourself politically?" the writer asked. "Do you lean towards the left or the right?"
A different shade of green
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One spring day five years ago and a few thousand kilometers away, Elizabeth Brubaker saw the signpost to a new environmentalism. She had flown to the UK in March, 1997, to study what had happened to that nation’s water supply since the industry had been privatized. As the executive director of the Toronto-based advocacy group Environment Probe, she contacted an assortment of British green organizations ranging from Surfers Against Sewage to the more established Friends of the Earth.
Hard Water: The uphill campaign to privatize Canada’s waterworks
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A series of reports by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) on water utilities – inspired by the explosive growth of three private water companies in the last 10 years – cites the work of Elizabeth Brubaker, the executive director of Environment Probe.
MPWWR Briefs: Book recommends privatizing water systems
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A new book titled Liquid Assets: Privatizing and Regulating Canada’s Water Utilities says that privatizing water and sewer systems is cheaper, inspires innovation and eliminates conflicts of interest.
Abusing the public’s trust
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Public Citizen, Ralph Nader’s signature organization, and the director of its environment program, Wenonah Hauter, assert that privatization "is not, and never will be, the solution" to Canada’s water woes (Water is a Right, letter, Jan. 20). For another point of view on the merits of water privatization, I refer readers to Ms. Hauter’s erstwhile colleague, Alex Tsybine.
A thirst for privatization
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The World Bank, in 1998, called privatization "a defining feature of the last two decades." Popular candidates for early privatizations included telecommunications and electric power utilities. Water and wastewater utilities soon followed, haltingly at first and then with greater momentum. If water was, as the Financial Times’s John Barham suggested in 1997, "the last frontier in privatization around the world," it was a frontier that was being aggressively explored.
Environment Probe 