A June 15 rally at Milwaukee City Hall was “really only the first phase” of what’s shaping up to be a concerted and comprehensive effort by a range of community-minded organizations to kill the idea to privatize Milwaukee’s Water works, says Karen Royster, executive director of the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future, or IWF. (Photo courtesy of IWF)
How diverse? Really diverse. KPOW comprises: The Campaign Against Violence; Food & Water Watch; Institute for Wisconsin’s Future (IWF); Great Waters Group - Sierra Club; Making Milwaukee Green Coalition; Midwest Environmental Advocates; Milwaukee Inner City Communities Allied for Hope; Milwaukee Renaissance; Milwaukee Riverkeeper; Riverside Park NA; Senior Water Advocates Network; Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters; AFSCME District Council 48; AFSCME Local 550, which represents Milwaukee City Water Department Distribution Employees (meter readers, repairmen, laborers & outside crews); and AFSCME Local 952, which represents Milwaukee City Pumping & Filtration Plant Employees.
‘No, not our water.’ KPOW presented the Milwaukee Common Council’s Steering and Rules Steering and Rules Committee with a petition signed by 500+ people calling on the Common Council to “permanently withdraw” the privatization proposal. The committee agreed with the KPOW crew and voted to put on hold a proposal to hire an advisor to help the city solicit corporate bidders for a 99-year lease of the Milwaukee Water Works.
“People are almost instantly appalled at the idea of privatizing the Water Works — ‘“No, not our water,’’’ says IWF Executive Director Karen Royster. “It’s one of those issues where privatization really sinks in. It’s something that people realize is a significant part of the quality of life.”
But as all quality-of-life preservers in this community know, the legs of the privatization story are long; once the idea’s floated, it remains part of the quick-fix consciousness that can permeate in an elected-official atmosphere. And there’s no denying this: The city of Milwaukee, like almost every other municipality and unit of government, has a fiscal crisis that won’t go away any time soon, either.
In short, then: Although the actions of KPOW & Co. have stalled the effort to privatize Milwaukee’s drinking water, the proposal may resurface, and resurface soon.
“Common Council President [Willie] Hines has been adamant in saying it’s still one of the tools in the arsenal,” IWF’s Royster says.
So: IWF, KPOW and — with every passing day, more concerned citizens — plan to keep on pushing. They’ll continue honing tools and developing an arsenal of their own, whether it means educating the community, cultivating aldermanic support, training organizers and/or offering alternative solutions to the city’s fiscal crisis.
“We will continue to organize actively until a resolution is passed to permanently and definitively kill any proposal to privatize the city’s water system,” says KPOW Organizer Corinne Rosen.
Tracing the evolution of the idea. One of the earliest public expressions of the city’s interest in putting the “p” word in the same sentence with “Water Works” was an Oct. 2, 2008, article posted on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Web site (www.jsonline.com). Headlined “Comptroller floats idea of privatizing Milwaukee water utility,” the article features a call from Milwaukee City Comptroller Wally Morics for the city to consider privatization, which he said could net revenue of more than $500 million in the form of a one-time payment from a private company in exchange for a 75- to 95-year lease. The plan, the article attributes Morics as saying, is Milwaukee’s “best hope to avoid a future of painful annual debate” over whether to raise property taxes and/or user fees, or cut services.
The public expression of interest in yet another privatization exploration caught the eye of a number of community groups (as well as AFSCME). It also attracted interest from such national groups as Food & Water Watch, which has been tracking water privatization pushes since the late 1990s, when privateers began targeting such big cities as Atlanta, New Orleans and Indianapolis.
“What’s going on now is they’re going after long-term leases, like in Milwaukee, where the city gets a cash sum upfront,” says Jorge Aguilar, a water campaign organizer who focuses on helping local groups protect their water resources, whether it’s to prevent water utilities from being privatized or keeping companies from bottling and selling water. “It’s a relatively safe investment for the company.”
And it’s been anything but safe for the communities that have gone that route.
“Milwaukee has an excellent system — the water is clean and inexpensive,” says Jayme Montgomery Baker, a member of Making Milwaukee Green Coalition and The Campaign Against Violence. “This would change if it is owned by a multinational corporation and our community cannot afford to be hit with large water hike fees. This has happened in every city that privatized [its] water. In Indianapolis, the Veolia Corp. was sued for overcharging over 250,000 customers.”
In April 2008, Indianapolis community members sued Veolia, accusing the company of failing to read meters on schedule, overestimating water usage in addition to overcharging customers. according to Food & Water Watch research. In 2002, Veolia received a 20-year, $1.1 billion contract to provide water service to more than 1 million people. During the past seven years, non-union employees have watched their pension, health care and other benefits get slashed, Food & Water Watch says. Meanwhile, Indianapolis has the second-worst drinking water quality among the nation’s largest city, ranking 99th out of 100, according to Men’s Health Magazine.
Then there’s Atlanta. In 1999, United Water (Suez) received a 20-year, $428 million contract to management the water utility. Four years later, the city voided the deal, citing poor management (a backlog of 14,000 work orders and delayed repairs), job loss (a workforce that went from 700 to 300), charges to the city for services not rendered (the city ended up paying $16 million out of $38 million for work that wasn’t done) and the fact that only half of the promised savings due to privatization were realized, Food & Water Watch says.
Meanwhile, privateers are seeking greener pastures (or water supplies) in cities such as Trenton, N.J., and Akron, Ohio, and smaller systems in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, and Fort Wayne, Ind. And they’re watching what’s happening here in Milwaukee very closely.
“That’s why the rally really was just phase one,” says Royster.
What’s next? For IWF, it means a lot more work on the policy-shaping and community organizing fronts.
“The city is in a terrible financial situation,” says IWF Research Director Jack Norman. “We need to be able to respond when they ask, “If you don’t want to privatize water, what’s your solution?’”
To that end, Norman was drafting a paper featuring alternative suggestions and solutions as this issue of AFSCME 48 went to press. And the KPOW crew will continue trying to convince the Common Council to pass a resolution that’d ban the Water Works privatization.
“Obviously, it could be overturned later, but the point is to try to get city leaders on the record,” IWF’s Royster says.
Meanwhile, the community education process continues. It goes hand in hand with the organizing effort, whether it will manifest itself in door-knocking within specific aldermanic districts, phone-banking or any number of other outreach efforts.
“A lot of people still aren’t aware, so we’re going to be out there,” KPOW’s Rosen says. “We’ll be doing more events.”
What can you do to help? You can start by getting involved. Contact DC 48 Take Back Organizer Ryan Neibauer at 414-344-6868 ext. 240; email: rneibauer@wiafscme.org.).
