"...A situation similar to Kansas is now playing out with WIFIA and the lobbying to provide tax-free private activity bonds (PABs) to pay for water infrastructure. At the same time, European water companies are buying US water companies and are interested in using international trade deals to privatize water infrastructure under the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA).
Even in the absence of TAFTA, major European water companies, such as Veolia, Thames, and Suez, are buying distressed US water systems. They are aided by major US water industry groups who are lobbying Congress for legislation to amend WIFIA to allow tax-free Private Activity Bonds for water projects and potentially use WIFIA to provide a path to privatization."
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/25308-big-players-promoting-water-privatization
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"...Although water privatizers promise that they will help balance municipal budgets, that’s not the way it happened that way in Stockton, California. The city with its private water system ended up declaring bankruptcy anyhow—and after the bankruptcy returned the water system to public ownership.
That hasn’t stopped water corporations from the drumbeat of privatization. The National Association of Water Companies and other private water lobbying groups have been trumpeting President Obama’s signing of the Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014, an otherwise important program of modernization of critical urban infrastructure, as an important step toward water privatization.
A campaign of NAWC in association with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce uses the slogan, “Water is Your Business.”
In an odd version of privatization, Nestlé Waters North America joined with AmeriCares earlier this month to send 30,000 bottles of water to the Gleaners Community Food Bank in Southeastern Michigan to be distributed to people in need. According to the Stamford Daily Voice, last year, AmeriCares and Nestlé distributed one million bottles of water to families in the U.S.”
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/policysocial-context/24507-stalking-horse-detroit-water-crisis-as-possible-precursor-of-privatization.html
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