defend water IMG_6362Staff Reports
Defend Our Water!
Photos by Grace Curry and Valerie Hoh

On Election Day, 86% of Asheville Voters voted NO to the selling or leasing of the Asheville water system – the first time in memory Asheville voters came so close to unanimity. A month after that vote, the Metropolitan Sewerage District (MSD) released its report analyzing the costs and benefits of taking over the water system from the city. A few months down the road, the state legislative committee will meet to decide whether the proposal generated by MSD will meet the expectations of Asheville and Buncombe County voters and taxpayers.

MSD’s proposal overlooks some of the costs that city officials believe must be taken into account, and seriously undervalues the watershed that protects the region’s water. MSD proposes to lease the watershed for 199 years and to pay the city $57 million over a period of 50 years for the system’s infrastructure. MSD valued that infrastructure at $169 million, but deducted “outstanding debt [$71 million], developer contributed assets, and cash transfers to General Fund” to arrive at the lower figure.

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The $57 million paid to the city comes to $1.1 million per year, approximating the 3% of total water revenues the city is allowed to use for general fund purposes. That payment is positioned by the MSD as leaving the city’s finances unimpaired.

However, because the $57 million is supposed to represent the total value of the system less outstanding debits, effectively the MSD would pay the city nothing for a two-century lease. Furthermore, many of the “developer-contributed assets” are water lines and water-line extensions to housing developments – which saved developers money from the alternative of building a community well system while increasing the value of the homes they sell by offering “city water and sewer – but low county taxes!” And the cash transfers to the city’s General Fund are those used, for the most part, to repave roads that are dug up when water lines have to be replaced or repaired.

Worse, because the MSD allows for public-private partnerships with developers and other entities, it is perfectly possible that down the road, MSD could lease operations of the water system to a for-profit corporation – in effect giving away the city’s system to a private company. The watershed, still owned by the city’s taxpayers, would thus be used to subsidize the profits of that company.

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Water rights are among the most highly prized “new industry” businesses in the world. Major corporations that have long invested in oil and other finite commodities have spent the past decade buying up water rights in anticipation of the long-term effects of global warming. They understand, as most citizens have not yet figured out, that fresh water is becoming, and will continue to become, ever more scarce as the world’s climate changes.

As icebergs and icecaps – which are fresh water – melt, they run off into the oceans and become salt water – undrinkable without expensive treatment. And as the climate warms, vast areas of the world face increasing and longer-lasting droughts, as can be seen in our own Southeast region as well as across the American Southwest and Midwest, where conditions in the past few years have rivaled the Dust Bowl of the 1930s – but far more widespread.

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Already in the northwest people in some communities are prohibited from using rain barrels to collect rainwater running off their own roofs – because farmers downstream have the right to it. And water wars between farmers and ranchers in California’s Central Valley and homeowners upstream have become major legal battles. Even the Mississippi River is likely to close 200 miles to shipping this winter because water levels are so low, the result of drought in the upper Midwest that has diminished the flow of its major tributary, the Missouri river.

Thus, far-seeing corporations are chomping at the bit to buy, lease, or steal the rights to public water systems. If our system is privatized, a future owner or manager could divert water from the Asheville-Buncombe area to a place like Atlanta, which would pay a huge premium as its own water system dries up, regardless of what is best for our region.

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Advocates of a takeover of the city’s water system have asserted that the value of the entire system belongs to its users.  That assertion impels the committee to claim the right to take over the system without any compensation at all to Asheville or its taxpayers, who have paid to build the system over generations.

By the committee’s reasoning, we also own Progress Energy, from which we have bought electric power, and Public Service Gas Company, AT&T, Charter Cable – all the public services whose utility bills we’ve paid over the years.