What is the point of having privatised water companies?
I work in the water industry (just a humble worker on the ground – a sparkie that’s all that works on the pumps and stuff), and I couldn’t figure that out either, it’s not like the national grid or the telecoms systems and it never can be. If all the water companies set up a ‘common grid’, drinking water quality would be compromised as any body could put bad water into the system and you would infect everyone who drank it. But the main advantage of privatisation has been investment into the infrastructure and much higher standards in quality and levels of service. I joined soon after privatisation, and the water and sewage treatment works and pipelines had been severely eroded when they were run by the local councils due to decades of underfunding. Pumps and things were old and always breaking down. Clean drinking water was not up to standards required by the World Health Organisation let alone new European rules rapidly coming into being. Leakage was at around 27%, which meant that ov
