Water thief!

Journalist Marc Laime investigated several years on water issues. In 2003, he published "The Record of water. Scarcity, pollution, corruption "(Seuil, € 20), before writing in 2008," The Battles of the water "(Blue Earth, 45 euros). Policy Adviser Water and sanitation in local communities, he runs two blogs: The icy waters of egotistical calculation (www.eauxglacees.com) Notebooks and water (http://blog.mondediplo .net/-Carnets-d-eau-).
Since the nineteenth century, the delegation of public water service to private singles out water management in France. Worldwide, only 7-8% of water services are now entrusted to private operators, and the French model is unusual in Europe. Promoted internationally for twenty years, it has enabled Veolia and Suez to become the two majors global water. But monopoly organizations in France for nearly half a century on an essential public service is increasingly challenged, because it caused drifts. At the time of the implosion of financial capitalism, the future of management "French" water is a major Democratic figure issue.
Water lies at the convergence of the multidimensional challenges: economic, social, territorial, environmental, indivisible, and which system. She entered the last few years, the era of anxiety as a result of cumulative factors: global, the specter of scarcity and deteriorating quality of this unique resource, which affects more than 2 billion people, a situation which causes about 30,000 deaths every day, ten times the mortality resulting from conflict, to concerns about the increasing pollution of water resources, their impact on the environment and public health: the continuing increase in the amount of the invoice and the opacity of its ongoing management, the presence, finally, transnational corporations, themes associated with the commodification of a vital asset.
The situation is paradoxical. France has seen the creation of companies that have become world leaders in water, and now provides services to the environment. They will exert a virtual monopoly, since there have form contracts, public service delegation agreements with local authorities, nearly 80% of the market for water, 55% of the wastewater treatment , not to mention waste, cleanliness, heating, transport, food ...
The presence of a real cartel of water is another form of French exceptionalism, since the public service delegation (PSD) is sometimes referred to as "second model of public service in French." However, the "public-private partnership (PPP) has shown, for a century and a half, first in France and over the past twenty years worldwide, it is primarily based on the uptake of Public annuity simple summary: Socializing losses and privatizing profits ...
To challenge the excesses of that mobilizes private management group now hundreds of citizens throughout the territory. The publication, January 31, 2006, an investigation by the UFC-Que Choisir, renewed in November 2007, denouncing the exorbitant margins realized by these firms, has revived a debate now recurring on water management. Distant "replica" of the Sapin law of 1993, which sought to "moralize" the procurement, thousands of contracts of delegation of public service water and sanitation began to expire at the edge of the 2000s, and will be renegotiated by the French authorities, at a steady pace in the coming years, with 600 to 700 contracts per year.
On the ground, gaining in intensity mobilization on all fronts: water pollution, environmental damage, health concerns, procedures against the excesses of "delegated management". In Italy, hundreds of lawsuits have brought an initiative referendum to outlaw any further liberalization of the water sector. The Netherlands has also put an end to the open area of water market, like Belgium. In France, large companies have an unexpected influence on all areas of water management, such as research and development, widely privatized. They also strongly guide the legislative and regulatory developments in the sector.
But many elected officials and communities are refusing this "inevitable". Created in the winter of 2006, the association water users associations (UAE) argues in favor of public management of water. Everywhere in France, hundreds of collectives, associations, elected officials, communities commit to an "other" water management, democratic and sustainable. And these mobilizations are successful. In Bordeaux, the obstinate action of an association of users allowed to retrieve the Metropolitan in 2006, nearly 230 million of overpayments for 30 years by the company holding the contract. In Lyon, under the pressure of users, the city has to force its delegates to fall by 16% the price of water. Same in Toulouse. The current mayor of Paris has committed to put the water service in the capital under the control of a public authority in the course of the next term. Lille are mobilizing users alike. In the Vosges, the city of Neufchâteau, having unilaterally terminated the contract of delegation, has created an exemplary public authority, now a school. The city of Saint-Dizier (Haute-Marne), which had also claimed a one-sided contract, won in the January 2008 trial that he was instituting a company claiming it considerable benefits ...
In the Paris area, the expiry in 2010, since 1923 the contract between the union of the waters of Ile-de-France (SEDIF), which includes 144 municipalities Paris region, the General Water Company, a subsidiary of Veolia, was greeted with identical mobilization gaining in intensity. While the last twenty years, people suffering the onslaught of neoliberalism repeated devastating struggles for water multifaceted record of victories, particularly in terms of a "republicisation" of water to scale of Commons. Water, local resource, locally managed, is an unexpected moment arm, rehabilitating political commitment and citizen. Good news for all those committed to the overhaul of "living together". ■
Marc Laime