The following opinion piece by Cheryl Nenn, Interim Executive Director/Riverkeeper, Milwaukee Riverkeeper, was printed in the Journal Sentinel on June 13.

Privatization of public water services has been occurring in the United States with vigor since the early 1990s. In these tough economic times, cities are struggling to pay for escalating costs of repairing aging water systems and attempting to balance their budgets.

In the past, many local governments responded to this conundrum by handing over control and management of water and wastewater utilities to private companies. In the late 1990s, Milwaukee even privatized operations of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Sewerage District wastewater treatment plants and conveyance systems to a French multinational company, United Water/Suez, and then in 2008, to the French corporation Veolia.

But Milwaukee long has maintained control of its drinking water system. In 1993, it became infamous for an outbreak of Cryptosporidium, which sickened an estimated 403,000 people and caused an estimated 54 deaths. Following the Crypto outbreak, the city put in a state-of-the-art ozone system.

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