The discussion has not yet been widely publicized, but the City of Milwaukee is exploring the possibility of privatizing its water system. There’s a contingent of city leaders that wonders whether leasing the utility could help Milwaukee address its deep budget problems. Then there are critics, who don’t like the fact that the process of purifying and distributing drinking water is on the table. WUWM’s Marge Pitrof reports.

The idea of possibly hiring a private company to run Milwaukee Water Works came from City Comptroller Wally Morics. There are three general options. One is allowing a private company to run the day-to-day operations, rather than having city workers do the job. A second option is leasing the system, and a third is an outright sale. Morics favors a long-term lease. He says it might be the only way the city can avoid laying off hundreds of workers and address a deficit that could balloon to $90 million.

Morics estimates that the market value of Milwaukee’s water system is a half-billion dollars. If the city would get that much, he says it could create an endowment generating $30 to $40 million a year to help pay bills. Peter McAvoy is not convinced Milwaukee could get hundreds of millions of dollars for its water infrastructure, unless the city sells the system or agrees to a long lease, say 99 years. He finds both options unacceptable. McAvoy is Vice President of Environmental Health at the 16th Street Community Health Center.

“We would lose control if the city is actually contemplating the selling the apparatus to get the water out of Lake Michigan, to treat it, to distribute it, because if they’re talking about either a wholesale sale or a long term lease, you lose control of that. That would really concern me, I mean we’re talking about water, we’re not talking about a garage or a bridge,” McAvoy says.
By Marge Pitrof
http://www.wuwm.com/programs/news/view_news.php?articleid=4606