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> I wonder if this is helpful? 'You are screwed no matter what you do' is not a good way to motivate people to action. People have heard this all before, and don't trust it. You can only cry wolf so many times with apocolyptic stories.

The water supply in a town near me is permanently contaminated by PFAS after the foam that the fire department used for training ran into the well: https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/investigations/how-officials...

That is a very sad story.

From your link

> Now, water suppliers across our region are now racing to fix the contamination.

I'm confused between 'racing to fix' and 'permanently contaminated'? Is it that it will get better but never be fixed completely?

The PFAS are underground and will likely be down there indefinitely. I assume that their "racing to fix" bit has more to do with filtration and reducing the PFAS levels to something deemed acceptable.

Given the changes at the EPA recently it would not surprise me if they simply change what is deemed acceptable and claim that the problem has been solved.

The challenges will be great and felt by all in some way.

I live downstream from W.L.Gore in Maryland, the creator of this miracle substance, and a few years ago I myself began asking questions. I came to learn that they just dumped the stuff in the stream for decades and that stream is the source of my family's water via the town system. I had my water tested and came back at 70 ppt of which I then spoke to some doctors. This inspired me to write up and speak before the political board of my town and they did not believe me. Hilariously however someone knew because they stopped publishing PFA numbers in our water reports in 2022 but as a result of my speaking a few months later they brought in Inframark Corp who runs our town water and sewer. After they spoke to the town board at the meeting the town board was no longer smiling nor doubting my words. They were told that they must filter the drinking water and the operation will capex at about 4 MM USD with an opex for filters of around 2 MM USD annually. The town board was floored, but wait there's more, Inframark then told the board that they also must filter the sewer too since it must be removed as liquid products we use have pfas as well as RO systems which just re-concentrate it back into waste water. This sewer system capex was quoted at 10MM USD minimum and no opex stated since the plant already runs and filters costs were not known at the moment.

My story is real world for nearly the entire East Coast of the USA but since the problem cannot be seen few know about it or even concern about it. A town close to me, Newark DE, just announced a few months back going to spend tens of millions to filter their water with taxes ballooning from that and more. While a town to my West stated needing to spend about 20 MM USD to filter theirs. This is an absolute issue and I'd wager, polymarket conveniently makes it easy now, that this post ages well with time, or maybe I should say unwell. I have also been speaking with a lawyer in a big state that is running a class action and his information of course should be blasted on the news as more and more folks continue to consume liquids from plastic containers. Veritasium did a great piece on it a while back too but I have yet to have my own blood tested. For perspective I immediately bought a PFA specific filter and I installed it by extending our existing 3 stage to a 4 stage kitchen water tap at a cost of 600 USD for supplies. I then bought a whole house PFA filter a few months later and installed it too, costing me about 2000 USD in supplies, it is the size of a large compressed air canister so room is needed. I have so much more on this PFA topic but I am already going on too long. Your health doesn't matter until it does and no pill is going to filter this stuff from your organs.

So the problem from the post then becomes: the water that we do have to drink probably isn't safe either.

This leads me to question how many other chemicals we continue to "create" that in time will too show health impacts to many. We are certainly leaving our mark in this layer of soil for some future species to find and ask their own questions about us, such as how smart we really could have been given what they dig up.

Stay Healthy!

I'm curious. You complain about "profits," but do you know how much money private investors put into the water companies to begin with? Because the alternative to privatization was the government issuing bonds to get that money. Are these profits more or less than the interest to bondholders you'd otherwise be paying?

Here in the U.S., almost all water utilities are operated by the government. We have a more than trillion dollar investment shortfall that taxpayers will have to cover: https://nawc.org/water-industry/infrastructure-investment/. It's not a problem with our government either. Both countries just have a lot of infrastructure built in the post-war era that is nearing end-of-life. And it just costs a lot more to replace that infrastructure than people think it should cost.

Our subdivision had a community-owned water/sewer system built in the early 20th century that was failing. The county government came in and tore it all out and connected everyone to the public system back in 2014. The county imposed a charge of $32,000 per house, which was added to everyone's county tax bill to be paid over 20 years (with interest). That was just the cost of hooking one subdivision up to the existing water/sewer plants. The existing public system ended less than half a mile away.

Even the Economist and FT are underwhelmed by the performance of many of England's privatized water utilities:

https://www.ft.com/content/bda390bc-8cc4-4fa4-9a90-36af08651...

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/07/05/the-real-proble...

The BBC said (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw4478wnjdpo) that in 30 years, private water and sewerage companies in England and Wales have extracted over 86 billion pounds (~USD $115 billion), while investing very little.

Meanwhile, consumer water rates in those areas increased by as much as 50% in the past year alone.

What is the number? It is a huge red flag if you see an article that cites a profits number without citing a number for capital invested. You literally cannot reach a conclusion either way without comparing the two numbers.

EDIT: The UK water regulator has the capital investment data here: https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/publication/long-term-data-series-o.... What does it say?

> You literally cannot reach a conclusion either way without comparing the two numbers.

You certainly can reach a conclusion, and the GP did.

What you can't do is to compute the rate on return on their investment. But as a user of a water system, why do I care about that?

You cannot reach a conclusion. A conclusion is a rational thing based on comparing realistic alternatives.

As the user of the water system you do have to care about the return on investment. Because the alternative is to have the government take out bonds to pay for that work, and you’d have to pay the interest on those bonds with your tax dollars.

The conclusion in this case is very simple: 86 billion has been taken in profits, with very limited capital investment.

Now .. what to do about that? That's a bit more complicated, but we could at least start from the premise that had the water systems been public, that 86 billion could have been spent on capital investment without a single bond being issued.

> The conclusion in this case is very simple: 86 billion has been taken in profits, with very limited capital investment.

What is the number for the capital investment? You’re comparing a number to words. That’s a type error.

> That's a bit more complicated, but we could at least start from the premise that had the water systems been public, that 86 billion could have been spent on capital investment without a single bond being issued

Not without knowing how much capital has actually been invested to date. Because you’d be have paid out interest and principal on that over 30 years out of that 86 billion.

I'm the board of my local (rather small) water system. Most of our capital investment is done by spending what we raise from our members/customers, and we try hard not to require loans unless absolutely necessary.

A larger water system has bigger capital projects, but also a larger customer base (and they also likely charge more per liter of water than we do). So it is absolutely not a given that capital investment in water infrastructure requires bonds or loans (though I acknowledge that these likely cannot be avoided).

Issuing bonds is how virtually every large water system pays for capital projects. My county is very financially responsible (triple AAA bond rating), but it has hundreds of millions in debt outstanding for water/sewer: https://www.fitchratings.com/research/us-public-finance/fitc.... This is a small county with just half a million people.

Again, how much money did these UK water companies invest? What's the number? Without knowing that, you're in no position to say it's in the range of what a government utility would be able to pay out of operating surplus, without issuing bonds.

The UK has an economic and corruption problem, not a water problem. In fact, it's probably got too much of all 3.

> Are these profits more or less than the interest to bondholders you'd otherwise be paying?

Apparently rather more

"Earlier this year, Corporate Watch calculated that £2 billion a year could be saved – or £80 per household – if the water supply was in public ownership. The government can borrow much cheaper than the companies and there would be no private shareholders demanding their dividends"

The research is cited in the document if you would like to critique

https://corporatewatch.org/the-severn-trent-takeover-corpora...

The frustration I have with this is that the money is there, today but our culture in the US does not understand the value of proper taxation to fund infrastructure and social services in the US.

We waste billions of tax dollars on frivolous pursuits, misaligned incentives and defense contractors rather than investing in communities and infrastructure, and that’s just at the federal level. Plenty of states and localities follow these same patterns then turn around and say they have no money for proper maintenance of civic infrastructure while being bilked by private companies

At least as of the last time I did the math (pre Trudeau), the U.S. had higher non-defense expenditures per person than Canada. We have low taxes, but that’s not because we don’t spend money. It’s because we pay for government expenditures with debt instead of tax dollars.

dunno where you're located, but 32k for sewage and water doesn't seem that terribly expensive if you compare what it would cost for each house to dig a well and install a septic system.

> I wonder if this is helpful? 'You are screwed no matter what you do' is not a good way to motivate people to action. People have heard this all before, and don't trust it. You can only cry wolf so many times with apocolyptic stories.

there was a time where we weren't guaranteed to be screwed. environmental stewardship was deemed unimportant in the face of profit. here we are.

The big lesson in The Boy Who Cried Wolf is, after all, that wolves don't exist.

I don't see how anything you've written is relevant to the question of whether the listed behaviors are causing water supply problems.

Are you sure that's the big lesson? That wolves don't exist?

To me the big lesson was that wolves do actually exist, and if you repeatedly claim that they are here when they are not, then nobody will believe you when they actually are here.

Sarcasm.

Argh. Saying the opposite of what you mean and expecting the recipient to guess.

Proof by contradiction is a powerful tool.

I don't see how anything you have written would help the reader understand what you took issue with?

While you're not wrong on the fact that the media too often use catastrophic headlines to sell more or that issues are overplayed by some company as a way to hide their greed, it does not mean that there is no over usage of water (compared to the reserves)