Sandy, who didn't want to give her last name for fear of reprisal, is trembling with anger. For the last six months, the Pittsburgh resident hasn't gotten a bill for water in the mail, and she's fearful she'll be hit all at once by an avalanche of charges. But the worst part is that the charges, should they ever arrive, may not even be accurate; the last time she got a bill it had tripled for no rational reason.
"I had to cut back on everything else," says Sandy, a retiree who lives alone in an apartment. "You don't know if it's going to come in, whether it's late or not, how much it will be. Then you get it and there's a late charge."
Sandy is in a room full of people, most of them older and on a fixed income, who echo her woes. After months of second guessing themselves in isolation, wondering if their showers had run too long or if they'd forgotten to turn off a faucet, neighbors in sleepy Millvale, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, are finally talking to each other and realizing they share the same problem. Only it's much bigger than most had realized: Over 42,000 people, based on an estimate from the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA), have received inaccurate and/or delayed water bills for months on end, about 14 percent of the population.
On June 24, dozens of Millvale residents have gathered in a community space to learn about a class-action lawsuit recently filed on their behalf against the PWSA, as well as the private water corporation Veolia Water North America, and the authority's collection agency, Jordan Tax Service. The group behind the lawsuit, Campaign to Reform PWSA, hopes to end what they see as the PWSA's coercive, slapdash attempts to shake down citizens for money. They also hope to alter the PWSA so that it is more transparent and responsive, because right now, they contend, the PWSA has become a smokescreen for France-based Veolia Environment, the largest private water company in the world. Its unbalanced partnership with the PWSA is supposed to represent the company's new approach to managing cities' water systems after a decade of failures with outright privatization, but if the anger in the room is any measure, residents in Pittsburgh may be souring on Veolia, too.
You can read the rest @
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31830-residents-fight-back-against-pittsburgh-s-privatized-water-authority
Those of you who think "global free trade" is a great idea should think long and hard about this issue. When corporations control your air, water, food, energy, and housing but are more concerned about their profits than your welfare, you are screwed. And that's the very direction the US is headed.
The only candidate who might change this if elected is Donald Trump. And note well how everyone is ganging up on him.
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