Wastewater Privatization: Case Studies
As Arnold residents prepare to decide whether to sell wastewater facilities in their city to Missouri American Water, they should consider cases where privatizations of this type have already occurred. Water and wastewater privatization in Saint Louis County and Illinois provide some useful comparisons.
Increasing budget constraints and needed upgrades have pushed many cities to privatize public systems in recent decades. A Saint Louis-area example is the privatization of water services in Florissant in 2002. The city divested its water services to Missouri American Water for a total of $14.5 million. The results, as a Show-Me Institute case study on privatization in Missouri noted, were positive:
Florissant took its $14.5 million and immediately budgeted $2,758,000 for street repairs, police projects, and public works projects. It deposited $10 million into a newly created special reserve fund, which served the city for several years after the sale of the water division. The remainder was placed into the city’s existing reserve fund. According to a 2007 city memorandum, “The timing of the sale of the water distribution system was extremely fortuitous and gave the city the cushion necessary to work through the dramatic drop in revenue without correspondingly dramatic service cuts.”
Florissant officials have been satisfied with the service, and Missouri American Water continues to provide water services to large parts of Saint Louis County.
While a wastewater privatization deal has not occurred in the Saint Louis area, many cities nationally have privatized this type of utility. A nearby example is in Mount Vernon, Ill., which contracted with a private company to design, build, and operate a wastewater treatment plant for 20 years in 1986. At that time, Mount Vernon did not have the resources to upgrade its aging treatment plan, thereby running afoul of environmental protection laws and preventing new industry from locating in the city. Environmental Management Corporation (EMC) entered into a deal with the city to build a new treatment plant in return for operating the system for 20 years, retaining and even retraining the existing employees. The city has since extended the agreement to 2023.
As these cases show, privatization of water and wastewater systems can be an effective way of providing public services in fiscally constrained cities.
