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Our View: Don't buy water company, but keep close tabs on it
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While as true a description of the human condition since Adam and Eve were ejected from paradise, "Nobody's perfect" rightfully leaves you uneasy if the people you're talking about are in charge of vital services such as health care - and the local water utility.
Friday's Tribune reported that both the private Arizona American Water Co. and public officials at Scottsdale City Hall have in their recent histories examples that, while explainable as lacking perfection, also should guide decision-making regarding AAWC's continued service to its approximately 12,000 customers in Paradise Valley and Scottsdale.
As the Tribune's Ari Cohn reported, in recent months the solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE, a suspected carcinogen, was found above federal drinking-water standards in AAWC water. But, AAWC officials told Cohn, the city of Scottsdale was fined a decade ago for allowing TCE to contaminate its water supplies.
Scottsdale City Councilman Ron McCullagh said the difference is that city officials are accountable to the public because a private provider would put "financial interests ahead of the public interest." Indeed, the public sector is politically accountable in that unhappy voters can elect City Council members who can replace those in charge of city water.
But McCullagh errs in saying these interests are mutually exclusive. The very essence of capitalism is that to profit, to even survive, a business must serve its customers. And the private sector is subject the same government water-quality standards as public-sector providers. You can't vote private companies out of office, but you can complain to federal and state authorities, who can take a range of punitive actions from mild to severe.
Therefore anyone who delivers water, public or private, must continue to be held accountable.
We are not convinced that, given Scottsdale's tight budgetary outlook, the city has the financial wherewithal to afford to buy AAWC's system, as McCullagh has proposed.
City officials should continue to do as they and other government officials have: Hold the firm accountable to appropriate regulations and any applicable sanctions under them. A buyout would extend too far the massively intrusive government power of eminent domain, an extension that would buy Scottsdale significant financial grief that it does not need.
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