Municipal Water Management, Private Contracting, and Public Response:A Case Study of Water Privatization in Buffalo, NY

Water Management;Privatization;Environmental Justice;Framing;Natural Resources and Environment

Herz, BethLarsen, Larissa ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Water Management;    Privatization;    Environmental Justice;    Framing;    Natural Resources and Environment;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/83530/Herz%20masters%20thesis%204_2011.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Municipalities in the U.S. are increasingly turning to private water management,often viewing it as a means to reduce costs. As has been the case in numerous developingcountries, many domestic communities are now reacting to their local government’s plansto either sell its water system assets or contract out the system’s management. Guided bySnow and colleagues’ theory of frame alignment between individuals and socialmovements (1986) and Taylor’s analysis of environmental justice framing (2000), Iidentify several of the frames that residents have employed in U.S. cases of waterprivatization – including anti-privatization, right-to-water, and environmental justice. Ithen use a case-study method to investigate whether and how residents in Buffalo, NewYork expressed concerns regarding the city’s private water management contract between1996 and 2008 and employed these frames to do so. I provide brief summaries of twoother private water management cases, in Milwaukee and in the Detroit area, to helpillustrate how residents responded in comparable circumstances.In my results section, I lay out a historical narrative describing Buffalo’sdiscourse on water management over the course of three major phases. To investigate myobservations in the historical analysis, I conducted a content analysis of the arguments forand against private water management quoted in over 200 local news articles during theperiod; I support my findings with data from that analysis. I find that the first phase wascharacterized by debate between public officials and public unions, the second phase wascharacterized by debate over a joint regional water system, and the third phase wascharacterized by attention to the concerns of residents, and in particular the concerns oflow-income residents (e.g. high water rates, late payment policies, and home foreclosuresrelated to water payments) in the press and among decision makers.I conclude that the concerns and arguments used in Buffalo aligned explicitly witha homeowners’/renters’ rights frame and implicitly with elements of both the right-towaterand the environmental justice movements’ frames. I recommend a broadenedunderstanding of both of these movements and their purviews, to include communities,like Buffalo’s, that voice related concerns, though they may not employ the explicitterminology. Finally, I make policy recommendations on municipal water managementthat relate to rate structures, decision-making processes, transparency, and accountability.