Fight the Hike - because it's our water

Defending the Indefensible

The Tennessee-American Water Co. proposal for a 19.7 percent rate hike is preposterous and a textbook example of corporate greed. There’s no rational way to defend such an outlandish request, but that’s no deterrent to company officials with dollars signs on their minds. A presentation before the Hamilton County Commission last week is proof of TAWC’s single-minded pursuit of cash — and its disdain for its customers.
John Watson, a TAWC vice president, put on a nice show for the commissioners. It was, in fact, an artful bit of stagecraft. He talked a bit about this and that, tossed in a bit of history and smugly assumed it made a case for the rate hike. It did not. He left out the important parts.
He didn’t mention, for instance, the fact that the Tennessee attorney general’s consumer advocate had recommended a 1 percent decrease in rates rather than an increase. He didn’t mention, either, the TAWC’s long history of seeking far higher rate increases than are justified. Or that, more often than not, those requests are scaled back by regulators.
No, Mr. Watson preferred to talk about “pipes, pumps and people,” a catchy alliteration to be sure, but one that doesn’t provide detail on precisely how they relate to the proposed increase. He mentioned, as well, the company’s contributions to United Way and the company’s long history in the city. What those topics have to do with a rate increase is baffling.
The company does trace its history here to 1886, but the past has nothing to do with present performance or costs. The corporate contribution is appreciated, of course, but precisely what it has to do with a rate increase went unsaid. Surely Mr. Watson isn’t suggesting some sort of connection between an increase in rates and corporate giving.
Most conspicuously, Mr. Watson did not mention “profit,” what would have been the fourth “P” in his alliterative phrasemaking, and the role it obviously plays in the whopping rate hike. TAWC customers should remember that it is the only privately owned monopoly water utility among Tennessee’s largest cities. It is owned by American Water Works, which has been put up for sale by its German owners. Approval of a rate hike would bolster AWW’s bottom line and make the company far more attractive to potential buyers.
Commissioner John Allen Brooks pointedly asked Mr. Watson if the rate increase is designed to run up the value of the company, and Commissioner Warren Mackey challenged the amount of the increase, correctly calling it “way out of line.” Mr. Watson denied the former and finessed the latter, but the commissioners’ points are well taken.
Mr. Watson did agree to provide a written report on the rate increase and its connection, or lack thereof, to the commission. What good that will do is uncertain. An unbiased analysis, not one from one skilled at spouting a company line, is needed in this case.
Mr. Watson’s bit of theater fails to make a case for a rate increase, but it does serve as a reminder that water is the community’s most precious resource. It sustains the economy just as it does human life. Control of the community’s water resource should be vested in local hands, not in corporate boardrooms located far from Chattanooga. This rate increase should be beaten back and the effort to bring public ownership of the water utility to the community should be reinvigorated.

This story was published Tuesday, April 03, 2007