At the Paris Media Centre, the Blue Community / Blue City Paris held a press conference for the opening of the Olympic Games: «Ici, je bois l’eau de Paris.» (Here I drink the water of Paris). Dan Lert, Deputy Mayor of the city, is in charge of the ecological transition, the climate plan, water and energy of Paris. He is also the president of Eau de Paris, the public water and wastewater service:
«The creation of a single, integrated public operator – Eau de Paris – in 2010 was the result of a political decision to take back control of our drinking water. The best treatment is to protect water resources at the source. We are working with farmers to adopt sustainable farming practices to improve groundwater quality in the long term.»
Maude Barlow, co-founder of the Blue Community, described the re-munipalisation of water in Paris in her book «Whose water is it, anyway?» (page 98f):
Paris reclaimed its water from Suez and Veolia in 2010 after 26 years of privatization, ending what the city council called a fragmented, opaque and expensive patchwork of services with poor accountability. The city reintegrated its water services to ensure better oversight and transparency.
The public utility Eau de Paris was created to replace the private management structure. Not only has it invested in conservation and the environment, city officials report, it is running the service far more efficiently as it can use all its funds to provide services, rather than keeping back capital to pay shareholders. Within the first year, savings of about 15% were achieved, and water tariffs were lowered by 8% the next year. According to Anne Le Strat, who oversaw the transition as deputy mayor, Eau de Paris has been saving the city council of Paris more than US$40 million per year. Officials at Eau de Paris are enormously proud of their company and promote it and over 1,200 public fountains they have installed in schools and many venues across the city. Their beautiful Pavillon de l’eau is open to the public to learn about the city’s water operations and used by the community to promote environmental initiatives and public events.
While there are active water justice organizations such as Attac France and France Libertés, in Paris and right across France, the fight to reclaim the city’s water services back under public management and then to designate Paris a Blue Community came largely from within city council. Le Strat’s successor, deputy mayor Célia Blauel, is equally committed to public water services. She understands that every victory has to be safeguarded, lest it be lost to complacency. It was an embarrassing and serious blow to the two water companies to lose not only Paris but so many other municipalities in their home country, and they have never stopped trying to get the cities to reconsider their decisions. Blauel and Mayor Anne Hidalgo decided to take the next step to protect their public water company.
On March 22, 2016, World Water Day, I had the great pleasure of presenting the Blue Community certificate to the deputy mayor and other officials at Paris City Hall. Blauel pledged to keep Paris water in public hands for all time. I said, “The global water crisis is getting more serious by the day and is being made worse by the corporate theft and abuse of water. Becoming a Blue Community like Paris has done today is a critical step toward the stewardship of water locally and globally that we need now and for future generations.” We spoke again at an evening public forum at the water pavilion attended by a large and enthusiastic crowd. I couldn’t miss the two well-dressed men who stood at the back of the room, arms crossed, coolly observing the event. Blauel recognized them as senior officials of Suez and Veolia.
Whose water is it, anyway? : taking water protection into public hands / Maude Barlow
Copyright © Maude Barlow, 2019
Published by ECW Press, 665 Gerrard Street East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada m4m 1y2
416–694–3348 / info@ecwpress.com