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ix A common and oft-repeated statement is that “water is the next oil.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. The comparisons, of course, are understandable . Oil has become scarcer and more expensive. We have reached peak oil and the world faces a downward spiral—fast or slowly depending upon who you believe—to the bottom of that energy barrel. Fresh water, too, is a finite resource with demand on the rise, and inevitably, higher prices to follow. Concerns abound regarding water as a fixed supply, often with limited access, and perpetually undervalued in terms of cost. One set of statistics claims that demand for water in the United States in the past thirty years has tripled, while the population has doubled. Global consumption of water appears to be doubling every twenty years—twice the rate of population growth.1 As historian John McNeill quaintly noted, “[t]he clearest thing about the history of water is that people use a lot more now than they used to.”2 Enterprising business leaders look on these challenges as opportunities to turn the problems of peak water into profits. Some engineers and scientists look upon the reality of limited water supplies as an occasion to change hydro-management techniques to “grow water,” that is, to modify existing engineered water systems to function more naturally and to allow for water reuse through recycling processes.3 To treat the problem of water supply as if its resolution can be found through some technical black box ignores the fundamental issue of who controls water and why. This is not to demean the search for efficient ways to provide sufficient water, to cease taking into account better methods of allocating the resource, or to ignore methods to sustain the available supplies. Rather, it is to state emphatically that the control of water supplies—whoever has it—strongly influences promotion of efficient technologies, determines allocation, and, to some degree at least, has something to say about the ultimate sustainability of water systems. Precious Commodity takes a look at public and private responsibility for Introduction water—truly a precious commodity x introduction water from a historical perspective and from a variety of vantage points. It concludes, not surprisingly, that the institutional setting within which decisions over water are made has a profound impact on allocation and use. Concerns about a “fresh water crisis” now or in the past give too much attention to gross statistics on population growth and levels of consumption and not enough to who manages water supply and why that matters. The following eight chapters focus mainly on urban American topics, but also make some attempt to move beyond those borders. All of them focus on questions of public and private responsibility in some fashion. Among the issues raised are the following: • The effort to “harness” American rivers brought into play questions concerning property rights and public management opportunities. Water as a contested resource was played out through these issues. • A major justification for the first public water supply and wastewater systems in American cities rested on a rather misinformed notion of disease transmission that nevertheless set a pattern for municipal control for generations. • While the development of modern American waterworks in the nineteenth century was a success story at the time, the inflexible systems left little room for serious modifications in the future. • The building of big dams by the federal government was the most graphic symbol of water as a public resource. Their construction, use, and possible dismantling have been and continue to be the subject of public regulation and public policy, as well as environmental concern. • San Jose’s long lasting private water system was an anomaly but demonstrates how circumstance and contingency can challenge orthodoxy. In the end, the private system survived in part because of its association with the Santa Clara Valley Conservation District—a public entity. • Public and private uses of water obviously are not limited to water supply. A water artery—in this case Buffalo Bayou running through Houston—linked the past and present political, social, and economic history of the community, serving both public and private interests. • While Houston followed the public service model in developing its modern water supply system, that system was crucial to private development and was sometimes shaped by the needs of the private sector—especially, in this case, the oil refining and petrochemical industries. • The emerging global movement by multinational companies to privatize water supply systems raises important questions about water as...

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