this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2026
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Yeah so that exists and it's not going so well for the UK. I will edit with some links.
Edit:
Very broadly water utilities in the UK and north America largely started off private but public ownership is still the norm for centralized system of idk > 100 people?
Tbh I'm high and not bothering to look stuff but but I'm guessing that it was sewage treatment which lead water utilities (handling both potable and sewage) being public. You can charge people for water, but unless the government is forcing people to connect to a sewer and get rid of pit latrines etc there is no market for it. (Fun fact domestic connections to sewers predate the widespread use of septic tanks)
Migration to urban centres due to industrialization and the industrial processes themselves were the main loading of sewage, which overwhelmed natural systems that had previously been able to support the community.
Someone had to treat the sewage because it was fucking up the drinking water. Who has to deal with stuff like that? The government! So they run the sewage plants. And because the private drinking water plants were run for profit and not for health, a lot of them were extremely bad they got shut down. Once again, the government had to step in because they needed to enforce standards.
Toronto and Ottawa have very interesting and very divergent experiences with that relationship. If someone is interested I can see if I can dig up an article someone wrote about it.
Anyways, sometimes the government made developers pay directly for the construction, operations and maintenance of a plant, but now in Ontario for the most part they just charge development fees. Small communities like trailer parks or ski villages typically have their own little plant or over glorified septic tank.
I came here to argue that there are in fact private sewage companies and they are often disasters, but I think the above kind of proved that the origin of public water utilities was the failure of the private sector to get their shit together.
Well that's awkward.
Anyways, fuck Thames Water : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Water
Having lived in their catchment, I cannot echo this sentiment more strongly. In a sane country their entire senior management cohort would be hauled before Parliament to explain the amount of human shit in the Thames, and why their bosses keep getting paid enormous bonuses despite this. Absolutely crooked industry, I'm fairly sure Thames Water could redirect the sewage they're currently pumping into the river into Ofwat's boardroom and they'd at worst get away with a slap on the wrist and 'boys will be boys'. Absolutely pathetic, and the whole thing stinks of corruption as well as sewage.
Yeah, having lived in a Thames Water area, and with the absolutely garbage water quality, and pretty consistent 2-6×/yr loss of service because of shit infrastructure, and constantly insane price increases. Now live in Scotland, quality is peak, haven't had a single loss of service in 4 years. Idk.... almost feels like maybe something like water and sewage shouldn't be privatised.....🤷🏾♂️
I would love to read about that, sounds very interesting.
I'm having trouble finding the one I'm thinking about (it was written for some industry org, maybe OWWA or OPWA?
Anyways, here is a comprehensive history, but it's 181 pages: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2273818
I'll comment again if I find the other one. I'm sure I have it saved somewhere 😅
TL;DR: Ottawa would have sooner built an aqueduct from 31-Mile Lake than build a sewage plant. They didn't get one until the 1960s. Toronto built it's first (and poorly working) municipal plant in 1912 (I think?). The chief bacteriologist in Ottawa was just like, throw some chlorine at the water, you will be fine. 😬