With Asheville's water system under review by the state, it might interest local residents to read what's being considered in nearby Tryon: A private company, NI America, has expressed interest in buying the system and managing the town's water delivery and maintenance. The town council met with company representatives to discuss the idea. Here's an excerpt from The Tryon Daily Bulletin:
During Tryon’s Jan. 17 meeting, two representatives from Ni America told [the town] council they have been interested in purchasing the town’s water and wastewater systems for a couple of years.Read the full article
Ni America President Ed Wallace said two years ago his company offered Tryon $4.2 million for its systems. ... Ni America Regional President Stan Jones said they came to Tryon’s Jan. 17 meeting as a re-introduction. Jones, who has a home in Columbus, said having Ni America look at the town’s systems won’t cost Tryon a dime....
“We really specialize in smaller systems that need help,” Wallace said. “We also are in the process of talking to cities in which there are water and wastewater issues with increasing costs. We try to fix the issues less expensively than you can fix it yourself. If you were to call DHEC (Department of Health and Environmental Control) in S.C., our reputation is stellar.”
Councilman George Baker said he is sure Ni America is a wonderful company, but he asked Wallace and Jones how they were going to ensure Tryon’s rates would remain the same or lower if they purchased the water/sewer system.
“We currently have the highest rates in North Carolina for cities our size,” Baker said. “... how are you going to prove to us that if you buy this system the rates are going to be as low or lower than they are now? Are you prepared to put that in a contract?
Wallace responded, “Sure – we have no problem with that.”
He said Ni America’s systems in S.C. are 40 percent lower in rates than their municipal counterparts. ...
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Why is a company from Texas so desperate to spend $4.2 million on a water system from Tryon NC (pop. 1700)?
Could it be because Tryon sits at the end of a long pipeline that leads to the Asheville water system to the north, and that everything south of them is solid red extreme drought all the way to the Gulf?
I'm just sayin', there's good money to be made selling drinking water to people who don't have any...
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/DM_southeast.htm
By Barry Summers
01/22/2012
Could it be because this water company would be poised to sell and provide precious and in massive amounts of water to the proposed Duke Energy Nuclear Plant in Cherokee,SC(the Broad River Basin)?
By schuyler conard
01/23/2012
You can listen live to the water committee in Raleigh on Monday the 23rd starting at 2 pm, either from my blog:
ashevillewater.blogspot.com/
or from the City's website:
ashevillenc.gov
By Barry Summers
01/22/2012
What was done at the end of a bayonet in Chile and Argentina is being done here at the end of the ballot.
By mat catastrophe
01/22/2012
Don't worry Tryon, these guys just want to help. Themselves.
By Ascend (of Asheville)
01/22/2012
1. Great news. This is an excellent development. Especially for the water customers of Tryon.
2. The difference between a bayonet and a ballot is force.
..............
By timothypeck
01/22/2012
Tim perhaps you could explain to all of those with no thoughts in their heads how exactly the magic hand of competition in the free enterprise capitalist system will work in this situation when there is only one set of pipes to deliver and remove water and only one source of water and water treatment.
How does competition that benefits consumers work here. Please explain. Use all the thoughts you need.
By Christopher C NC
01/22/2012
And just when you think this whole thing has hit bottom, Florida Republicans, stymied in their attempts to privatize large parts of the prison system, have introduced legislation that would keep privatization deals secret from the public until the contracts are signed:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/18/2594988/senate-bill-would-allow-privatization.html
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/gop-florida-secret-privatization-outsourcing
This would apply to any privatization deals initiated by the Legislature, not just prisons, and it would even nullify the requirement for a traditional cost/benefit analysis. Selling off public infrastructure to your friends in backroom deals specifically because the public is opposed to it, without even an attempt to demonstrate that it's good for the taxpayer... at what point do we get to call this what it is: theft?
By Barry Summers
01/22/2012
Tim, as usual you haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. Especially since you seem to be contradicting the oft-repeated libertarian mantra that government itself is a form of force and coercion.
Which isn't surprising, since it must take a lot of effort to keep all the cognitive dissonance in your frontal lobe firmly under control.
And this is not good news for "water customers" in Tryon, anymore than the coming takeover by corporate interests in Asheville's water system will be good for "water customers" here, unless by "water customers" you exclusively mean businesses and not people.
Will those businesses (and perhaps the wealthier citizens) get special rates? Will they get guaranteed water pressure? Maybe they will get preferential treatment, based on what they're willing to pay? I'm sure all of that just makes your inner Rand hard as a rock, but it runs absolutely counter to what we've understood in this country for literally centuries about the common interest in keeping certain things "public" and not privatizing them.
Now, you can insist all you'd like that the free market is Right and Proper, but all evidence of the it is to the contrary, stretching back as far as the coup in Chile in 1973 and right on into the economic collapse of 2008.
If you can honestly say that only people who can pay for clean water should have access to clean water, then you are even less of a human being than many people suspect.
By mat catastrophe
01/22/2012
Tim, really, the privatization wave we're getting ready to experience has less in common with the rise of "stellar" private companies in the West than it does with the theft of public resources and creation of goon companies during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
If - and to my mind it's a big if - America is your socialist city on a hill, it'd be a good idea to keep the "us" resources in the hands of "us" that paid for them.
Your naivete on subjects like this is really hard to understand. You're willing to transfer resources from the hands of people we can most assuredly get fired come election time to folks we have absolutely no control over, and somehow there's supposed to be a savings in here somewhere? You might want to venture outdoors now and then.
By sharpleycladd
01/22/2012
The Texas company seeking to acquire Tryons water system purchased a private water/sewer utility in Columbia SC, Palmetto Utilities, around the same time they made their first offer in Tryon. That SC utility currently has an "F" rating with the Better Business Bureau.
By Barry Summers
01/22/2012