Excellent column in the 8/25 Financial Times by Fredrik Segerfeldt on "The Private Sector cn get water flowing to the poor." Full text for subscribers only, unfortunately.

Segerfeldt, author of a Cato book on water rights, makes a strong case that private companies deliver clean, safe water to more people, and so improve the lives of the poor who are more likely to be without water, and also lower the cost of water to the poor, who now buy clean water at high prices from small vendors in small quantities.

As a result, even if water prices for existing customers rise (a frequent charge of privatization opponents), water prices for the poor fall under privatization.

I did get a little worried at the end when he began to talk about the need for more requlatory oversight of the contracts with the private firms (this was ever so successful with regulated utilities in other areas....). I have some more comments on the ethical issues raised by the column here.

The book is Water for Sale: How Businesses and the Market Can Resolve the World's Water Crisis (Cato Institute).

If you are going to read about water markets, you also need to read Terry Anderson and Pam Snyder's Priming the Invisible Pump.