After the revolution, New York City was left in shambles. There were no trees, no clean water, and what wasn’t destroyed by the great fires, were burnt down by the British. To make matters worse nyc had a severe drought which caused of a panic of dying from thirst.
There were several people who came forward addressing the way of means to provide water to the public. Before the revolution, ‘the people in charge of the wells and pumps where elected men who’s main job was to help the poor, by collecting and distributing the poor tax. After the revolution however, documents were lost and those jobs were taken over by British loyalist. The new nation now had to figure out a way to provide water to the public by means of pumps and who should be in charge. The common council had many proposals coming in from men like Samuel Ogden, Joseph Newton, and Jonathan Emery. The council suddenly decided to return all proposals and to just create a proposal for a privately run supply. Koeppel described this moment as “This earnest intention marked the beginning of decades of official abdication of responsibility on the subject of water and of private interest choking off real solutions to New York’s growing water needs”. After hearing the public opinion, the committee came to the conclusion that there should not be a private water company. This decision still benefits us today because we do not have to resort a a private company for water source. Water services are still seen as a very important public service and the risk of water being privatized
Photo of breast wheel used by Montreal Water Works, 1873
today is relatively low.
This was a good post on how NYC found structure for water systems. One good point to bring up was that a lot of water sources were dirty and cholera was traced in various water systems that people were using. There would be outbreaks every now and than, as a result one out of every 39 people would die. This posts shows evidence of how everything got organized.
Yes, I do agree that the privatization of water will be extremely detrimental to NY. Unlike many other places, NYC has access to clean and cheap water despite the global shortage of freshwater. If we look at Africa, many of the countries’ residents are dying because of lack of water. They drink from disease infested rivers causing many deaths. Cheap and usable water is a privilege here.
Great post about the early history of water in NYC, it highlights the business mentality that has made New York and the U.S. in general what it is today. The capitalist system is built on private industry and the exploitation of the working class. This sad reality is over looked and ignored on a constant basis. Like Jerry mentioned before, luckily today we can enjoy clean and plentiful water but what about the hundreds of other countries that still to this day struggle to find water and other bare essentials of living. We have to stop thinking about ourselves and start thinking about ways to help those in need. We might think that our dirty past is behind us but that is not the truth, it just spread some where else.
I completely agree that the privatization of water anywhere would be detrimental to its people. Water is an inelastic good. This means that no matter how expensive it is, the demand remains the same. For example, lets assume that your thirst and you need water. Water is $50 a bottle, but you still need the water and have no other choice, but to pay the $50. If water was privatized, I truly believe that many more people would be dying of thirst. However, I do believe that private water companies should be allowed to flourish. A battle between the public and private water sectors would drive down water prices and help the evermore increasing population of the world!
I thought it was interesting how the committee came to a decision not to make water private after hearing the public. We often hear government officials doing whatever is sometimes best for themselves but in this case, they did it for the betterment of the public. I also think that privitizing water would have left poor districts in cities without no water and would have left people who could not afford water or people who refused to pay for water to fend for themselves. Like how Sheena said about cholera above, creating a public water system left us a cleaner city overall.