Freshwater Future’s Executive Director Jill Ryan shares her thoughts on the predatory water system pricing in Pennsylvania in Food & Water Watches recent article focused on privatization.
Today, more than 20 groups and hundreds of Pennsylvania residents sent in public comments asking the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission to end predatory water system pricing.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) has proposed changes to how it implements Act 12 of 2016, a state law that opened the floodgates on water and sewer privatization in the state by allowing predatory pricing of municipal systems and excessive rate hikes afterwards. Act 12 allows water corporations to recover the cost of inflated acquisition prices through rates.
The PUC has proposed a reasonableness review ratio to serve as a guide post to evaluate purchase prices of water and sewer systems that are marked above their book value. The expected initial ratio is 1.68, effectively indicating that the PUC believes it is reasonable to buy a system marked up by 68 percent over the book value.
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