Municipal Water Management, Private Contracting, and Public Response: A Case Study of Water Privatization in Buffalo, NY

Abstract

Municipalities in the U.S. are increasingly turning to private water management,often viewing it as a means to reduce costs. As has been the case in numerous developing countries, many domestic communities are now reacting to their local government’s plans to either sell its water system assets or contract out the system’s management. Guided by Snow and colleagues’ theory of frame alignment between individuals and social movements (1986) and Taylor’s analysis of environmental justice framing (2000), I identify several of the frames that residents have employed in U.S. cases of water privatization – including anti-privatization, right-to-water, and environmental justice. I then use a case-study method to investigate whether and how residents in Buffalo, New York expressed concerns regarding the city’s private water management contract between 1996 and 2008 and employed these frames to do so. I provide brief summaries of two other private water management cases, in Milwaukee and in the Detroit area, to help illustrate how residents responded in comparable circumstances. In my results section, I lay out a historical narrative describing Buffalo’s discourse on water management over the course of three major phases. To investigate my observations in the historical analysis, I conducted a content analysis of the arguments for and against private water management quoted in over 200 local news articles during the period; I support my findings with data from that analysis. I find that the first phase was characterized by debate between public officials and public unions, the second phase was characterized by debate over a joint regional water system, and the third phase was characterized by attention to the concerns of residents, and in particular the concerns of low-income residents (e.g. high water rates, late payment policies, and home foreclosures related to water payments) in the press and among decision makers. I conclude that the concerns and arguments used in Buffalo aligned explicitly with a homeowners’/renters’ rights frame and implicitly with elements of both the right-towater and the environmental justice movements’ frames. I recommend a broadened understanding of both of these movements and their purviews, to include communities, like Buffalo’s, that voice related concerns, though they may not employ the explicit terminology. Finally, I make policy recommendations on municipal water management that relate to rate structures, decision-making processes, transparency, and accountability.