FELTON’S WATER SUCCESS

By Dr Arvind Kumar

Felton is a small town in the redwood hills above Santa Cruz, Califprnia in The United States. Felton had a privately run water system and its residents quickly experienced some of the drawbacks: skyrocketing rates, and little public recourse. It hadn’t been much of an issue until 2002, when California-American Water (Cal-Am), a subsidiary of American Water Works, took over Felton’s water utility.
In November 2002, Cal-Am proposed a 74 percent rate increase over three years. Felton residents formed Friends of Locally Owned Water (FLOW), and with legal help from Santa Cruz County, fought the rate increase, which the utilities commission knocked down to 44 percent. But the threat of escalating costs loomed, so FLOW began working on a plan to buy the water system and turn it over to the nearby San Lorenzo Valley Water District (SLVWD), a public utility.
By 2005, FLOW had enlisted the help of Food & Water Watch and was working on a ballot initiative to raise the estimated $11 million to buy the system from Cal-Am/RWE. Today, with Felton’s water back in the hands of a public utility, the average resident’s bill has dropped by at least 50 percent.
In the fight for water independence, Felton, California has become a symbol of what can be achieved.
If there is need to make improvements to ailing systems, municipal bonds are usually a cheaper option than private financing, and people can seek public-public partnerships (PUPs), an alternative to public-private partnerships. PUP, according to the Transnational Institute, is “a collaboration between two or more public authorities or organizations based on solidarity to improve the capacity and effectiveness of one partner in providing public water or sanitation services.”
Felton town’s success story can be emulated in India on the PUP model with the involvement of civil society and citizens.