From ADRIAN SHAW
In his review of Coming Clean: The Politics of Water and the Environment
(30 July), Fred Pearce criticises the privatised British water industry
and its failure to live up to the ideals of proper water resource management.
The English water industry maybe, but in Scotland circumstances are quite
different. Here, water and sewerage services are provided by local government,
including Strathclyde Regional Council, and water quality monitoring is
carried out by the River Purification Boards, not the National Rivers Authority.
River water quality in Strathclyde is good (over 90 per cent is class
one) and charges to domestic users lower than in England. There are, coincidentally,
no shareholders to consider. Is this too good to be true? The government
proposes to change the arrangements. As part of the proposed reorganisation
of local government in Scotland, it intends to remove control of water and
sewerage to new, specially created water authorities (quangos) accountable
to the Secretary of State.
The government emphatically insists this is not privatisation, but the
great majority of Scottish opinion including this council, rejects the proposals,
believing the current arrangements in Scotland to be preferable.
Adrian Shaw Strathclyde Regional Council Glasgow
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