Back in 1999, when Bolivia decided to privatize water services in Cochabamba, the country’s third-largest city, it didn’t bargain for the backlash that would unleash. Mobs of angry Bolivians, some armed with Molotov cocktails, took to the streets in protest. Martial law was declared, and in the ensuing violence one person was killed and several others were injured. Eventually the government withdrew the private water contract, and Bechtel, the U.S. engineering giant overseeing the water system, was run out of the country. Since then, documentaries such as The Corporation, Blue Gold and Flow have used footage of the riots to highlight the perils of water privatization. But it’s too bad the filmmakers didn’t stick around to see how things turned out.

Since water delivery has been returned to the state-run utility, things haven’t improved at all. Fully 80 per cent of the new management is “not qualified to perform their responsibilities,” according to one former senior staffer. Two directors of the water authority have since been sacked for corruption, several managers have been fired for similar charges, and the utility is now hobbled by inefficiencies, nepotism and “blatant company corruption,” according to a recent study by the Transnational Institute. Now, party politics and electoral concerns determine “who gets service and when,” and the “fragmented hodgepodge” of expansion projects is neither coherent nor technically viable. Fully half of Cochabamba’s people are still without water, and those who have service only have it sporadically—for some, as little as two hours a day. “I would have to say we were not ready to build new alternatives,” admitted Oscar Olivera, who led the Bolivian protests that forced Bechtel out. Continue…