By Laura Bliss
Route Fifty
In Coatesville, Pennsylvania, nearly a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. Abandoned buildings are rampant. With high unemployment rates, the tax base is dwindling.
And yet, many residents of Coatesville are paying hundreds of dollars for their monthly water service. That’s as much as people living in cities as large and wealthy as San Francisco cough up.
Why? In 2001, Al Jazeera reports, Coatesville officials sold the city’s water system to the Pennsylvania-American Water Company (PAWC) for $38 million, with ambitions to revitalize the city with the sale. But the decision has had an opposite effect: The city mismanaged the revenue, and PAWC has sought exponential rate hikes on multiple occasions.
Locals wonder whether the publicly traded company is merely padding its investors’ pockets. PAWC says the increases have gone to support crucial water infrastructure maintenance and improvements, long deferred by the city.
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