Too often these days it seems that large corporations and powerful individuals can do whatever they want. However, outrage over corporate control of water is causing more and more citizens to mobilize against efforts to profit from our public resources.

Such is the case in Akron, Ohio this week. On Monday, the citizen group Citizens to Save Our Sewers and Water (SOS) succeeded in putting on the November ballot a measure that would put to a public vote any effort by City Council to privatize city utilities.

The initiative drive—which collected nearly twice the signatures needed to order the issue to ballot—developed after Akron Mayor Donald Plusquellic announced in February his intention to lease Akron’s wastewater system to a private company. The mayor’s plan, which will also be on the November ballot, has the seemingly virtuous goal of financing a scholarship program for Akron youth.http://www.afsc.net/PDFFiles/mayorsplan0001.pdf

The contract, however, assembled in just a few short months, steps directly into many of the pitfalls of water privatization, not to mention fails to address questions of city and corporate responsibility and the degree and quality of services provided.

While the cause of financing education is a laudable goal, privatizing the city’s water system would create more problems than it would solve. Besides, the question at hand is not about the (inestimable) value of education, it is about whether or not corporations should control access to water in Akron.