It was a few hours before the city council meeting in O’Fallon, Missouri—across the Missouri River from St. Louis—when Sister Carol Boschert first heard that the O’Fallon city council was considering selling its public water system to a private corporation. Wasting no time, Sister Carol made her way to the meeting, research in hand, and raised her concerns: that privatization could lead to higher rates, poor customer service, and loss of accountability. One of the bidders for the system was Missouri–American Water, and Sister Carol had read up on the problems other communities had faced when dealing with American Water and its European parent company, RWE.

Sister Carol’s case, and the case of other stakeholders who spoke at the meeting, was so compelling that the City Council decided to delay a decision/vote on the sale until they had done more research and provided more information to constituents.

The city formed a water and sewer task force to study the issue, comprised of City Council members, city staff, and O’Fallon residents. Sister Carol was invited to be on the task force, and she accepted.

“The commission was unanimous in not wanting to sell,” Sister Carol said, despite the fact that some of its members had initially supported the privatization of O’Fallon’s water system.

The task force’s findings, which were presented to the Mayor and City Council, listed such disadvantages of a sale as loss of “control and representation,” “possible loss of jobs,” and “loss of future revenues.” After the task force’s presentation, the city council decided not to pursue a sale of the city’s water system in the upcoming election.

Ironically, Sister Carol first began studying the impacts of water privatization in Bolivia, where some of her sisters lived and where the U.S. company Bechtel had raised the cost of a water connection so high that many people could not afford it. “My initial reaction when I found out this could happen in O’Fallon was no, this can’t happen. Because of the bad experience in Bolivia, where our sisters had been, I didn’t want that to happen here.”

In May 2007, the City Council awarded Sister Carol with a Citizen’s Award in recognition for other contributions she has made to O’Fallon.