When Carol Weaver learned that her city council was considering selling the local water system to a private company, she and her neighbors got together and formed Knox Friends of Locally Owned Water, or Knox FLOW. As a former mayor and city council member, Carol knew how to get the attention of elected officials. She and fellow FLOW members gathered signatures from 300 neighbors opposed to privatizing their public water system (a big number in a town of about 750 registered voters) and presented those to a stunned city council.

“We told the council members: You’re accountable to us,” Carol said. “But if you sell our water system to a commercial entity that’s accountable to shareholders and CEOs, then we, the customers, end up at the bottom of the list.”

On May 8, 2007, the Knox City Council voted against selling the local water and wastewater systems to either of the two companies vying for it: American Water and Aqua America. Those are the two largest private water companies in the U.S., and in recent years they both have been looking to small towns like Knox as targets for privatization.

"We figured, if we're paying for the upgrades anyway, we might as well own the system in the end," Carol said.

Carol and her neighbors drew inspiration from the many grassroots FLOW groups sprouting up around the country, like Bluegrass FLOW in Lexington, KY, and Felton FLOW in Felton, CA. It’s a model that Carol says has worked to unite the community.

Knox residents like Carol only learned of the potential privatization after the council had already asked companies for bids. Neighbors sensed foul play: The city council member who proposed the privatization scheme, Jim Curran, is an employee of Pennsylvania American Water, one of the companies jockeying to privatize Knox’s water.

“I’m a very patriotic American,” Carol says. “For the future of our children and our grandchildren in this town, we have the right and the obligation to vote—to say who we want to control our water.”