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Pay" arrangements with private water service providers--buying bulk quantities of water whether you use it or not--are vulnerable to charges that public funds are being used to "guarantee multinationals' profits at the expenses of taxpayers/consumers", while at the same time discouraging conservation .23 ~i~ o~ a~er e~e~ t~e ate~ is sea o~ ~ot ~s a t~e Or_p~ eo~tr~et s that it gre~tl~ ~h~e~i~es i~ee~ti~es fo~ °~ ~°ih~ ~te~ ~ohserv~tio~ i~rOve~ehts si~e the ~te~ PRIVATIZATION OF WATER AND WASTEWATER SERVICES IN TEXAS Eighty percent of the population of Texas is served by municipally owned water utilities, but Texas reflects the water supply system of the United States with its diversified water utility system. In Texas, there are approximately 8000 water suppliers that own and operate individual systems.2~ This includes community systems, such as cities, Municipal Utility Districts, water supply corporations, mobile home parks, and non- community systems, such as strip centers, recreational facilities, and jails. Of this number, there are approximately 700 investor-owned utilities, 938 municipal utility districts, 13 counties with water systems, 667 Special Utility Districts and 817 non-profit water supply corporations.26 A 1998 national survey indicated that there are municipal utilities in Texas that are interested in various types of public private partnerships for drinking water and wastewater services. 27 Some Texas communities have privatized parts of their water-wastewater services, but the extent of those partnerships, whether they are in the form of outsourcing discreet activities or building and managing facilities has not been fully documented. There is no documentation that a Texas municipality has divested its entire water system to a private corporation. The Texas Water Development Board commissioned Reed-Stowe & Company, a firm that specializes in providing services to the private sector companies involved in public water, wastewater and solid waste management, to conduct a study of trends in water and wastewater competition in Texas and privatization strategies. That report, completed in May 1999, identified 43 cities, one utility district and one municipal utility district that were engaged in some form of public-private