Eye On Illinois: Private water companies looking to increase revenue streams

When you turn on the kitchen faucet, what color is the water?

I’d hope everyone reading this right now has the same answer, but a Friday report from Capitol News Illinois says otherwise.

With a Bourbonnais dateline, the piece details Aqua Illinois’ hopes of raising rates on customers in 14 counties, starting in January, by about $30 per month.

“It’s just unfair,” said Frank Pontrelli, of Lakemoor, at a July 29 Illinois Commerce Commission hearing in Crystal Lake. “We’re just getting browbeat here. Money’s getting taken and the water is still orange.”becameIt’s not just Aqua, as Illinois American Water is looking for its own similar hike, but the smaller company has a much worse track record. CNI noted a 2023 consent order reached as a resolution to “years of legal battles with the state’s attorney general stemming from dangerously high levels of lead in the water system for University Park” and unincorporated McHenry County residents complaining of iron discoloration and Lake County residents dealing with service interruptions and high costs.

Reliably providing clean water seems like the kind of thing folks might expect from government, but for-profit utilities are common in Illinois with the state getting involved through regulations that arguably make it the arbiter of how much average folks can pay and how much companies can profit. That hybrid arrangement removes many benefits of free market competition, while also putting some communities at odds with others utilizing textbook public works.

As CNI noted, every water company faces aging infrastructure – the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2023 said Illinois needs to spend $22 billion over two decades – but customers of private providers are likely to pay much more on their bills than those whose expenses will also be spread out over property taxes and grant funding.

This schism may be unsustainable.

ON THIS DAY: On Aug. 6, 1881, Louella Oettinger was born in Freeport. Known by her married name, Parsons, Louella eventually became so famous as a gossip and movie reporter in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles she earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her first memoir, 1944′s “The Gay Illiterate,” contains a passage about working for the Dixon Star during summer vacations as a teenager. File it under “As true today as when it was written”:

“I always carried a huge yellow notebook. I had an idea that a real reporter constantly jotted down notes, and I would far rather have been caught out without my lace-edged drawers than without my notebook! For the magnificent sum of five dollars weekly I covered musical events, wrote society notes, ran errands for the city editor, and learned something I have never since forgotten: NAMES make NEWS.”

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. Follow him on X @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.