Veolia Environnement
Veolia Environnement is the world’s largest water company. Its water and wastewater unit serves over 110 million customers in 84 countries. But the company seeking to privatize our water has run into trouble, including bribery convictions, class actions suits and the collapse of stock prices.
Until 2003 Veolia Environnment was known as Vivendi Environnement, a reflection of the company’s one-time status as a subsidiary of the multinational conglomerate Vivendi Universal. In recent years, the corporate labyrinth has twisted, turned and unrav- eled, and Vivendi’s erstwhile majority interest in the world’s biggest water company has dwindled to a little more than 5 percent. Veolia Environnement, too, has made changes, most notably selling off an equipment sales and service divi- sion, a pair of retail-level water service companies and even some water rights in California.
Amid so much change, one thing has remained the same: the company’s nightmarish vision of a future where the entire planet’s increasingly scarce supply of water fit for human consumption is controlled as a commodity to be bought, sold, traded, marketed, managed and priced for the highest possible corporate profit.
Veolia’s vision is shared by the rest of the increasingly con- solidated private water industry, the international financial organizations which are heavily influenced by the financially powerful water conglomerates, and scattered public officials at all levels of governments who have either been misled into thinking that privatized water is economical or who are driven by ideology and blind faith in private-sector superiority.
Veolia’s vision is not shared by citizens of the world whose common sense and common sense of justice tells them that clean, safe water is a human right that should be available to all, not just those who can afford to pay. And throughout much—too much—of the world, citizens have seen first-hand the price-gouging, corruption and profiteer- ing that Veolia, formerly Vivendi, carries in its wake.
