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This chapter provides a historical framework for consideration of today’s debates over privatization. Changes in policies and practices are never free of the inertia of history. Some of the key pressures for change today have resulted from past action (or inaction), and today’s practices have evolved from specific problem-solving histories.
Efforts to provide safe drinking water and wastewater disposal facilities date back to the origins of civilization (Rosen, 1993; Winslow, 1952). Ancient societies in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Pakistan, Crete, and Greece all sought to provide safe drinking water and safe means of human waste disposal. Water supply and wastewater collection reached a high point in the Roman Empire. The Dark Ages, however, witnessed a decline in the development and application of these practices.
As world population neared one billion during the Industrial Revolution in the late nineteenth century, cities and villages became more crowded. Public health concerns dictated that new ways had to be found to provide safe water supplies as well as provide means for safe disposal of sanitary wastes. Growth in the numbers and in the size of cities and increasing use of water in residential, commercial, and industrial enterprises led to increasing provision of public systems for water supply and wastewater systems. Although some research suggests that private water companies emerged during the Renaissance (Walker, 1968), private entrepreneurs initiated the provision of water supply services on a large scale during the nineteenth century in both Europe and the United States. By contrast, provision of sewers, along with streets and drainage facilities,
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