Grassroots Movement in Illinois Is Resisting Corporate Grab of Water Systems

The road from public ownership of a municipal water system to privatization is a one-way street paved with regret. Once public ownership is lost, it’s a rarity to recover control. Bolingbrook, Illinois, has been trying to for the last 15 years. Missoula, Montana, is one extraordinary success story, but it took sustained public support, political will across administrations, costly decades in the courts, and ultimately hardball tactics like the invocation of eminent domain.

In southern Illinois, an ad hoc people’s movement is going after government officials who are trying to smooth-talk residents toward the edge of the privatization bluff. Many Illinoisans, once they find out about the issue, are refusing to let corporations take control of their water and dole it out only on their terms. They’re storming into public meetings not with pitchforks but with insistent hard questions. They come armed with damning facts about backroom shenanigans gleaned from citizen-led scrutiny of public records requests, as well as relentless social media reminders that the smell of money is in the air — one man satirically called the attempted privatization of his town’s sewer a “Turd Tax.”

So far, they’ve flushed the threat.

Privatization, which is sometimes preceded by the consolidation of a number of smaller water districts into a larger one, is being pushed by those who would have people believe that stripping their small towns for parts is a form of legitimate economic development that constitutes the only possible escape from the economic burden that the current water system has placed on tiny hamlets. Rosiclare mayor Roy Tolbert told Truthout he fell for that pitch in 2020, and along with the city council, his administration sold their formerly city-run fresh and waste water systems to Illinois American Water, a subsidiary corporation of American Water, for $600,000. “I hate, hate, hated to sell it,” he said.

Tolbert described it as the best bargain he could make on behalf of the system’s 350 water customers, who were staring down an irrational system designed to fail.

“The way the loans are tied up is you’re supposed to be able to sell the water, and within 20 years you’re supposed to collect enough revenue off of that to put in a different fund to rebuild it again in 20 years,” Tolbert said. “But when you borrow, it might cost $5 million to do the job. 20 years from now, that $5 million job could cost $12 million.”

Water bills in Rosiclare have increased, but he still defends the town’s decision in economic terms. The loss of political autonomy is not top of mind.

“My bill is higher now. But if we kept it and borrowed money, our water bills would have been even higher than [Illinois] American Water’s,” said Tolbert.

Recognizing Tactics of Political Manipulation

Since 2013 — the year Illinois made it legal for corporate buyers to spread the cost of their acquisitions among all ratepayers — corporations have succeeded in taking over control of 61 water systems in the state.

As a result, there’s now been enough experience of corporate takeovers of public water assets in Illinois for many of the state’s water districts to understand that a temporary relief from a heavy burden ultimately translates into a painful loss and a bad deal for Illinoisans.

So when elected officials called a mass meeting to have a conversation about the benefits of consolidation, opponents identified it as an easily recognizable tactic of political manipulation. Communities in southern Illinois are facing this now, and are meeting the challenge with everyday heroism, homegrown Midwestern pluck, and the courage that comes from a deep conviction in the public good.

Sage Lintner, the 29-year-old office manager, treasurer, and Class D licensed water operator at the Buncombe Public Water District, told Truthout she thinks of lawmakers who mislead constituents for personal aggrandizement as “groomers.”

It was in that spirit last month that Lintner, short of yelling “stranger, danger,” drew as much attention as possible to a proposed June 16 meeting of 153 water districts called by four Republican lawmakers, including a U.S. congressman with a keen interest in water privatization.

U.S. Rep. Mike Bost represents Illinois’ 12th district, which is so sparsely populated that it covers most of 13 of 102 counties in the state. He introduced legislation to facilitate payments to private water operators from funds that public districts have been paying into for decades. Bost has received upward of $15,000 in campaign contributions from American Water, or its subsidiary Illinois American Water, during his 11-year incumbency. The meeting’s ostensible purpose was to bring the districts together to explore collaboration and cooperation for securing federal grants.

But when Lintner got word that Illinois American Water was invited, she said she saw the meeting for what it was — “a prime spot for grooming and propaganda,” and issued a lengthy and detailed press release to sound the alarm.

“Grooming is essentially what the entire June 16 meeting was supposed to be, right?” Lintner said. “Illinois American Water was supposed to come, because according to Larry Hackethal, the mayor of Cobden, State Senator Paul Jacobs, who’d sent out the letter inviting everybody, contacted Illinois American Water to talk with them ‘because of their expertise’.”

In her press release, Lintner explained that consolidation could lead to privatization, and that it likely would, without an intervention.

The meeting was canceled in the face of public outrage at the thought of losing control of 14 Illinois counties’ worth of water systems in one fell swoop. The urge for self-preservation quickly rippled beyond any one individual’s advocacy. On July 22, Lintner read in the local university newspaper that “the Jackson County Board in its July 21 meeting passed a resolution opposing the privatization of water utilities within its county lines.” In a few short weeks, issues that virtually only water professionals cared about were finally receiving public attention.

“I’m hoping that young people will feel that movement, that uplift, and feel the call,” Lintner said. “We’re not little babies anymore. We are full-grown adults with thinking minds and skills we can bring to holding onto our water here in southern Illinois.”

That same evening, in White County (one of over 30 counties exploring secession from the State of Illinois), the city council in Carmi voted unanimously to reject Illinois American Water’s bid to buy its wastewater system. The corporation’s defeat came after weeks of relentless public criticism described in a local report as a “tongue lashing.”

Independent businessman Rudy Rudolph, who does some of the city’s printing work, told Truthout that if he hadn’t picked up a flyer that had fallen off his printing press, he and the town’s other almost 4,600 residents might’ve woken up on July 22 to learn their sewer system had been sold out from under them with little fanfare. Luckily, he’d read the agenda item on the flyer: “Bid opening for real and personal property owned by the City of Carmi – Waste Water Treatment Plant/Sewer Plant,” recognized it as a big deal, and wondered why no one in town was talking about it.

“When I took it to the mayor, he just acted like I was a dumbass,” Rudolph said. “That’s a mistake, to underestimate me.” That’s when he took to Facebook to tell his neighbors what he knew, how he came to know it, and what he still needed to know. By the day of the vote, he’d garnered 224,000 views on 40 videos, many of them staged as scenic walk and talks, sometimes at sunset, in which he shared his questions as they came to him, as well as answers whenever he shook them loose from public officials and city staff.

One of his persistent public records requests was met with a door knock at his home by a city underling who wanted him to go back to city hall to talk it over. Rudolph is mulling legal action. The act enraged him, and he wondered aloud if someone more likely to be intimidated would be less likely to file another records request after experiencing “a government man coming to the door like that.”

Rudolph has been praised on social media as a pit bull whose toe brushes the line of decorum without crossing it. The morning after the city council’s decision to reject the corporate takeover of Carmi’s water system, he relayed his sentiments about the win in a text to Truthout. He was pleased that they’d saved the jobs of eight city workers. “Embracing empathy turned me into a ‘warrior’,” he said.

That same evening at the White County Board, there was more good water-related news: a 12-month moratorium on data centers was passed.

“We Really Need to Restore That Federal Commitment”

The water privatization war’s been waged for decades. A straight line can be drawn from the high monthly city water bill paid by Rosiclare’s mayor to former President Ronald Reagan’s reduction of the federal share allowed for local construction under the Clean Water Act from 75 percent to 55 percent. Reagan also “pushed local water systems to use full cost charging to upgrade their systems,” per a July 2024 In The Public Interest report titled “Water Wars in Pennsylvania: How Corporations Play The Long Game.” The report recounts the funding history as a drip, drip, drip of the disinvestment hose. Damage was done by The Water Quality Act in 1987, the establishment of loan programs in 1996 (which supplanted outright grants), and President Bill Clinton’s enduring promise to “reinvent government” by promoting “public-private partnerships.”

Nor is the funding future rosy.

Mary Grant, Water Policy Director for Food & Water Watch puts a trillion-dollar price tag on the budget needed for our water and wastewater systems improvement over the next 20 years, “and that’s according to the EPA’s own needs assessments just to comply with existing federal law,” Grant told Truthout. “It doesn’t account for future needs around the climate changing, or future needs to address new toxics that are being introduced into our water and wastewater. We really need to restore that federal commitment.”

She hopes people joining the privatization fight will look seriously at the “Peer2Peer” model developed by the Association of Environmental Authorities. It promotes “public-public” partnerships between water district boards and municipalities, and other forms of public sector cooperation. “So instead of consolidation or regionalization, this is where local governments and local water districts work together to improve services and address issues,” she said.

From Chicago to Cairo, Illinois, the state’s news media is filled with reports that Illinois American Water is trying to extract a $142.4 million rate increase from its existing Illinois customers, and is moving to buy its competitors’ customers to monopolize the private water market in the state.

But southern Illinoisans simply cannot tolerate higher water fees. Trump’s tariff policies have lost Illinois farmers reliable foreign customers, and farm bankruptcies are reaching crisis proportions. Lately, Lintner said, she’s been looking at her infant daughter’s future through the lens of a privatized world.

“As I sit back now as a parent, I can’t think of one thing that they’re not taking away from her future,” she said. “Now she might not get water.”

Determined to find the “infiltrators” who feel entitled to the water that she describes as her daughter’s birthright, she’s working with a few others on a power map. They’re finding the connections between the water company, local solar operations, potential AI data center development (the former power plant in Grand Tower has been discussed as a possible site for one), and Southern Illinois Now, a “regional economic development hub and unified voice for the 17 southern counties of Illinois,” where Illinois American Water is a bronze member. Clarifying that relationship, Southern Illinois Now posted: “Our partnerships are not endorsements of every issue or policy position associated with an organization, nor do they signal support for or opposition to local decisions.”

Meanwhile, workers at Food & Water Watch are busy trying to track the emerging nexus between AI data centers and water system privatization. But currently, Grant said, “there are no clear trends or information that water companies are privatizing specific systems to serve data centers.”

However, Illinois American Water’s affiliate in Pennsylvania — Pennsylvania American Water — has applied to expand its service area to reach a data center, filing with the regulating body a Certificate of Public Convenience “to begin to offer, render, furnish and supply water service to the public in an additional portion of Salem Township.”

Grant also provided Truthout with another example of overlap in Pennsylvania American Water’s recent rate case application where data centers are used as a partial justification for a hefty increase in water and wastewater rates. In the application, the corporation says it is “committed to helping attract and support data centers by providing them with reliable water service.”