Essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of our most vital resource.
Our water system is a mess. Rising bills and rivers full of sewage grab the headlines, but the greater threat is climate crisis, bringing increased drought and flooding.
This book exposes the many problems with our unsustainable water system. Unfair charges limit spending on infrastructure, while financial extraction has turned the water companies into debt-burdened zombies in an increasingly fragmented system.
Reforming regulation and tinkering with tariffs will not be enough, and public ownership is just the first step. Murky water shows that the system can only be made sustainable through a radical overhaul of how it is owned, managed, funded and planned. We need a new kind of water management, with national and catchment planning and coordinated action by landowners, local authorities and water companies.
Westminster and Whitehall currently stand in the way. To overcome their resistance and secure a sustainable future, we must ignite a social movement capable of challenging power.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
1 From sanitation to water management
2 The business model problem
3 Much more investment required
4 From water poverty to water justice
5 Failure of political and regulatory control
6 Towards foundational water management
Index
About the Author :
Luca Calafati is an independent researcher and social entrepreneur.
Julie Froud is Professor of Financial Innovation at Alliance Manchester Business School.
Colin Haslam is Emeritus Professor of Accounting and Finance at Queen Mary, University of London.
Sukhdev Johal is Chair in Accounting and Strategy at Queen Mary, University of London.
Karel Williams is Director of Foundational Alliance Wales.
Review :
‘At last, a genuinely fresh and vital analysis of why Britain’s privatised utilities are failing. Through a close-up study of the debacle of water, this book tells a rich and nuanced story. The big question is how to pay for the huge investment that is long overdue. The authors show how it can be afforded while making bills fairer, rather than forcing poorer households to pay proportionately more than the rich. Essential reading.’
Aditya Chakrabortty, Senior Economics Commentator, Guardian
‘Murky water is a rigorously researched and well-argued book that cuts through the mire and offers clear and practicable solutions to the water crisis in the UK. It recognises that Westminster politicians will not tackle the crisis effectively unless pressured by us as citizens organised into a social movement for water reform.’
Grace Blakeley, author of Vulture Capitalism
‘To rebuild water management, nothing less is needed than a disruption from below countering the disruption from above by the financialised power structure that has taken possession of the sector. The book makes a convincing case for social movements as indispensable agents for restoring democratic control over the basic needs of economic and social life.’
Wolfgang Streeck, author of Taking Back Control?
‘A meticulously researched tale of the greed, incompetence and regulatory failures that have brought the UK’s privatised water system to its knees.’
Gill Plimmer, Infrastructure Correspondent, Financial Times
‘Few issues provoke so much righteous anger in twenty-first-century Britain as the profiteering from and neglect of water. The Foundational Economy authors provide the ultimate audit of Britain's water crisis, recombining its financial, regulatory and material dimensions. The result is both an undeniable indictment of neoliberal failure and a handbook for a different form of materialist political economy in relation to our most essential resource.’
William Davies, author of This is not Normal: The Collapse of Liberal Britain
‘Too often the economic and the social are treated as separate domains and dealt with in separate analyses. Murky water is a book that innovatively brings together what’s gone wrong economically in privatised water and shows how we can fix it socially if we mobilise for change.’
Hilary Cottam, author of The Work We Need
‘A singular achievement that brings a radically new approach to bear on the provision of basic services. This fascinating study disposes of the mythology that our water and sewage systems are Victorian leftovers, showing that they essentially date from the long post-war boom. The failure to invest since is not just the result of extractivism and compromised regulation but of the very system of charging for water, which weighs too heavily on the poor and too lightly on the rich. If we are to live better we need to attend to the necessities of life in new ways suggested by this vitally important book.’
David Edgerton, author of The Rise and Fall of the British Nation
‘A serious attempt to grapple with the issues not only of ownership but of accountability for performance and equity in terms of the price of water. Too often on the left there is an automatic, almost kneejerk assumption that public ownership is desirable without a serious consideration of the difficult issues of effective governance and accountability, the source of the considerable required investment and the pricing of water for users.’
Andrew Davies, formerly Minister for Economic Development, Welsh Government
‘Combines forensic analysis with easy readability to tell the full story of how our water system has come to be in such an appalling state. The accounts of policy naivety, political inaction and corporate greed will make your eyes water. Thankfully the authors also provide an insightful vision of what needs to change and how. This book will both enrage and inspire.’
Kate Bayliss, SOAS, University of London
‘Keir Starmer’s government is doing everything in its power to avoid the demand of a large majority: that water in England must be taken back into public ownership. This book explains why and sets out how things will get worse if we don’t break the model of financialisaton. The prognosis is terrifying, but it is not paralysing. The path the book offers is a means of taking back control of our water supply and funding it properly with progressive charging based on household income. This is much more than a guide to the ruins. It also offers us a way out of this mess. The authors have lit a fuse that can ignite a new movement for water justice.’
David Whyte, author of Ecocide
'Murky water makes a cogent and compelling case for fundamental reforms of our water system that goes far beyond the recommendations of recent official reviews. [...] This book will hopefully galvanize different groups to work more closely together in delivering the change in approach that is so desperately needed.'
Tony Juniper, Times Literary Supplement
'The authors of Murky water make a powerful case for water justice'
Taj Ali, Hyphen
'This is a compelling read for those who want to go beyond a simple call for renationalisation, to understand how we have reached the current appalling state of water management England and Wales, and to consider how we should proceed. Recommended.'
Lynda Graham, Morning Star
