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http://www.montanakaimin.com/law-student-documents-missoula-water-sale-1.2613391

Law Student Documents Missoula Water Sale

In 2000, people in Cochamba, Bolivia revolted because Bechtel Enterprises, a multinational corporation, drove up water prices — the poor were not even allowed to collect rainwater.

Monday, a former senior vice president of Bechtel testified at a hearing in the Missoula City Council Chambers because his current employer, the Carlyle Group, wants to own Missoula’s water supply.

The Carlyle Group manages about $153 billion in assets, according to its website, and announced in December that it would use a portion of those assets to buy Park Water, which controls Missoula’s water supply. The company has since offered about $100 million for the company.

And while many students may not have heard about this situation, at least one student has. She’s heard a lot about it.

Second year law student Ada Montague has been blogging since the beginning of the semester about Carlyle Group’s desire to merge its Western Water Holdings LLC with Park Water.

A law student with a bachelor’s degree in land planning, Montague is passionate about natural resources and their legal protection. She has to be, to spend so much time documenting an exhaustive process like this one.

“The story is ever-evolving,” Montague said. “So it’s hard to keep on top of it all.”

She’s not doing it alone, though. She and her adviser, law professor Michelle Bryan Mudd, have partnered with journalism Professor Nadia White to put together the blog. Both Montague and White agree that people, especially Missoulians, need to know who controls their water.

“Montana, like all Western states, is water-poor, despite being at the headwaters of some great rivers,” White said. “And protecting the state’s access to water is part of what the interveners in the case are worried about.”

The interveners, whose job is to make sure Missoula’s water can be entrusted to the new owners, are the City of Missoula, the Clark Fork Coalition, the Montana Consumer Council and the Public Service Commission.

Caitlin Copple, who is running for a City Council seat in Ward 4, said the problem with privatized utilities is that people don’t get to have a say. And although Carlyle Group Managing Director Robert Dove said the group will not increase consumer water rates to an unreasonable level, Copple said she still doesn’t trust the company to try to please Missoulians.

“They have excellent representatives and they’re going to say what they’ll say to get what they want,” Copple said. “And that’s unfortunately our water.”

Montague’s blog is at etalnews.org/missoulawater.

rebecca.calabrese@umontana.edu

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