I just find if difficult to believe they could charge 10x more, but won’t. In this era of greed/inflated prices, it’s just hard to believe.
You’ve forgotten how government works. Remember it wouldn’t be just charging the Saudi firm. Or Nestle. It’s everybody. So what’s going to happen to elected officials that say the water prices need to increase by 10x? Same thing that happens to elected officials who threaten to cut SocSec benefits. Increasing utility costs is a 3rd rail in politics. And since when it comes to water the government IS the utility...
This is really the problem with having government in charge of stuff. If some company had bought all the water supply, and was looking at the water tables in AZ they’d damn sure be pricing in relation to supply. It would work like every other shortage in supply, prices go up as supplies go down. But we don’t have a company in charge. We have elected officials. Who want to stay elected officials, and don’t care if the government makes money, or charges something sensible. They just want to not get voted out. So they aren’t increasing the price on water.