Cochabamba is an excllent case in point. Here, local leftists stirred up trouble and ruined the chances for the poorest of the local people to have piped, safe, clean, and economical water.
I am attaching a link to a scholarly article appearing in the Bulletin of Latin American Research entitled "The Limitastions of Water Regulation: The Failure of the Cochabamba Concession on Bolivia" This is generally conceded to be the authoritative study of this subject.
Listen to this from the article's conclusion:
"The rapid demise of the Cochabamba water service concession has been heralded by observers as a major popular victory in the struggle against the forces of globalisation (Lobina, 2000). This analysis suggests that such an interpretation is mistaken. The evidence suggests that the lowest five deciles of the urban population stood to gain most from the successful implementation of the Contract - both in the short term (i.e. the introduction of cross-subsidisation through the IBT and reduction in leakage rate0 and over the longer term (i.e. the extension of the pipe network to poor neighborhoods currently dependent on high-cost water vendors)."
Also, to my knowledge, much of the criticism of the project was just plain concocted. Lies, if you will, which this study exposes.