For you see, it's not a sale in the usual sense of the word.
The chart below, prepared by EPA award winning Greensboro Water Conservation Manager, Mike J Baron shows Greensboro's projected water trends vs Greensboro's actual water usage from 1995 until 2010. It's evidence the City of Greensboro will never dispute.
Will Greensboro and the surrounding cities need the water from the Randelman Dam someday? Maybe? Perhaps? I'm not here to argue that point, I'm here to tell you how our water supply is being privatized and there's nothing we can do to stop it.
The Randelman Dam does not belong to the City of Greensboro. The Randelman Dam belongs, lock stock and barrel, to the PTRWA (Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority) which is owned not by the City of Greensboro but by its bond holders. Greensboro sold its interest in the PTRWA along with High Point and other cities.
Who would buy such a thing? Institutional investors like banks and water companies-- that's who.
And with Greensboro under contract to buy 53% of the water produced by the Randelman Dam it doesn't matter that Greensboro still has its old system of lakes and water treatment plants-- we still have to pay for 53% of the water.
The Dam Scam, as Mike Baron called it, tured out to be far more sinister than even Mike thought it to be. For when the PTRWA defaults on the bonds because Greensboro, High Point and the other cities contracted to buy the dam water cannot meet their projected quotas the bond holders step in and take legal possession of our water. Then we pay and pay and pay and...
I hope some of my fellow bloggers and media types will begin submitting their PIRTs (Public Information Requests) in an attempt to debunk what I've just written. Fact is: you all know it to be true, even Ed Cone who so lavishly promoted the project cannot deny what I've written to be true.
