Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank DRA management, especially Linda Serizawa and David Ashuckian, for their support and guidance, and especially Chris Danforth, for his sustained encouragement and repeated suggestions for improvement. Thanks are also due to Louis Irwin for PRISM model runs and to Ke for technical support and help with presentation. The Division of Ratepayer Advocates (...

Water utilities that generally provide continuous and reliable service to their customers may sometimes issue an advisory notification when service is interrupted or water quality is compromised. When the contamination is biological, utilities or the local public health agencies issue a 'boil water advisory' (BWA). The public health effectiveness of a BWA depends strongly on an implicit public ...

This paper studies how privatising service provision (shifting control rights and contractual obligations to providers) a ects accountability. There are two main e ects. (1) Privatisation demotivates governments from investigating and responding to public demands, since providers then hold up service adaptations. (2) Privatisation demotivates the public from mobilising to pressure for service a...