The Corridor Cities Ask Out Loud: Is Water a Right or a Rental?

SINGAPORE — The pipes came first, and the rules are only now catching up. In three water-scarce megacities this week — Singapore, Chennai, and Karachi — councils opened parallel hearings on a question the desalination boom raced past in its hurry to keep the taps running: who, exactly, owns the water a corridor makes, and on what terms may a household have it? For a decade the answer was improvised. Utilities built, delivered, and metered, and a thirsty public asked no questions it did not have to. Now that the worst of the emergency has eased in the districts the corridors reach, the deferred question has arrived with force. Is desalinated water a public right, guaranteed to every resident at cost — or a manufactured commodity, priced like any other and available to those who pay? "We built the machine before we decided whose machine it was," a Singapore councillor said, opening the session. "That was defensible during a crisis. It is not a permanent constitution." The hearings drew utilities defending their meters, relief groups demanding a guaranteed baseline liter, and ordinary residents who simply want to know whether the tap that saved them this summer will be affordable next. The engineering question — can we make the water? — has largely been answered. The harder one is only now being asked out loud: having made it, what do we owe each other for a drink?