Wild Bill surfs high

>> Controversy magnet now wields power over the oceans

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

A dozen years ago World Bank official William Cosgrove was hand-picked by Premier Robert Bourassa to inherit a perennially safe seat. But unexpectedly, the can't-miss star candidate was hit by a storm of anglo wrath following the Liberals' unpopular language law, Bill 178. Voters accused him of being a clued-out, parachuted-in candidate and Cosgrove became the only provincial Liberal candidate to lose an election in Westmount since 1936. "It was an unfortunate time," says Cosgrove. "But I never look back--there's no time to look back."

Since that dark period, the McGill 1962 environmental engineering grad has resurfaced as vision director for the World Water Council, an influential union of 300 bodies, including his former employer the World Bank. The fast-growing WWC, which turns five this month, is headquartered in Marseilles and has offices in Cairo and Montreal. As the second-in-command and the person with the daunting task of developing water-use vision for the entire planet, the once-humiliated Cosgrove now faces a new set of critics.

New set of enemies

"The WWC is there to defend the interests of private enterprise," says retired union leader André Richard Bouthillier who leads local water coalition Eau Secours! "They're dangerous because high government bureaucrats are influenced by the WWC and groups who are really just there to serve the multinationals. They argue that when you serve somebody a glass of water, all the costs must be incorporated into it. They don't want to subsidize water to anybody."

Cosgrove has heard the criticisms, particularly about the WWC's receptivity to water privatization. "That issue rather dominated the recent water conference in the Hague and other issues didn't get enough attention. For example, the provision of assuring that we're going to have enough water to grow the food that's needed on earth."

The dire state of the planet's water supply is Cosgrove's preferred message. "In the last 20 years the population of the world has doubled and this has put tremendous strains on the water supply. It's the same quantity that existed when Earth was formed billions of years ago, but in the last hundred years the population has tripled and the volume of water use has gone up six times. Still half the world's population will need water for its economic development," he says.

Cosgrove made his earliest career splash as water advisor to the MUC, which taught him much about how Montreal has managed its water since buying it off of private interests for $14-million in 1927. Today bad pipes leak up to half of our treated water into the ground, helping us become the world leader in water consumption. Cosgrove is optimistic that the forthcoming megacity could improve the city's disastrous water management. "The MUC hasn't had the power to do some of the things that needed to be done," he says. "But we still need to be a lot more transparent about the way we manage water here."

Charging by the bucket

Cosgrove's controversial prescription for water-use awareness could also involve direct payment for water use. Montrealers long paid a small annual water tax, which was abolished by former Mayor Jean Doré. Nowadays only large local industries are metered, to a $3-million annual city profit. A Bourque administration media rep tells the Mirror that the city eventually plans to install meters into medium-sized institutions, opening the door to charging them for water use at a later date but has no plans to meter private homes.

Yet Cosgrove likes the idea of metering water use. "If there's a link between the cost of providing the service and the volume of water people use and pollute, then they would be conscious of the amount of water they're using and the amount of pollution they're causing."

Predictably, some don't like the sound of this. "Water is a health issue, we have studies showing that metering citizens lowers consumption among the poorest and doesn't lower consumption among the rich who use it most," says Bouthillier.

However, on many issues Cosgrove and his detractors don't appear to be oceans apart. Bouthillier reluctantly agrees that in some cases, "perhaps in a developing African country," private water companies might do better than a government short on infrastructure. And both Cosgrove and his local nemesis agree that selling water should only be considered with a careful eye on the potential environmental impact. And both bubble with optimism over the potential for the desalination of salt water.

Ultimately Cosgrove says that he just likes for these water issues be discussed. "The problem has been that decision makers have not been aware of the importance of good water management. And the population wasn't aware, so they didn't put pressure on the decision makers. We think that's one of the things that's changing now," he says.