STATE'S WATER SALE APPROVED TO GERMAN CONGLOMERATE - 161,000 Customers, Seventeen Counties, $4.6 Billion Deal

(01/04/2003)

The state's Public Service Commission has given final approval to a German conglomerate's purchase of West Virginia-American Water Company. The sale is part of a package worth $4.6 billion. West Virginia-American Water serves 150,000 thousand residential and 11,000 commercial customers in 17 counties, providing one-fourth of the state's water supply. The approval came a day after Attorney General Darrell McGraw said he negotiated some terms that would be in the public interest. Assumption is those terms are part of the approval deal. The sale is to Germany's R-W-E and its British subsidiary, Thames Water. Charleston Mayor Goldman said he was looking at the city buying the Charleston water system, but that issue may now be moot. Water resource experts have said water is West Virginia's most valuable resource in the 21st century - its storage, sale and distribution. The state has taken little action to regulate the resource, protecting it as a commodity for state residents.

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