Privatise all national water supplies to pay off debts?

[Soleron]

numonex said:

The world's population continues to grow exponentially. Water has a price and the free markets should determine the price of water. Private enterprise can supply drinking water: bottled water sells well to consumers all over the world.

Bottled water is a serious environmental hazard. It's also overpriced by several hundred times compared to tap water. That's your model for efficiency?

Private enterprises can regulate themselves without government intervention. Suppliers of water private enterprise can efficiently deliver water to buyers/consumers at the right price. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you want water you pay for it.

You can't have more than one water pipe. If you have water wholesalers, it will be like the UK (btw I live here, this is the reality) where once one utility raises a price they all follow suit within days and act as a cartel. Since privatisation the maintencence of supplies and pipes has decreased (Thames Water's network is in a dreadful state with leaks and shortages), prices have increased well above inflation, there is zero competition in many areas, government subsidy of water companies is now higher than the supply cost of the water, and profit margins/executive pay is very large.

Please show how water can be more efficiently provided as a market than as a nationalised resource. Feel free to use examples of countries with a privatised water system and show how much cheaper it is and how maintenence is better and how compettion works.