I agree with the statements ...

I agree with the statements alluding to how water is misunderstood.  There is the conundrum of whether access to safe water is a human right or a commodity. There is no question that there is cost to have safe water. Treatment, distribution, collection, reuse, desalination, all require technology, infrastructures, energy and people.  But those who have the safe water, take it for granted and don't think about it until something goes wrong like there is funny odor or they turn on the faucet and nothing comes out.  Ironically, the ecosystem of the industry operates the same way.  The funding and investments follow crisis.  In the US, lead is not an issue that has just occurred in this last year, but take a city like Flint, Michigan and the social issues combined with the lead in the water, and now political pressures are on and the funding and investments are happening all over of the US to address lead and new regulations are coming up.  However, the financial drivers for why such a poor decision was made in the first place were overlooked and rarely publicized as more attention went to the social issues and the face that the pipelines need to be replaced.

As a technology provider, I see this reactive mode to water quite often.  But unless a crisis happens, the industry has to limp by on very limited funding that comes out of the same public budgets as the roads, parks, schools, government buildings, etc.   Privatization is a big trend in some markets as we have seen the percentage of the overall global water market being attributed to private operators has increased over the past decade.  This has created some means of funding, but this is also a limited option.  Private companies do face some scrutiny due to the misunderstanding of water and the public being uneasy about a private company managing its water supply.  In some cases, the privatization has even been overturned and concessions canceled with the public government taking back over the water operations.  As water experts, I think we need to do a better job of educating the public on this industry as although, people need water and use it everyday, it is a "silent industry" that seems to only come to the public's mind when things go wrong.  The public is a powerful influence for this industry (just look at what happened in KSA as example) and can be a catalyst for change if we can get them to understand water as more than just a resource but also what it takes to keep that resource consumable.