"Married for Better or Worse: the “Problem of Water” in the Suburbs of Paris (1859-1923)"

After a first successful water concession contract between 1859 and 1875, the water utility « Compagnie Générale des Eaux » (CGE) and the municipality of Choisy le Roi in the suburbs of Paris extend their cooperation for 75 years, until 1950. Similar contracts, with slightly different contractual clauses, link CGE to more than a hundred municipalities in the Paris suburbs at the end of the nineteenth century. For CGE, water pumping and distribution are stable and profitable; customer subscriptions and water networks increase incrementally.
From the 1880s, the discovery of microbe by Pasteur, the growing influence from the hygienists, industrial growth, and the multiple health crises of cholera and typhoid (1881, 1882, 1891,1892, etc.) make water a problem, as much an issue of quality as quantity. CGE innovates and expands. Profits by CGE reach up to 300% of its expenses.
Nevertheless, from the mid-1890s, municipalities rumble and gather into two groups to oppose CGE. For both groups, the prices of water by CGE seem excessive. Despite several attempts to weaken CGE from the late 1890s to 1923, it remains the most significant water operator in the suburbs of Paris.
This paper mainly relies on archives from Compagnie générale des Eaux (today Veolia), from the Water Syndicate (SEDIF), from external institutions (banks, stock exchange, the Academy of Medicine, municipalities). To ensure robust triangulation, the author has conducted 100 interviews inside and outside Veolia and, from 2012 to 2017, he spent one day a week in Veolia as an observer. The combination of primary and secondary sources and previous historical works by historians (Lorrain, 2014 ; Gmeline, 2006; Jacquot, 2002; Franck, 1999; O’Connell, 1985) allowed us to triangulate collected information.