The disaster was that harmful substances ended up in citizens body's. Veolia had very well a responsibility in that outcome, evidenced by the fact that they paid huge damages to the victims.

"Let me be more clear: The fact that something hasn't occurred is not proof it can't."

Of course not and that was never up for debate. I brought that point up after your claim that the water supply in Europe and the US are on par, which is just not the case.

Germany's water supply is secured by multiple layers in a swiss cheese model of security and has set up the incentives of the involved such that the holes will not align.

What happened in Flint was that the hole of the city and the hole of Veolia did align.

Once again: Veolia's role was in addition to the normal requirements and testing required by the US federal government (which is very similar to what Germany requires.) This was not privatization in lieu of public services, it was an additional stop-gap that failed.

The point being that privatization is not the issue - the same roles performed by the government in Germany are performed by the government in the US. All of which is a response to you stating it could not happen in Germany, because water isn't privatized.

> Of course not and that was never up for debate.

This was literally your evidence for saying it couldn't happen in Germany.

>> "If we're talking about unknown unknowns, this is true of anywhere in the world."

> No, water supply in Germany is closely monitored at the source, at the water works and even close to the user in apartment buildings and rental properties.

(Again, same as the US.) Followed by...

> If that does not convince you I'd like to point you to the list of water crisis in Wikipedia. There have been none in western Europe while the US had Flint and Jackson.

Your arguments have honestly been so disingenuous I can't even continue this.

> What happened in Flint was that the hole of the city and the hole of Veolia did align.

You are clearly still missing something if you think that Veolia had any hand in creating the water crisis, lol. They were hired as an outside party to keep the city (i.e. the government) honest after it became clear to citizens that the water supply had issues - and the government covered it up. Why do I keep having to repeat this?

Your argument has been that the water supply issues cannot happen in Germany because it's a public utility, controlled and monitored by the government. The same was true of Flint, and yet the government was responsible for creating the crisis and for failing to resolve it.

If so much control has been shifted from the municipality to a private entity that said entity had to pay damages, it very well means that part of the system was effectively privatized.

My point still stands: The system in Germany is different (different incentives, different form of checks and balances) and would have prevented an incident analogous to what happened in Flint.

In addition to that I have a hard time to understand your point that Veolia is not responsible for the crisis just because it was not responsible for the root cause.