What's the difference?

In a private, for-profit water vendor and a public agency?

Don't answer that, it was rhetorical.

Though the Fort Worth Star-Telegram makes it sound like we all have a choice WHO we buy water from.

Under Texas law, the city has no choice but to buy water from Monarch at almost any price the company convinces state regulators to approve.

Surprisingly some Texas lawmakers tried to help (?) while Rick Perry said, uh, no.

Monarch, a subsidiary of Covina, Calif.-based SouthWest Water Co., had filed the rate notice with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, an Austin-based agency governed by three full-time commissioners appointed by Gov. Rick Perry.

Texas state Sen. Jane Nelson and state Rep. Charlie Geren tried to help Blue Mound in the last legislative session. They passed a bill allowing Blue Mound (and Blue Mound only) to condemn the water company’s system.

Perry vetoed the bill. In a statement, the governor called the taking of private infrastructure a “disincentive to development.”

Good luck, Blue Mound, people in Tarrant County have been making noise about their "public agency", the Tarrant Regional Water District, for years...Austin can't hear you until you give them a number.

A financial management company identified Texas as the most generous state in the country for granting private water vendors’ rate increases.

All Blue Mound can do is keep making noise and hope someone hears in Austin.