The world's water supply will continue to dry up in the next decade, but a growing number of companies see opportunity in that half-empty glass. Last year, General Electric dropped $1.1 billion to buy Ionics, a global desalination and water-recycling operation, and made it the centerpiece of its new "Ecomagination" program. GE's conscience is already paying dividends: It recently won a $300 million contract to build a desalination plant in Algeria, where the taps are now open only every third day (by 2007 it will produce 53 million gallons daily). And in 2005, the water division earned $2 billion, a figure expected to hit $10 billion by 2016, making it GE's fastest-growing division. Of course, there's cause for concern whenever the private sector moves in on a public utility: Water rates spiked 35% after a private consortium took over the waterworks in Cochabamba, Bolivia, leading to rioting and, less than a year later, a canceled contract. And then there's Enron. "We can't discount corporate social responsibility," says UN sustainable-development officer Marcia Brewster. "It's just trying to figure out how much to trust them. Ideally, we'd like to see people use water better and conserve it."
--Mark Borden
