This is from a recent Time magazine article:

A thirst for growth

... France is the land of public service par excellence, where a whiff of sacrilege still adheres to the very notion of privatizing basic infrastructure. Trains, hospitals, universities and pensions are all largely state provisions. But water--a sector that remains a function of municipal government in 90% of U.S. cities--is the almost exclusive domain of two companies, Suez Environment and Veolia Water.

The business of slaking the world's growing thirst is lucrative, controversial and surprisingly French. Veolia is the world's biggest player in the management of water services. Last year sales rose 10.4%, to $13.2 billion, and earnings 16.7%, to $1.5 billion. Suez drew more than half its 2006 sales of $14.9 billion from the water business, making it the sector's No. 2 in the world.

This is from a recent article on the English site of The Economic Observer:

Stealing the Yellow River

In February 2007, our newspaper received a report claiming that the Zhengzhou Sino-French Cooperative, a joint-venture by a subsidiary of the Suez Group and the Zhengzhou Tap Water Company, was suspected of stealing water from the Yellow River.

Original documents made available to the EO clearly show that in the company's six years of operation, the difference between the volume of water actually drawn from the Yellow River was 50 million cubic meters greater than publicly reported, a figure that does not include water lost during water processing.

From 2000 until now, Zhengzhou residents have weathered an increase in water prices from 1.1 to 2.45 yuan per cubic meter. If we use an average price of 1.9 yuan per cubic meter, the sale of this water netted more than 100 million yuan.

The EO sent two journalists to Zhengzhou to investigate and verify these claims...