I read a fascinating article on how, in developing countries, it is often the private sector that supplies water to the poorest of the urban poor. If anyone is interested in how water markets function in such places I highly recommend this, although beware it’s a pdf download link:
The Informal Small-Scale Water Services in Developing Countries: The Business of Water for those without Formal Municipal Connections
[quote=“Gain”][quote=“buzzkill1”]How many millions of liters of water a day are lost to eroding or inefficient infrastructure? I’m guessing it’s a lot. Empty the dam rivers if need be, just don’t make me have to use a bucket for a toilet.
I go through umbrellas faster than cheap sandals. Everything I see is green and yet there’s a shortage of water. What would this place do if they had REAL water problems? 
[/quote]
Apparently, we lose three to four Shimen reservoirs annually, that’s about 18% according to this article. 
udn.com/news/story/7312/715327-% … 0%E9%AB%98[/quote]
On that note, a few paragraphs out of the aforementioned article.
[quote]Unlike the municipal water system, which is subsidized by local governments, small-scale providers are forced to operate efficiently. It has been estimated that there is not enough funding to build a public water system in Onitsha (Nigeria) [12], as the population is too poor to support the high, estimated costs of such a system. However, a highly advanced private vending system is able to collect as much as twenty-four times the cost of constructing a public system from this same population by operating efficiently.
In the informal sector, there is virtually no ‘unaccounted-for water’, a universal occurrence in municipal systems. This is because, rather than seeing themselves as managing a large system, informal water providers see themselves as business people, who value the goods they sell and account for them. A private water treatment plant in Kenya, for example, treats only as much water as is necessitated by demand, minimizing waste of treatment chemicals or power for pumping, in the same way that a restaurant would minimize the amount of food prepared during non-meal hours [18]. The same plant is also much more reliable when it comes to paying its electricity bills on time, and therefore, unlike the municipal provider, never suffers from a disruption in its electricity. This is done to prevent the loss of profit associated with a disruption in services. By being more cautious about resource use, this private water treatment plant, which operates in parallel with municipal treatment, is able to make over 80% profit, while the municipality is unable to operate without subsidy [18][/quote]
The residents of Taipei would easily survive without a government water supply: they would simply buy water privately, and use a damn sight less of it.
and environmental regulations 
like ‘environmental flows’ for ecosystems. But I do think private companies should supply water and, importantly, make their profits from its sale. Only then would there be an incentive to invest in increased storage and fix the leaks. Why on earth would the lovely people at the Water Resources Agency fix anything? Their pay is guaranteed and has no relation to whether they actually supply water or not.