Mis­soula, Mon­tana, the scenic moun­tain town that inspired A Riv­er Runs Through It, is fight­ing for con­trol of the aquifer beneath it. Cit­ing emi­nent domain, Mis­soula sued last year to take over the local water util­i­ty, Moun­tain Water Com­pa­ny, from its cor­po­rate own­er, the Car­lyle Group, a glob­al invest­ment firm with $194 bil­lion in assets.

If the judge rules in favor of Missoula, the win could be a game changer for communities around the country and even the world.

Stand­ing against this mul­ti-bil­lion­dol­lar firm is the town of Mis­soula, with a pop­u­la­tion of 70,000 and an annu­al bud­get of about $116 mil­lion. If a dis­trict judge does not agree with Missoula’s argu­ment that it is the best man­ag­er of own its drink­ing water, then Car­lyle can go ahead with a planned sale of Moun­tain Water to anoth­er multi­na­tion­al, the Cana­di­an­based Algo­nquin Pow­er and Util­i­ties Corp. Argu­ments in the case have con­clud­ed, and a deci­sion is expect­ed any day.

If the judge rules in favor of Mis­soula, the win could be a game chang­er for com­mu­ni­ties around the coun­try and even the world, says Her­mi­na Harold, a Mis­soula-based activist who has orga­nized grass­roots ral­lies in favor of the city exer­cis­ing emi­nent domain. ​“Pri­va­ti­za­tion is a fright­en­ing glob­al trend that has been con­strict­ing people’s access to water at an increas­ing pace,” she says. ​“If we can set a legal prece­dent that helps oth­er com­mu­ni­ties win con­trol of their water, it will make the City’s efforts even more worth it, in my opinion.”

Harold cites sev­er­al rea­sons that pub­licly owned water would serve the pub­lic inter­est. For one, Mis­soula cit­i­zens pay some of the high­est rates in the state for water. ​“The rates don’t need to pro­vide mil­lions for a par­ent com­pa­ny and investors,” she says. Addi­tion­al­ly, the city’s expert wit­ness tes­ti­fied, Moun­tain Water’s infra­struc­ture is in need of repair, with some esti­mates of leak­age rates as high as 50 per­cent — an indi­ca­tion of how pri­vate own­er­ship has failed to invest in the util­i­ty, Harold says.

When the Car­lyle Group pur­chased Moun­tain Water and its par­ent com­pa­ny, Park Water Co., in 2011, Car­lyle agreed to con­sid­er sales offers from Mis­soula. In 2013, the city twice offered $65 mil­lion for the util­i­ty, and both times, Car­lyle said no. Stat­ing that Car­lyle had made a ​“good faith” agree­ment to sell Moun­tain Water to the city, Mis­soula May­or John Engen announced plans to con­demn the util­i­ty and to take munic­i­pal con­trol. In 2014, a few months after the city filed an emi­nent domain law­suit against Car­lyle, the com­pa­ny announced it would sell Moun­tain Water to the Algo­nquin Pow­er and Util­i­ties Corp. for $327 million.

Harold says the deal shows Carlyle’s true col­ors. ​“They break agree­ments,” she says. ​“Prof­it is the num­ber-one goal.” For the most part, Mis­soula cit­i­zens have backed the city’s efforts. Accord­ing to a munic­i­pal poll con­duct­ed last spring, 73 per­cent of vot­ers sup­port the city’s bid to pur­chase and oper­ate the util­i­ty. But some have balked at the cost of the fight. The city’s legal fees reached $1.9 mil­lion in April 2015, vast­ly sur­pass­ing the orig­i­nal esti­mate of $400,000. The Mis­soula Independent’s opin­ion colum­nist, Dan Brooks, wrote last fall that the city should cut its loss­es: ​“The city has got­ten into a high-stakes game against an aggres­sive bluffer with many, many more chips.”

City Coun­cil­man Adam Hertz, one of the more con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers of a pri­mar­i­ly lib­er­al coun­cil, says that while he’s not opposed to the city own­ing its water, the emi­nent domain suit ​“has the abil­i­ty to set a fright­en­ing prece­dent, in that we’re a free enter­prise soci­ety, and we can force util­i­ties to municipalize.”

Some of the most vocal oppo­si­tion to munic­i­pal own­er­ship of Moun­tain Water has come from the util­i­ty itself: Pub­lic state­ments on Moun­tain Water’s web­site argue that city own­er­ship won’t mean reduced rates, and include sta­tis­tics (with­out cit­ing any sources) claim­ing that most Mis­soula vot­ers are ​“sat­is­fied with Moun­tain Water’s ser­vice.” Moun­tain Water employ­ees, includ­ing a senior accoun­tant and civ­il engi­neer, have appeared at pub­lic meet­ings to denounce the emi­nent domain pro­ceed­ings and reject offers of employ­ment from the city, which Mis­soula City Coun­cil­man Jason Wiener chalks up to a his­to­ry of bad blood in nego­ti­a­tions between the city and the com­pa­ny. The city has promised Moun­tain Water employ­ees, except three top exec­u­tives, five years of employ­ment, which Wiener describes as ​“incred­i­bly gen­er­ous.” When asked to com­ment for In These Times, Moun­tain Water Pres­i­dent John Kappes said he wasn’t dis­cussing the case, pend­ing the judge’s ruling.

Wiener, one of the most vocal advo­cates of the con­dem­na­tion, is opti­mistic about the city’s chances of win­ning con­trol of its util­i­ty. He is con­fi­dent the city’s attor­neys made a strong case that it would be the most effec­tive man­ag­er of the sys­tem, and points out that the $1.9 mil­lion the city has spent in the fight still doesn’t quite match the $2 mil­lion annu­al­ly spent by Moun­tain Water for ​“admin­is­tra­tive and sup­port ser­vices” from its cor­po­rate own­ers. If Moun­tain Water is local­ly owned, those mil­lions will stay in the community.

When it comes to the fight for water, Wiener takes the long view. He con­sid­ers the exam­ple of Butte, the famous Mon­tana min­ing town that was the boom­ing, vibrant star of the state in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, draw­ing thou­sands of immi­grants from around the world to work in cop­per mines owned by nation­al cor­po­ra­tions. Today, the mines are closed, and Butte has been des­ig­nat­ed a Super­fund envi­ron­men­tal cleanup site, known for the heavy-met­al-laden Berke­ley Pit.

Wiener also takes into con­sid­er­a­tion the omi­nous head­lines about Cal­i­for­nia droughts and increas­ing water scarci­ty in the West. ​“I have no idea if water’s going to be as pre­cious as cop­per in the future, but I can def­i­nite­ly tell you that the peo­ple of Butte would be bet­ter off today if they had been mak­ing deci­sions about how much cop­per was going to be tak­en out, and when,” Wiener says. ​“It would be a more pros­per­ous place if those prof­its hadn’t sim­ply left.”

If the city los­es its bid for emi­nent domain, Wiener says it might choose to appeal the deci­sion, depend­ing on the judge’s ratio­nale. If Mis­soula doesn’t own its water, Wiener sees the state Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion as the only thing stand­ing in the way of cor­po­rate malfea­sance and poten­tial abus­es of the sys­tem, and he’s not con­vinced that reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies will be able to offer much pro­tec­tion in an increas­ing­ly cor­po­ra­tized world.

“Giv­en where nation­al pol­i­tics seem to go, all that’s going to mat­ter in the future is if you own some­thing or not,” he says. ​“And so con­cepts like jus­tice and fair­ness seem to play less and less a role in what hap­pens. So I’m not going to rely on the law or val­ues in order to pro­tect the com­mu­ni­ty in the future. We need an own­er­ship stake if we’re going to chart our own course.”