Talk:Veolia/Archives/2013

This article is biased
"Veolia Water is the world leader in water services."

"The company’s sustainable development activities are diverse ... The company’s sustainability efforts are furthered by its Foundation and Institute which emphasize innovation and research"

A lot of the text here is marketing puff, written in the language you'd expect from their own PR department.

Fjleonhardt (talk) 21:18, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Merge proposal
Vivendi Environment (sic) was a past name of this corporation. Vivendi Environment article references a couple of sources, one of which predates the name change, and the other of which post-dates it but still uses the old name.--Larrybob (talk) 00:01, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Just redirected. The change from Vivendi to Veolia was in title, nothing more. The Veolia Environment article was a two-line stub that offered nothing extra over this one. Gr1st (talk) 12:31, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Israel Boycott Divestment and Sanctions
Veolina has been one of the primary targets of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) by pro-Palestinian activists due to its contract with Israeli settlements (it provides water, waste management and transportation services to Israeli settlements). As a result it has lost billions of dollars worth of contracts worldwide. It recently announced that it is canceling its transportation contracts in the settlements as a result of pressure. Shouldn't this be a major part of this article?? It is very significant. In fact the BDS campaign is one of the reasons this company is known to many people.

207.188.69.26 (talk) 18:58, 3 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Can somebody please explain why the information I added on the boycott of Veolia has been deleted again? Nescio vos (talk) 21:54, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I removed some of the material you added which was sourced to a non-reliable web site (Electronic Intifada). The material that was sourced to mainstream sources is still there. Jeff Song (talk) 18:50, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I removed a story about VE not making a shortlist (along with several other companies that did not make the shortlist) because that seems like a fairly common business story, which makes no mention of any boycott efforts. We need reliable sources that tie this contract loss to BDS or other boycott. It's not enough to rely on the self-interested claims by Palestinian solidarity campaign. Jeff Song (talk) 18:56, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

A few days ago I tagged the following statement as needing a citation, since the given link was dead : "the press reported that Veolia was exiting Israel altogether as a result of political pressures from the BDS movement.". An editor has now provided a purported source for that statement, but what that source actually says is 'Pro-Palestinian organizations in France and Scandinavia have attacked the company over the past two years for its involvement in the Jerusalem project, which also serves part of East Jerusalem. ', while reporting that the exit from Israeli transport business was due to "part of an overall restructuring and efficiency plan the international company announced this week, in which it will sell off some 5 billion euros in assets within two years. " and that it is not exiting Israel at all, but rather "Veolia Israel will be keeping its local environmental and water businesses, which employ another 1,250 and have about NIS 1 billion in annual revenues. Veolia is even expected to expand these interests as they are quite profitable. ". Accordingly, I am removing the statement form the article. I will assume good faith here, but remind editors that misrepresentation of sources, especially in an area subject to sanctions by ArbCom, is a block-able offense. Jeff Song (talk) 21:56, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * That was an error on my part, apologies. However the story as it stands is not quite correct either. It's only in December 20011 that Veolia announced its intention to exit the transport sector altogether, after merging it with Transdev earlier the same year. The announcements of the sale of the Jerusalem Light Rail were made earlier, in 2009 to Dan and in 2010 to Egged. The paragraph removed by previous editor refers to JLR only, not to the whole of Veolia Transdev (or Veolia Transport as it was before). Nescio vos (talk) 16:42, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Lack of 3rd Party References
Awareness of controversy over 3rd world water supply needs to be represented. nilloc (talk) 04:13, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Caerphilly
I removed the following paragraph, for reasons of undue weight, reliable sources and primary sources: "In November 2010, the Council of Caerphilly in Wales adopted a resolution calling on officers not to sign or allow to be signed any new contracts or renewal of any existing contracts with Veolia or any other company in breach of international law. ". To elaborate a bit on my reasoning, the material was sourced to some unknown web site (identified only by IP http://212.219.240.82), which fails WP:RS. Even if authentic, it appears to be a primary source document, which was not covered by any secondary source, which leads me to conclude it would be undue weight to include this in the article. Jeff Song (talk) 16:31, 12 March 2012 (UTC)