Stop passing buck on water shutoffs
There’s a weird round robin of responsibility that accompanies any systemic failure: Look at the Detroit tax foreclosure crisis, or the Flint water crisis, or the Detroit Public Schools Community District crisis (all ongoing!), and you’ll find stonewalling and delay, as the people in charge scramble to explain why they are not the ones who can address the problem. That, in fact, is the one thing we know about any crisis: It is not
in the wheelhouse of whomever is being asked about it at that particular moment and their hands are tied.
This is what’s happening with Detroit water shutoffs, which continue to disconnect thousands of people from water and sewage services each year.
The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department says most disconnected water customers have service restored quickly, and points to its two payment plans as evidence that it offers ample opportunity for residents to avoid shutoffs. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s office has said the same. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has declined to declare a public health emergency in Detroit.
Now it’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s turn, and it would be absolutely fantastic if she bucked the blame-shifting trend.
Nancy Kaffer
honestly,
actually
First, stop the shutoffs
exactly
The Detroit City Council is preparing a resolution asking Whitmer to declare a public health crisis in the city and stop water shutoffs for Detroit’s poorest residents. The resolution follows requests by the ACLU of Michigan and a coalition of water activists, both of which asked the state Department of Health and Human Services to declare a public health emergency in Detroit last fall, said Mark Fancher, a staff attorney for the ACLU’s racial justice project.
The department declined the petition, and the coalition asked Whitmer to reverse that decision.
“We’re calling on Gov. Whitmer publicly to address this problem,” Fancher said. “It has become increasingly clear that there is no willingness to engage in any kind of relief for people facing shutoffs at the local level. Detroit officials will not do anything. They absolutely will not. That’s why we turned to the governor.”
Last week, Whitmer told the Free Press that her team is doing their due diligence.
“The request has come in, and I think my legal team is working with both the health department and the City of Detroit so we can make a decision based on good information,” she said.
Fancher said the ACLU provided reams of information to the state health department:
“We cited scientific studies that referenced waterborne diseases in the absence of water in urban areas. We also made reference to the practical consequences of people not having water ... mothers of newborns unable to make formula, diabetics who have to have a certain diet and are unable to cook, people who in desperation will collect rainwater and snow — sources containing bacteria and other contaminants — people who are simply stressed out, and that exacerbates hypertension and other issues ...”
A moratorium on shutoffs would be a good first step. But the city has to re-think how it delivers water to its residents, and Whitmer has to support that effort.
Payment plans will never be enough, Fancher said, because they’re programs based on a false premise: “That at this point, people do not have enough money to pay off an arrearage, and that if they receive help ... they will be able to make future payments.
“From the outset, most of those customers (living in poverty and subject to shut-off ) don’t have enough money to pay market rate for water, and they never will. If they get onetime assistance, it doesn’t do anything for them when next bill comes due. There’s just no understanding of the realities of poverty at all.”
Thousands without water
I hope Whitmer’s due diligence includes a hard look at numbers Detroit’s water department provided to the Free Press this month.
In 2019, the department shut off service to 23,000 residential accounts. Around 54% had service restored by the end of that year; another 3,000 had service restored in the first three weeks of this year. Of the remaining 9,500, about 5,400 showed no water usage in 2019.
That may indicate, the department says, that the property is vacant or that the service has been illegally reconnected. The department also acknowledges that it may mean that those residents are living without water. The rest — around 3,600, DWSD said — “had some usage in 2019, and may be without water as of the moment of data retrieval.”
If you got lost in the math, that’s anywhere from 3,600 to 9,500 Detroit households without water.
And it really just has to stop.
Nancy Kaffer is a Free Press columnist. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com.