Jasmine Omeke and Mariel Borgman of the University of Michigan survey an abandoned lot on the east side of Detroit. Unpaid bills are often converted to liens against properties. Credit: University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment/cc by 2.0

By Patricia Jones
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, Oct 24 2014 (IPS)

United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation Catarina de Albuquerque and Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Leilani Farha were in Detroit, Michigan Oct. 17-20.

What they saw and heard in a city struggling to emerge from historic bankruptcy were mass water shutoffs and conditions they described as “a perfect storm.” The U.N. experts issued a call for a national affordability standard that would protect the poorest and most vulnerable.The city of Detroit, the state of Michigan and nations worldwide are on the cusp of making decisions that will lock generations to come into trillions of dollars of water and sanitation infrastructure investments, requiring staggering increases in water rates to households, small businesses and communities.

After speaking to hundreds of consumers, local authorities, and City of Detroit water and sewerage utility staff, the U.N. experts reported the scale and impacts of the shutoffs as unprecedented in their experience.

Freedom of information act responses from the City of Detroit showed that in 2014, 27,500 water shutoffs took place. The utility was not able to say how many persons were affected, how many residences were vacant, nor the impacts of the mass water shut off programme.

How could this be? This was the United States. This was Detroit — in previous years, one of the nation’s thriving manufacturing cities. As the third largest water and sanitation public service provider in the United States, Detroit’s utility serves 40 percent of the state of Michigan’s population, similar to large urban utilities around the world.

The City of Detroit, the state of Michigan and nations worldwide are on the cusp of making decisions that will lock generations to come into trillions of dollars of water and sanitation infrastructure investments requiring staggering increases in water rates to households, small businesses and communities.

Detroit is the tipping point, and the lesson we must learn. Water is the great equaliser. Everyone must have access to survive.

Water availability, quality and affordability are increasingly global issues, in developing and developed countries and particularly within major urban areas like Detroit. More than half the world’s population now lives in a city.

The United States is similar to other countries in terms of urban water and sanitation service challenges, but unique for a few important reasons. First, the U.S. can bring economic resources to bear to solve these issues that are beyond the capacities of most developing countries.

Of equal importance, U.S. technical expertise and policy framework are well developed.

That said, the United States is also unique in problematic aspects. There are unintended consequences of a water shutoff in the U.S. Unpaid bills are often converted to liens against properties, and homes are being foreclosed upon as a result of unpaid water and sewerage bills.

In Detroit and other cities, tenants who have no control over upkeep of properties they are renting are burdened with escalating water bills due to unrepaired leaks. Residences can be condemned for unsanitary conditions.

Most disturbing, water shutoff is a de facto sign of neglect: by law, children may be removed from the custodial care of their parents and placed in state care.

In the U.S., due to the legacy of racial discrimination of the past and the legacy of poverty resulting from racial discrimination, the demographics of consumers negatively impacted by increasing water rates and shutoff programs are single female head of households, children, the disabled, the elderly and people of color.

In terms of urban water issues specifically, the United States shares with other countries significant gaps in understanding the contours of the problem– and in our policy framework to address it.

In the U.S., we do not know the extent of the problem or who is impacted. Neither health officials, utilities, local, state or federal governments are required to collect data. Nor do we have in place sufficient programmes to address the problem of lack of access by the poorest and most vulnerable.

There are few, if any, existing official data sources on the impact of water shutoffs. No utility in the U.S. — including Detroit — is required to assess a household before shutting off water service, to report on shutoffs with demographic data, or to assess the public health implications of shutoffs for children, elderly, disabled or chronically ill — precisely those for whom a water shutoff poses an extraordinary burden.

Fortunately, some states have adopted protections for certain populations against water shutoffs. In New England, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island prohibit water shutoffs to households with infants less than 12 months of age up to children under two years of age.

Some states and utilities have provisions for persons with chronic illness to delay a water shutoff with a medical certification.

These practices, along with their rate implications, should be researched as best practices and expanded.

Many Western democracies ban water shutoffs completely, including France, Great Britain, Russia, Ireland, Scotland and, most recently, Ecuador. Courts in Belgium and the Netherlands have found that water shutoffs violate human rights.

The U.S. and other countries can study how service providers in these countries use other collection procedures and affordability protections to ensure their own financial sustainability while still ensuring water access for lowest income consumers.

Where oversight is weak or non-existent at state or city levels, or where political conditions no longer afford the checks and balances of a two-party system, national governments must have a role, give guidance, and monitor water availability, quality and affordability, to ensure basic constitutional protections.

Constitutional protections must include due process, representation and continuing service for both disputed bills and low income consumers, while making arrangements for an affordable payment plan.

21st century challenges will add the overlay of increasingly more difficult environmental issues. What will define us is how we as a nation and as a world community respond to drought, flooding, water shortages, water contamination — and ensuring access to water as a human right.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Over the last decade, Detroit residents have seen water rates rise by 119 percent. Credit: Bigstock/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 19 2014 (IPS)

When the United Nations reaches out to resolve a water or sanitation crisis, it is largely across urban slums and remote villages in Asia, Africa or Latin America and the Caribbean.

But a severe water crisis in the financially bankrupt city of Detroit in the U.S. state of Michigan has prompted several non-governmental organisations and activists to appeal for U.N. intervention in one of the world’s richest countries.

“This is unprecedented,” said Maude Barlow, founder of the Blue Planet Project, a group that advocates water as a human right.

“I visited the city and worked with the Detroit People’s Water Board several weeks ago and came away terribly upset,” she told IPS.

"Water bills are regressive, so low-income households pay a disproportionate amount of their income for water service." -- Mary Grant, researcher at Food & Water Watch
She pointed out that hundreds of thousands of people, mostly African Americans, are having their water ruthlessly turned off.

Families with children, the elderly and the sick, cannot bathe, flush their toilets or cook in their own homes, she added.

“This is the worst violation of the human right to water I have ever seen outside of the worst slums in the poorest countries in failed states of the global South,” said Barlow, a one-time senior advisor on water to a former President of the U.N. General Assembly.

Last March, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) announced plans to shut off water service for 1,500 to 3,000 customers every week if their water bills were not paid. And on Tuesday, the City Council approved an 8.7-percent water rate increase.

According to a DWSD document, more than 80,000 residential households – in a city of 680,000 people – are in arrears, with thousands of families without water, and thousands more expected to lose access at any moment.

A group of NGOs has submitted a report to Catarina de Albuquerque, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation, urging the United Nations to weigh in on the crisis and help restore water services and stop further cut-offs.

In a joint report released Wednesday, the Detroit People’s Water Board, the Blue Planet Project, the Michigan Welfare Rights Organisation and Food and Water Watch made several recommendations, including an appeal to the state of Michigan and the U.S. government to respect the human right to water and sanitation.

The report also calls on the city of Detroit to abandon its plans for further cut-offs and restore services to households that have suffered water cuts.

Mary Grant, researcher at Food & Water Watch, an advocacy group based in Washington DC, told IPS people often think the United States has fully met the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and provides universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

But as the crisis in Detroit shows, the situation is more complex and certain communities lack these essential services, she added.

When the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Water visited the United States last year, Food & Water Watch wrote a report delineating violations of the human right to water and sanitation across the country, primarily in rural, Latino and immigrant, Native American and homeless communities.

Grant said water shutoffs for non-payment are one way these violations are occurring.

In Detroit and other cities, she pointed out, households can lose access to drinking water and wastewater service when they cannot afford to pay their water bills.

The few low-income assistance programmes that exist are inadequate and fail to meet the needs of struggling households, she added.

“Water bills are regressive, so low-income households pay a disproportionate amount of their income for water service. Unfortunately, water rates across the country are increasing.”

She said there are many factors driving this: federal assistance for water infrastructure has been cut back by more than three-quarters since the 1970s, ageing systems are reaching the end of their lifespan, and water quality standards are getting stronger “as we learn more about the health risks of substances that contaminate our water.”

Large cities, in particular, are struggling to maintain and modernise water systems without making water service unaffordable for their least well-off residents, said Grant.

Food & Water Watch’s research has found that communities experience even larger water rate increases when systems are privatised.

Grant said the shutoffs appear to be an attempt to make the water and sewer system more appealing to potential private investors.

Over the last decade, Detroit residents have seen water rates rise by 119 percent, according to a press release Wednesday.

With unemployment rates at a record high and the poverty rate at about 40 percent, Detroit water bills are unaffordable to a significant portion of the population.

Many of those affected by the shut-offs were given no warning.

“The infirm have been left without water and functioning toilets, children cannot bathe and parents cannot adequately prepare food for their families”, the press release said.

Barlow told IPS Detroit is “the canary in the coal mine.”

Through years of corruption and mismanagement, deep cuts to infrastructure and social security, the city is now bankrupt and unable to care for its people, she noted.

And years of neoliberal policies such as free trade, de-regulation and privatisation have allowed the wealth to be diverted to the suburbs and jobs to move overseas.

“Detroit is our collective future if we do not start re-investing in essential services, education and health care, local communities and sustainable local economic development,” said Barlow.

She said, “What is happening with these cut-offs is a social crime.Here in North America we are creating failed states and punishing the most vulnerable among us with these ruthless polices of savage capitalism.”

She said the city has experienced flight of wealth and business and as a result, the poorest and most vulnerable have had to pick up the tab for essential public services.

“Water rates have gone through the roof and people cannot pay. Let Detroit be our wake-up call. President Barack Obama must step in,” Barlow pleaded.

(END)