Ending Detroit's Water Shut Offs a Good Start

By The Detroit Free Press | Editorial

22 July 14

n Monday morning, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department announced that it’s calling a 15-day halt to an aggressive shutoff campaign that has left an unknown number of Detroiters without water.

It’s a start.

The department has about 137,000 delinquent residential accounts totaling about $75 million, and about 10,000 delinquent commercial accounts worth about $23 million.

Folks who can pay should pay what the owe. But department officials have to accept that some Detroiters just can’t pay — and further, that the department itself has created an expectation in customers juggling bills that it’s OK to prioritize other debts. If the water department’s goal is to get, and keep, delinquent customers current on bills, ramping up shutoffs with no warning to ratepayers was a wrong-headed, shortsighted way to proceed.

After weeks of public protest, harsh words from the United Nations, the federal judge overseeing Detroit’s bankruptcy and this newspaper’s Editorial Board, the department seems to get it.

Department officials say they plan a citywide advertising blitz, complete with outreach to community groups and churches. That’s excellent news, but outreach must be paired with concerted efforts to match impoverished residents with financial assistance to pay up and stay current.

The department should also consider income-based partial amnesty for ratepayers who are truly unable to catch up, or comparing data with social service agencies to identify customers who are in need of assistance.

The department must also identify vacant, abandoned homes and target those first. There’s little excuse for cutting off water to families as a cost-saving tactic when empty buildings are flooding.

We’ve been told, confidently, by the folks in charge that no one who honestly cannot afford to pay is being deprived of service; that’s overconfidence at best, and outright dishonesty at worst, as documented in Free Press reporter Patricia Montemurri’s story about conditions in the city this weekend.

Some adherents of the department’s shutoff campaign have dismissed fears that disconnection from clean water and modern sanitation could lead to a public health crisis, noting that the vast majority of delinquent account holders pay up promptly and have water restored. But let’s consider the reality of this situation: If just 10% of the ratepayers currently delinquent are unable to pay to have service restored, we’re talking about more than 10,000 residents. It’s terrible public policy.

All of this against the backdrop of the city’s bankruptcy, and the department’s efforts to clean up bad debt in an attempt to make a regional water authority more attractive to suburban county executives. (Though let’s also keep in mind that aides to Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson wrote in a February report to the Oakland County Commission that “stoppage of water and sewer service for tens of thousands of fiscally distressed members of the system is unacceptable policy and one the Oakland County executive will never support.”)

Detroit is a poor city. About 38% of residents live in poverty. Our unemployment rate is twice the national average. It’s time to talk about what our goals are, and rethink how we deliver water.