Detroit water shutoffs

[Jazzy]

A judge overseeing Detroit's bankruptcy refused Monday to stop the city from shutting off water if people can't pay their bill.

Judge Steven Rhodes said the water department probably hasn't done enough to help people with chronically low income, but noted there is no "enforceable right" to water.

CBS Detroit reports that the plaintiffs argued they wanted a six-month halt on water shut-offs so a legitimate policy could be created to address the delinquent bills.

"Detroit cannot afford any revenue slippage," said the judge, who heard two days of testimony last week.

Outside the courthouse, attorney Alice Jennings said she was considering an appeal to U.S. District Court.

Nearly 22,000 homes lost water due to shutoffs from March through August, according to the water department.

The department said it would suffer financially if ordered to supply water without payment. "There are limits" to what the department can do, city attorney Thomas O'Brien said.

Source

Should there be an "enforceable right" to water? Why/Why not?

 

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

A amazing thing happens when people do not get hand outs and freebies they pay there bills and find a job any job to do so.

Water is not a right. Food is not a right. Health Care is not a right. Government assistance is not a right. A job is not a right. Nothing is a right except for you to have the freedom to pursue what you want to make of it. Thats it and good luck!

 

[Webster]

Is water a human right? Let me think.....YES!
Quoting...
The Nation: Against Austerity In Detroit - "Water Is A Human Right"

Water is a human right.

The United Nations formally “recognizes the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights.”

A new European Citizens Initiative declares, “Water is a public good, not a commodity.”

Former President Jimmy Carter writes, “Clean water is a basic human right. Without it, the other rights may not even matter. Human societies cannot be healthy, prosperous and just without adequate supplies of clean water. What could be a more basic right than clean water?”

So why are children in Detroit marching through that battered city’s downtown with signs reminding officials that “Kids Need Water to be Healthy” and “Kids Without Water Can’t Brush Their Teeth”?

Why are religious leaders being arrested when they seek to prevent the shutoff of water services to families who cannot afford to pay bloated bills?

The answer is that, thanks to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, Detroit is again providing a stark example of what happens when right-wing officials implement an unthinking and inhumane austerity agenda. Since Snyder imposed “emergency manager” control on Detroit last year— effectively disempowering local elected officials and putting the governor and his appointees in charge—the city’s residents have faced plenty of threats from unelected “managers” who are determined to balance the books of a financially strapped city on the backs of its hardest-hit residents.

But none of those threats has been so extreme, or so dramatic in their illustration of the crisis created by austerity policies, as the rush by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) and its for-profit contractors to shut off water to some of the poorest families in America.

Under pressure from the governor’s emergency manager, the DWSD has so far this year shut off the water for approximately 17,000 households and small businesses that owed on their bills. And that’s just the start. In a city that has been brutalized by deindustrialization— where the official unemployment rate is 14.5 percent and where the real rate is dramatically higher; where 44 percent of residents live below the poverty line—water rates have spiked by almost 120 percent over the decade. Even as the city has gone through a bankruptcy crisis, rates have continued to rise at a dramatic rate.

Families and small business owners have struggled to keep up, but today an estimated 138,000 accountsare past due— including those of roughly 90,000 low-income families. Many families have paid their bills by cutting back on other necessities, but many others are struggling— while, at the same time,Snyder’s managers are pocketing hefty checks and toying with privatization schemes that have the potential to enrich private, out-of-town interests.

The Detroit officials who have ordered the shutoffs say they are simply creating pressure to get bills paid, and argue that they are trying to do so in a responsible manner. But environmental writer Martin Lukacs counters: The official rationale for the water shut-downs—the Detroit Water Department’s need to recoup millions collapses on inspection. Detroit’s high-end golf club, the Red Wing’s hockey arena, the Ford football stadium, and more than half of the city’s commercial and industrial users are also owing—a sum totalling $30 million. But no contractors have showed up on their doorstep.

The targeting of Detroit families is about something else. It is a ruthless case of the shock doctrine—the exploitation of natural or unnatural shocks of crisis to push through pro-corporate policies that couldn’t happen in any other circumstance.

Congressman John Conyers, D-Detroit, has called on the DWSD to stop the shutoffs, making the case that “in the 21st Century, in the wealthiest nation on earth, no one should ever go without safe, clean water.”

The congressman has aligned with the Detroit Water Brigade, a grassroots movement that is organizing to stop the shutoffs and to get water to families. They’ve drawn international support. Canadians living across the river in Windsor have been organizing to deliver water to Detroiters.

Catarina de Albuquerque, the UN special rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation, has made it plain that “[d]isconnections due to non-payment are only permissible if it can be shown that the resident is able to pay but is not paying. In other words, when there is genuine inability to pay, human rights simply forbids disconnections.” And the Blue Planet Project, a global movement to promote water justice is petitioning President Obama (and Governor Snyder) with a message that “[t]he U.S. government is obligated to respect the human right to water and sanitation, yet the thousands of water cut-offs currently taking place in Detroit, Michigan, is a violation of this basic right.”

Conyers says the Obama administration and federal officials have options to act. In particular, he is “calling on President Obama to make available some of the $200 million still apportioned for Michigan from the Hardest Hit Fund, a reserve made available for relief from impacts of the Great Recession, for water service relief.” Additionally, the senior congressman is “requesting that US Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell formally designate the water crisis a public health emergency eligible for federal relief.”

But Detroiters have over the past several years come to be recognize that the plight of their city, even as it is assaulted by the governor’s austerity measures, is often neglected by federal officials.

It will be harder to neglect Detroit in coming days, however, as Netroots Nation brings its ninth annual gathering (and Vice President Nebulous Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren) to the city. And National Nurses United, the activist union that has been promoting a “Robin Hood” tax on financial speculators as an alternative to austerity cuts, is working with dozens of local, state and national groups to organize a July 18 “Turn on the Water! Tax Wall Street!” march and rally.

The registered nurses plan to “declare a public health emergency and demand a moratorium on the unprecedented water shutoffs in Detroit.”

Their message is a blunt challenge to austerity: Gov. Snyder is allowing the tragedy to continue with an endgame of privatizing the public water department—the latest in a string of gifts to Wall Street. The historic transfer of public wealth to private hands overseen by Snyder has cost the public jobs, pensions, vital public safety services, and civic jewels like Olmstead Island Park.

Now they have come for our water.

Let’s Tax Wall Street, Get Our Money Back, and Turn on the Water!

 

[Dee]

According to replies on Reddit from some residents of Detroit:

[–]dontdrinktheT 1642 points 2 hours ago
I didn't see anyone else mention this, but as a Detroit local, poor people aren't getting their water turned off.
Poor people have their water paid for, they have credit systems already. The people without water are the businesses and rich people (yes, there are rich in Detroit, mostly municipal workers). They got away with not paying and now are getting the water shut off.
This is more of a buzz topic outside Detroit than it is here.

[–]fishsticks40 187 points an hour ago
What's more, the city has spent a lot of time and effort notifying people and helping put together payment plans and such.
Basically these are people who bet that they could just not pay and there would be no consequences. They lost that bet.

Even so, if it wasn't rich people or people running businesses who have the money but refuse to pay it, like Smooth said, water is a service provided by and to the city and it costs a lot of money to be treated, maintained, and delivered. If you cannot pay for that service, then you either need to find a way to be able to do that or get the water somehow yourself.

 

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

Wow! I got to U.N., European Citizens Initiative and Jimmy Carter and could not read anymore from some of the biggest idiots on planet earth. Just need a official from ISIS and we could have completed the circle.

Someone has to get that water to a plant. Someone at the plant has to make sure that the water is clean. Someone has to make sure it safely makes it to every home for use. If anything was ever a commodity its water.

So that means it does not magically appear and poof water comes out of your faucet to use. That means lots of resources are used to make that water available by people who do pay for it. Now if charities and people with there own pocket books want to help people get water into there homes. Good for them! But to make everyone else suffer with higher water prices is wrong.

 

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

Liberty, as soon as I saw "the UN formally recognizes" that's when I stopped reading as well. I don't need 25 paragraphs of inane babble about the UN to discuss this case. Come ON, using the UN as a basis for your argument??!?! How completely laughable.

Why anyone would think they deserve anything for free that the rest of us must pay for is something I just can't wrap my brain around. As I said; if water is a human right, then they need to remove the fees for electricity, natural gas, food, telephone service, internet connections and all the other bills we have to pay for as human rights. When and where does this entitlement attitude end? Why does anyone think they are so special that they shouldn't have to pay their bills as the rest of us do? It's completely ridiculous.

Just make it all a human right. LOL!

 

[Jazzy]

I think that maybe some people aren't understanding this due to the fact they don't have to pay for their water. I have a well and I don't pay for my water. People who live in my city don't have to directly pay for their water. The cost to provide water is incorporated into the extravagant property and school taxes.

 

[DrLeftover]

Water is a human right?

Sure. I agree.

Dig a well.

Catch rain.

Walk down to the river with a bucket.

Have a good time.

Those you can have for free, all you want.

Treated, filtered, pressurized water does NOT come free.

 

[Jazzy]

Water is a human right?

Sure. I agree.

Dig a well.

Catch rain.

Walk down to the river with a bucket.

Have a good time.

Those you can have for free, all you want.

Treated, filtered, pressurized water does NOT come free.

Do you get a separate water bill where you live?

 

[DrLeftover]

We get a water bill.

AND a separate sewer bill that arrives about a week after the water bill, and is due on a different day.

From the SAME COMPANY!


https://www.aquaamerica.com/our-states/illinois.aspx

 

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

Water is a human right?

Sure. I agree.

Dig a well.

Catch rain.

Walk down to the river with a bucket.

Have a good time.

Those you can have for free, all you want.

Treated, filtered, pressurized water does NOT come free.

Do you get a separate water bill where you live?

yes because I here oh my god every month from the wife

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

I think that maybe some people aren't understanding this due to the fact they don't have to pay for their water. I have a well and I don't pay for my water. People who live in my city don't have to directly pay for their water. The cost to provide water is incorporated into the extravagant property and school taxes.

I don't have to pay for mine either, its incorporated into my rent.

I have lived in places where I had to pay my for my own water bill (on a meter) and its not cheap (especially when you accidentally left your hose running too long on outside).

Not sure where I stand on this... I think these "poor people" should be responsible and do whatever they can to get their bills paid, but at the same time, I am sure they have children and families and I wouldn't want them to be without running water.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

I don't have to pay for mine either, its incorporated into my rent.

So it is still paid for by someone. Your landlord pays the water bill, he just doesn't charge you directly for it.

Thats true, the more I use the more he pays probably, but even though its "free" for me, I don't abuse that fact and I try to avoid wasting water.