A coalition of activists protest outside of the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department's office in downtown Detroit on Friday, June 6. (Ryan Felton/Metro Times)
We've been paying close attention to the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department's efforts to cut service to thousands of residents with outstanding fees. Meanwhile, Detroit City Council this week approved a 8.7 percent increase to water and sewerage rates for Detroiters -- about a $5 increase. The timing was a bit poor.
Knowing an appeal to Detroit's emergency manager would be futile, a few local groups decided to ask the United Nations for assistance. In a report released yesterday by the Detroit People's Water Board, the Blue Planet Project, the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and Food & Water Watch, representatives of the group say they are "outraged" about DWSD's "violation of the human right to water and sanitation in the city of Detroit and call on the authorities to take immediate action to restore water and stop further cut-offs."
As we reported this week, the department will continue to cut service to roughly 3,000 delinquent customers per week who owe at least $150 to try recouping some $118 million in outstanding fees. The department has said upwards of 80,000 households are behind on their bill. According to DWSD representatives, they cut service to 7,056 residential and commercial accounts in April and May, which is "reaping great benefits with the department" -- about $400,000.
That shouldn't be how the department tries to generate revenue, says Maude Barlow, chairman of the Food & Water Watch Board and founder of Blue Planet Project.
"By denying water service to thousands, Detroit is violating the human right to water," Barlow says in a statement this week. "After decades of policies that put businesses and profits ahead of the public good, the city now has a major crisis on its hands. It is shocking and abominable that anyone would be subjected to these conditions."
What sort of conditions is Barlow talking about? The eight-page Submission to the Special Rapporteur has a few examples:
The Detroit People’s Water Board is hearing directly from people impacted by the water cut-offs who say they were given no warning and had no time to fill buckets, sinks and tubs before losing access to water. In some cases, the cut-offs occurred before the deadline given in notices sent by the city. Sick people have been left without running water and working toilets. People recovering from surgery cannot wash and change bandages. Children cannot bathe and parents cannot cook....
The [Michigan Welfare Rights Organization] was recently contacted by a woman who moved in to care for her ailing father, who had received a shut-off notice from the DWSD. She offered to make the full payment, but was told the DWSD would not accept the payment because the bill was in her father’s name and she did not have papers to show she was his representative. Her picture I.D. has the same address as his, but the DWSD would not accept payment.
...
The MWRO recently spoke to a woman whose water was shut off without any notice from the city. She reported that when she and her Department of Human Services worker called the water department, she was informed that if people have outstanding bills for more than two months no advance notice is required.
A spokesperson for the department told Metro Times that it has a computer system which identifies 60-day delinquent accounts. A shut-off notice is then mailed to the account holder. DWSD's initiative comes as a time when some corporate accounts in the city have been identified as having hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding fees. It's unclear if those companies have paid their remaining fees yet.
Food & Water Watch reports that Detroit residents rates have increased by nearly 120 percent over the last 10 years.
It's unclear what the impact of the submission will be. According to the United Nations Office of the High Commission for Human Rights website, the Special Rapporteur "relies heavily on information from indigenous peoples, their organizations and NGOs. The Special Rapporteur encourages these sources to submit information that relates to his mandate from the Human Rights Council, which is to promote the human rights of indigenous peoples and address specific situations in which their rights are being violated. This information may be about positive developments, studies or conferences of interests, new initiatives or problem situations."
The Special Rapporteur has the authorization to act on "credible information alleging human rights violations of indigenous peoples," the website says.
