Community Task Force Needed
A group of civil rights attorneys have asked Governor Whitmer to establish a community-based task force to oversee Detroit water restorations. In an April 7th letter to her, they noted, “With both the rates of infection and deaths from Coronavirus increasing daily in Detroit, the urgency to promptly identify all occupied homes where water service remains terminated is critical.”
The reality is that the Mayor does not see restoring water to people as a priority. Further, his official report to the Governor on progress of water restoration is flawed, confusing, and vastly understates the dimensions of the crisis we face.
From the very beginning communication from the water department about water restoration was lacking. The Mayor seemed more concerned about collecting bills than turning water on. Even now, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis that is devasting our community, the information put out by the City places water restoration as the second to last item, in small print, under sub headings at the very end of their electronic updates from the mayor.
In essence, rather than the city assuming responsibility for restoring water, it has put the onus on getting reconnected on to households, requiring them to call into this poorly publicized number.
In spite of this, according to the report provided by the Water Department, 25,000 people called the number. The third-party answering service then “disallowed” 23,578 of them. The report offers no explanation for why so many calls were “disallowed.” Nor does it provide any rationale for why such a small number of calls were accepted. Only 5.7% or a little over 1400 homes were accepted. This figure is about half even the lowest public estimates offered by the water department of the number of people without water. It is inconsistent with actual data, provided over time, about water shut offs.
That actual data, provided by the Water Department, not that garnered by a third party flyer service with no training or controls on their reporting, was cited by the civil rights attorneys noting:
Data submitted by DWSD through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to Bridge Magazine shows that as of January 2020, the number of occupied homes without water service was approximately 9,500, a number that reflected ONLY 2019 service terminations. We urge you to act immediately to understand why this vast discrepancy exists and to ameliorate it. Under the Restart Plan, you can obtain the list of the 9,500 occupied homes and have water restored to those residents now.
Here is what we know.
The city of Detroit has never been forthcoming in providing public data on water shut offs.
The city of Detroit has consistently denied the connection between water and public health.
The city of Detroit has consistently underrepresented the dimensions of the problem.
The city of Detroit has consistently overstated the effectiveness of each of their efforts to assist people who cannot afford water.
The city of Detroit offers no explanation of how it is possible to “disallow” 23,578 of the 25,000 calls for assistance.
The city of Detroit has shifted its responsibility for restoring water on to individual customers, created a complicated process for restoration, and failed to adequately publicize that process.
For those of us who have worked closely with people since 2014 who have suffered under the aggressive water shut off policies of the City, we know that every year about 25,000 houses are shut off from water. We know that a little more than half of them are restored. By the water department’s own estimates, consistently, about 10,000 homes are without water in any given month. How is it possible that this crisis has been resolved with less than 1500 homes restored to water?
We should all join the efforts by our civil rights attorneys calling upon the Governor to establish a community task force to hold the mayor and water department accountable to the people. We clearly cannot trust the Mayor or water department to act with integrity, even in a global pandemic.