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Community Corner

United Nations Says Turning Off Poor Detroiters' Water Violates Human Rights.

According to the Detroit Water Brigade, the Detroit Water and Sewage Department is conducting mass water shut offs in Detroit which will affect over 120,000 account holders over a 3 month period (June-September 2014) at a rate of 3,000 per week, at the height of high temperatures and humidity.

Critics say that DWSD has been unnecessarily aggressive in pursuing delinquent accounts since it began ramping up shutoffs in April. Williams said the department has shut off accounts of families with young children, as well as houses with the disabled and elderly residents.

Nearly 50 percent of DWSD’s accounts are behind on payments, according to the department, and Detroit’s already-high water prices are on the rise, now averaging $75 a household — almost double the national average.  “Over the past decade, Detroiters have seen their water rates increase by 119 percent," Conyers said in a statement. "Over this same period, forces beyond city residents’ control -- including a global financial crisis that left one-in-five local residences in foreclosure and sent local unemployment rates skyrocketing -- severely undercut Detroiters’ ability to pay."

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The water department says it needs to shut off the water to recoup some $175 million in outstanding bills. But DWSD has also been accused of ignoring the commercial and industry accounts — like a  golf course that owes $437,000,  the state of Michigan itself, which owes $70,000, disposal and cycling, waste energy, investments groups, and a cemetery being amount the top 40  highest outstanding bills — while going after people who owe as little as $150 on their accounts, and a lady in her 80s that was only one day late in making her payment.

 “There are families that have gone months and months without water,” Mia Cupp, the director of development at nonprofit Wayne Metropolitan Community Action Agency, told the Free Press. “You can only imagine, how do go to the bathroom? How do you take showers? How do you clean yourself? .... You can’t conduct the normal daily things that you would do.” 

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Pastors, Community leaders and others have been arrested blocking gates and trucks to stop Detroit water shut-offs.

No human being should be denied access to water despite attempts of certain people wanting to “privatize” water so they can make more money.  Water is the basis of life itself.   

A  group from Windsor, Ontario, crossed the border to deliver 1,000 liters of water in a display of support for Detroit residents.  Protests have been held outside DWSD’s offices every Friday since the shutoffs began.

If you want to help the people in Detroit, please donate water (be it a case, or a 5 or 10 gallon bottle), donate funds, volunteer to deliver water to the people being forced to live without it, donate purification tablets, open a resource hub, or volunteer in other ways through this link:  http://detroitwaterbrigade.org/.  For more on the Detroit Water Brigade's efforts, call 1-844-42-WATER.





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