Civil Rights Coalition Calls on Governor Whitmer to End Detroit Water Shutoffs Crisis

January 20, 2020 8:30 am

Tell the Governor and Mayor: End Detroit Water Shutoffs

Media Contact

Dana Chicklas, (734) 945-8857, dchicklas@aclumich.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DETROIT – After years of fighting Detroit water shutoffs through litigation and advocacy, a coalition of civil rights lawyers and organizations publicly calls on Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to order a moratorium on the interruption of water service to thousands of Detroit households to end a public health emergency. The coalition privately asked the Governor to end the water crisis in a letter nearly three months ago, but yet Detroit water shutoffs continue. The coalition approached the Governor because of years of Detroit city and state officials’ inaction, apathy or disregard.

The coalition of organizations and law firms includes, among others: the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan (ACLU); Edwards & Jennings; Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice; Detroit Justice Center; Jerome D. Goldberg, Esquire; Marine-Adams Law, P.C.; and the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center.

“Water is a human right,” said Dave Noble, Executive Director of the ACLU of Michigan. “Elected officials have failed Detroit residents, and they have fought against ending water shutoffs at every opportunity for years. They refuse to enact a water affordability plan indexed to income that would save lives as well as save the city money. We need the Governor to override the disregard for lower income city residents.”

For years the coalition has attempted without success to urge Detroit officials to abandon the use of shutoffs. Their efforts have included: meetings, collaboration with city council, preparation of memoranda, advocacy for individual water customers. Members of the legal team even filed a class action lawsuit against the city that was ultimately considered by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“For years, the DWSD and official powers that be have toyed with the lives of Detroit residents and their families by cruelly shutting off their access to water for sometimes very little owed on their water bill,” said Mark Fancher, Racial Justice Project Attorney for the ACLU of Michigan. “On this Martin Luther King, Jr. day of remembrance, I remind Governor Whitmer of Dr. King’s words, ‘Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.’”

Finally, and after years of gridlock with the City of Detroit to make water accessible and affordable, the coalition filed a petition with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) in July. The petition urged the state agency to require the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) to suspend water shutoffs by declaring a public health emergency, caused by terminating water service to thousands of Detroit residents.

In September MDHHS Director Robert Gordon denied the request stating the MDHHS has “not identified data that suggest a causal association between water shutoffs and water-borne disease.” This, notwithstanding the coalition’s analysis of the many practical dangers of not having water in homes occupied by infant children, the elderly, diabetics and others whose lives depend on access to water.

In November, in an attempt to have Gordon’s decision reversed, the coalition requested a meeting with Governor Whitmer. The request included an analysis of her legal authority to issue an executive order to restore water service for affected Detroit residents; and to issue a moratorium on any future water shutoffs.

“Detroit officials have used water shutoffs as an inhumane tactic against residents for years, and my stance has not changed — clean, affordable water, regardless of income, is a human right which I advocated for while in city government,” said Anthony Adams, former Detroit Deputy Mayor, Interim Director of Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, and now founding partner of Marine-Adams Law, P.C.

The DWSD has disconnected water to more than 112,000 households between 2014 and October 2018. After years of litigation, research, and advocacy, coalition partners continue to assess the physical and mental illnesses and distress caused and heightened by residents’ lack of access to running water in their homes.

“It is time for city and state officials to recognize the data that shows a water affordability plan makes sense for Detroit and it makes sense for its people,” said Alice Jennings, founding partner of Edwards & Jennings, P.C. “Research shows if the DWSD sent affordable water bills, people would pay their bills and the city would avoid the expenses of collection, while lower income residents would have access to clean water.”

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As a civil-rights lawyer, I’ve dedicated my career to battling back the infuriating unfairness that runs rampant through our society. As a black woman, I’ve experienced for myself the sting of racism and know just how depressing and disempowering such hateful bias can feel. But when it comes to the water shut-offs I’ve seen taking place around Detroit—shut-offs that I’m fighting to end as an attorney with the ACLU of Michigan—I find myself feeling angrier and sadder than usual. With every meeting about the issue that I attend, I find myself leaving more bitter, more enraged and more heartbroken than the day before. Finally, I’ve figured out why: I’ve never before been faced with how devastating our government’s lack of regard for poor people can be—especially when the poor are also people of color. Before moving to the Midwest, I had been insulated from many of the problems that the extremely poor in the African-American community face on a daily basis. Growing up in Southern California, I typically found myself in social situations where I did not see any other black people. Years later, attending school in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., I met many more blacks—but most of them were highly educated and affluent. Yes, there were discussions of the effects of racism in these settings. And to be sure, my friends and I were angry about social inequality. But we were mostly mad that education and affluence had not facilitated our full acceptance into society, that our white bosses and colleagues still treated us as inferiors and relegated us to the fringes of the workplace, that our white neighbors still cringed when they saw us moving into the house next door. Poverty, however, was largely an academic discussion to me, an abstraction I understood primarily from college courses examining the intersection between race and class. I thought that, because racism is the root cause of much of the poverty in the African-American community today, eliminating racism would automatically result in the elimination of poverty. Therefore, I assumed, there was no need to think about ways to combat poverty head-on. Living in Detroit, I realize now just how misguided that assumption was. Here in Detroit, I see poor people who are going on month three with no water. I see a water department that has not come up with any workable system for restoring water service to the poorest people. I see a mayor whose only answer is to offer a payment plan for restoration of service—a useless solution for those whose water was turned off because they lacked the means to pay one of the country’s highest water bills in the first place. I see children, the elderly, the sick, and tons of others who are now being forced to do the impossible—learn to live without water. Given that it’s literally impossible to have life without water, I don’t see how this does or should make sense to anyone. But whether the powers that be find any logic in this proposition, they certainly don’t seem to care. They are content to let the City of Detroit pay off its creditors, regionalize the water system, go back to their homes with running water, and leave the poor in Detroit to fend for themselves. Even the judge in charge of Detroit’s historic bankruptcy has refused to support a moratorium on water shut-offs—despite the fact that he’s also the very same judge who found that Detroit residents were being irreparably harmed by not having access to water! I’m no stranger to injustice—but I’m becoming more familiar than I ever imagined. I knew we lived in a segregated society and sexist one. I knew that we in Michigan were increasingly living in a non-democratic world, too. But it wasn’t until I began fighting for poor people to have water did it dawn on me just how deeply inhumane we’ve become. I still hold to my ideals, though. Rather than infecting my enthusiasm for change, the inhumanity I’ve witnessed has inspired me. It's inspired me to work harder for justice, to resist the mistreatment of the poor, to refuse surrender. Why? Because here in Detroit, we are no longer fighting for only the noble ideals of justice and equality. We also are fighting, in the most literal sense imaginable, for the very lives of the poor. And for all of our sakes, it’s a fight we must win.  
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