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Water Donations Needed!

On behalf of We the People of Detroit, please donate cases of water which are urgently needed for those who do not have access. Cases of water can be dropped off at St. Peters Episcopal Church (1950 Trumbull) on March 20th from 11:30 am – 1:30 pm. Monetary donations to help secure additional water resources can be made here.

Watch our Tele-Press Conference on the Status of Water Access in Detroit

Please watch this video as we call for urgent action on the restoration of water and sanitation service in Detroit. The state and city response to restore water service in Detroit and across Michigan amidst the COVID-19 crisis has been inadequate. This crisis could have been prevented altogether if government officials had taken seriously and acted upon the UN’s 2014 declaration that water shutoffs violated human rights.

March 20: Telephone Press Conference on Residential Water Access in Detroit

MEDIA ADVISORY: COVID-19 Response Must Include Residential Water Access for Handwashing and Sanitation to Protect All Residents  LANSING – On Friday, March 20th , People’s Water Board Coalition — frontline grassroots, social justice, environmental and faith-based groups working with low-income residents who struggle with water shutoffs and affordability — will hold a telepress conference to discuss the urgent immediate need from government to provide residential water access for drinking water, plus disinfectants, to households that do not have them. People’s Water Board Coalition has requested Governor Whitmer use her authority to send in the National Guard and request other federal assistance to set up emergency potable water stations in Detroit and Flint to provide bulk water, bleach and sanitizing products to residents who do not have running water and in their homes. This need is keenly felt in Detroit, where roughly 10,000 households are without running water. and cannot manage proper sanitation. Although Governor Whitmer has ordered the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to restore immediately residential water service to disconnected residents who cannot afford to pay, full restoration could take nearly six months at the current pace due to damaged and contaminated plumbing from long-term shutoffs. People’s Water Board Coalition is deeply concerned about the public health implications that this is having on the State of Michigan’s ability to control the spread of the coronavirus. Read more at http://peopleswaterboard.org/2020/03/16/appeal-to-gov-whitmer-in-light-of-covid-19- water-sanitation-needs/  WHO: Sylvia Orduño, People’s Water Board Coalition Nicole Hill, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization Dr. Paul von Oeyen, Retired Physician WHAT: COVID-19 Response Must Include Water for All Telepress Conference WHERE: RSVP to smcbrearty@cleanwater.org for log-in details WHEN: 10:00 A.M. – 11:00 A.M., Friday, March 20th , 2020

Turn The Water On Now!

Water Is Life

Governor Gretchen Whitmer, EGLE, and Mayor Mike Duggan, Detroiters are demanding you act quickly to turn the water on in households that have been shut off. Detroit Off To Slow Start Restoring Water To Homes As Coronaviris Hits “Detroit’s response is far too slow for water activists such as Sylvia Orduño of the Michigan Welfare Rights Coalition, a group that along with other social agencies petitioned Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to declare the shutoffs a public health emergency. “This is a crisis. We can’t wait weeks for water to be restored,” Orduño told Bridge. “They don’t have the capacity to deal with this. The pace is too slow for an emergency situation and there are many households still in a vulnerable state.”

Appeal to Gov. Whitmer in light of COVID-19 Water and Sanitation Needs

March 16, 2020 Governor Gretchen Whitmer George W. Romney Building 111 S Capitol Ave,Lansing, MI 48933 Dear Governor Whitmer, We extend our deep appreciation for your collaboration with the City of Detroit to provide for the safety and well-being of residents through your statewide plan to respond to the COVID-19, coronavirus. Your prompt activation of the State Emergency Operations Center on February 28th was an important step to address this public health crisis in a comprehensive manner. Specifically, your leadership in establishing a moratorium on shutoffs and restoring water service to disconnected customers was another critical initiative to ensure that low-income households could take steps to safeguard themselves through hand-washing and home sanitary measures. Now, one week after your Detroit press conference, we wish to alert you to concerns we have based upon our more than 12 years of experience of working alongside and on behalf of impacted residents. Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, a founding member of the People’s Water Board Coalition (PWBC), has been engaged in water rights work with low-income households for more than 20 years. Firstly, we are deeply concerned that Detroit officials are unable to carry out your March 9th instruction to restore water and sanitation services to all of the estimated 9,500 disconnected households. We are aware of homes that have been without DWSD service for weeks, months and years. Consequently, these homes have considerable lead service line and residential plumbing problems characterized by corroded and burst pipes; water heaters lined with dangerous deposits; water-borne microbial contamination in the lines from stagnant water and raw sewage; and lead contamination in plumbing and fixtures. Secondly, the COVID-19 crisis has caused a frenzy among customers in the GLWA and DWSD regions who are buying bottled water in mass quantities from wholesale suppliers, warehouses and retail stores. This is causing low-income, residents without water service to compete (unsuccessfully) with residents who have safe, clean tap water. As water rights advocates who for years have worked to aid impacted households, we cannot acquire water nor sanitizers (including bleach and disinfectants) to distribute for emergency assistance. Rubbing alcohol, aloe gel, and other essential ingredients are hard to find for homemade remedies as well. Thirdly, the City of Detroit is turning on water in homes where possible and prioritizing water meters installations where needed. However, local officials have no plan or capacity, as we have surmised, to address the magnitude of ensuring that all estimated 9,500 disconnected residents in the immediate future will have potable water for drinking, hygiene and sanitation. We believe many households will never regain residential water service. We are in a frightening and dire state of crisis and urgently request these seven responses through the authority of the Office of the Governor: 1. Since you’ve declared a State of Emergency, please use your powers to deploy federal and state resources. Government aid would include the logistical expertise and capacity of the National Guard, as well as the deployment of water system personnel and plumbers from across the state; and a wider posting of public health information in non-digital formats accessible for low-income residents such as newspapers, billboards, leaflets and bus signs. 2. Establish immediately public water stations across the City of Detroit where residents can acquire gallon jugs of water, and where community groups can pick them up for delivery to homes that do not have the capacity to get it themselves. Also, (re-)establish government-funded water stations in Flint, Benton Harbor and other impacted communities across the state. Moreover, we strongly request that this water be derived from municipally sourced packagers and not from profit-making bottlers that thousands of Michigan residents have opposed in EGLE public hearings. 3. Make available at these water stations, gallon containers of bleach as well as sanitizers, disinfectants, and paper towels for impacted households to clean their homes properly. 4. Direct Michigan DHHS to expand and extend State Emergency Relief (SER) benefits to include more resources, less restrictions and quicker responses for benefits to include water heater replacements, water payment assistance (particularly when the moratorium ends), and essential household water line flushing; and to cease mandatory child protective service reporting requirements of households without water. 5. Extend the moratorium on shutoffs indefinitely and especially until DWSD has confirmed that it has been in contact with residents at EVERY disconnected home, and made significant efforts for restoration and plumbing repairs. Additionally, as the immediate crisis is alleviated: 1. Ban future water shutoffs on vulnerable households, i.e., those where babies, children, pregnant women, elders, persons with disabilities and/or chronic health conditions reside. 2. Enact a statewide, low-income based water affordability program assessed on a household’s ability to pay. This will allow impoverished customers to enroll in sustainable payment plans without service interruption. Your urgent response will help ensure the COVID-19 public health risks in Detroit are contained, and that the city does not experience a man-made crisis in similar effect as Flint. With deep appreciation, People’s Water Board Coalition People’s Water Board Coalition Member Groups AFSCME Local 207; Baxter’s Beat Back the Bullies Brigade; Brightmoor Connection Food Pantry; Boggs Center – Detroit; Cities of Peace Detroit; Detroit Greens; Detroit Jews for Justice; Detroit People’s Platform; East Michigan Environmental Action Council; Ecumenical Theological Seminary; For the Love Of Water; Food & Water Watch; Great Lakes Bioneers – Detroit; Highland Park Human Rights Coalition; Immaculate Heart of Mary; Methodist Federation for Social Action – Michigan; Michigan Emergency Coalition Against War and Injustice; Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation; Michigan Coalition for Human Rights; Michigan Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Network (MUUSJN); Michigan Welfare Rights Organization; Moratorium NOW; Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development; Sierra Club; Sisters of Mercy; St. Peter’s Episcopal Church; United Church of Christ – Detroit Area Social Justice Team. People’s Water Board Coalition, 4605 Cass Ave., Detroit, MI 48201 PeoplesWaterBoard.org Info@PeoplesWaterBoard.org PDF File

Detroit unveils water restart plan because of coronavirus threat

By Tracy Samilton• Mar 9, 2020 [REPOSTED] The City of Detroit has announced what it’s calling a Coronavirus Water Restart Plan to try to ensure that people have access to water during the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. Michigan does not yet have a confirmed case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. The program comes after pressure from community activists, following Detroit’s decision to pursue aggressive water shutoffs in 2014. More than 30,000 households experienced a water shutoff that year.  The city often demanded large lump sum payments from people to re-connect them. Community leaders protested. The ACLU sued, lost and sued again.   But despite the city rolling out a payment assistance plan in 2016, water shutoffs surged again, last year. Nearly 24,000 customers had their water shut off at least for a time in 2019.  All the while, Detroit’s water department denied there is a link between disease outbreaks and water shutoffs.  Until Monday, March 9th. At a press conference, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan described meeting with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to discuss the issue. “Given the importance of hand washing in preventing the spread of this virus, what happens with water shutoffs?” he said. The solution Duggan and Whitmer came up with: a $25 a month water bill, while the coronavirus outbreak is a threat. It will be offered to the 3,000 households who are without water now, or who are facing shutoff in ten days.  Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is the Flint doctor who was one of the early whistleblowers in the Flint water crisis. She says, of course, clean, accessible water is a public health necessity.  “We’ve known that at least since the cholera outbreaks in London in 1854,” she says. “We need water to keep our hands and bodies clean, to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.” Mark Fancher is an attorney with the ACLU of Michigan. He says he’s glad Detroit is doing something, but it should have been done sooner. Being able to wash your hands is the first line of defense for other illnesses, too, he says. “If there is concern about the spread of that virus, and there should be, there should be concern as well about the spread of the flu, which quantitatively claims more lives than the coronavirus has claimed,” Fancher says. Fancher says what’s really needed, in the long term, is making water affordable, so people don’t get cut off in the first place. “What is needed is a water affordability plan which is indexed to the incomes of those customers who are receiving the service.” Nicole Hill agrees the problem is that water is simply unaffordable in the city. She’s a volunteer with Michigan Welfare Rights. She had her water shut off twice. The second time was after she enrolled in the city’s water assistance plan. That plan tacks on an extra payment, in addition to the current monthly amount, to catch people up on past due bills.   Hill had to pay an extra $175 a month, in addition to her regular $350 a month water bill. It was too much. She now lives in housing where the landlord pays the water bill.  Hill says there are many people on the water assistance plan she was on, struggling with crazy-high bills. They are not eligible for the new $25 a month respite plan. And what happens to those who are eligible after the city says the danger is over? “What happens after we get through this outbreak?” she asks. “Are you going to go back out and shut these people off? Are you going to give them an incredible hike to their bill?” The answer to that appears to be yes. The city says this program will only defer what people owe. Customers will have to pay for the water they used once the $25 dollar program ends.   So Detroit could just be kicking the can down the road, setting the stage for another round of water shutoffs later. https://www.michiganradio.org/post/detroit-unveils-water-restart-plan-because-coronavirus-threat

Statement on Gov Whitmer Inaction on Water Shutoffs, Public Health Safety

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE News from the People’s Water Board  Friday, February 28, 2020 Contact: Kim Hunter kim@engagemichigan.org 313-287-2992 Groups Demand Whitmer Enact Water Shutoff Moratorium to Fight Coronavirus Public health endangered by depriving thousands of clean water DETROIT – Today, a large coalition of social justice groups released a statement which serves as the basis for a letter and a petition to Governor Gretchen Whitmer. In the document, they call on Governor Whitmer to use her executive authority to declare a moratorium on water shutoffs because of the current and impending health crisis. The groups cite the need for everyone to have access to clean, safe water as a way to combat the spread of coronavirus which the Centers for Disease Control affirm will spread in the United States. They have  released the following statement:  In light of the impending health and social crisis of coronavirus and the current health crisis of shigellosis and other water-related illnesses caused by thousands of households being deprived of water, we the undersigned demand that Governor Gretchen Whitmer work with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to call for an immediate moratorium on all water shutoffs in the State of Michigan.  Hundreds of thousands of people in low-income families across the state have borne the brunt of the record rise in the cost of water services and the unaffordable water bills that have resulted from that rise. The unconscionable act of depriving anyone of water because the cost is more than they can afford has resulted in a health crisis, that, with the advent of coronavirus, has the serious potential to be magnified and spread due to thousands not having access to water.  The ultimate solution is to implement income based water bills based on the Water Affordability Plan. The immediate, short term solution must be a moratorium on water shutoffs and the immediate restoration of service where it’s been disconnected. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar II declared a public health emergency for the entire United States to aid the nation’s healthcare community in responding to COVID-19 (coronavirus.) The World Health Organization has already declared a public health emergency, naming it an issue of international concern. For this reason, it is incumbent upon us to ensure that all Michigan residents have access to clean, safe, and affordable water. We must stop the water shutoffs that are occurring in our communities to prevent the further spread of potentially fatal infectious diseases such as COVID-19. The City of Detroit, Michigan’s largest city, became the first major city in the world to shut off hundreds of thousands of its most vulnerable residents from water and sanitation, flouting the consensus of an international body of research that shows water, sanitation, and hygiene access are essential to maintaining mental and physical health, and to halting the spread of infectious disease. The Centers for Disease Control recommendations for common prevention strategies include the following specifically:   Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom; before eating; and after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing. If soap and water are not readily available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol. Always wash hands with soap and water if hands are visibly dirty. Michigan residents have particular reason to fear the spread of coronavirus because the ongoing deprivation of tens of thousands of people from basic access to water and sanitation puts everyone at risk Residents deprived of water in their homes have been sharing or borrowing water at an alarming rate — 80% in one study — creating a transmission path for coronavirus, as well as hepatitis A, shigellosis, campylobacter, and giardia, all of which have been plausibly linked to the shutoffs by health officials The city and state have neglected to put any public health measures in place or to study the problem Those shutoff from water are already more likely to be infants or children, elders, and/or people living with chronic illness — the same factors that predispose people to a more serious course of illness or death if they catch the virus It should not take an outbreak to realize that lack of water and sanitation poses a danger to the public health of those impacted by shutoffs, and everyone in our state Governor Whitmer must act in the best interests of every person in the State of Michigan. Basic health and safety must be the top priority. The threat of widespread disease makes it imperative that every household has access to clean, safe water for drinking and sanitation. That means the Governor must use her authority to declare a moratorium on water shutoffs across the state.     Rabbi Alana Alpert, Executive Director, Detroit Jews for Justice Charles Altman Russ Bellant, former licensed Water Plant Treatment Operator, City of Detroit. Randy Block, Director, Michigan Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Network Rev. Roslyn Bouier, Executive Director, Brightmoor Connection, Detroit People’s Platform, Equitable Detroit Coalition Jennifer Carrera, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Michigan State University Piper Carter, Hartwell Block Club Environmental Justice & Equity Cultural Organizer  Rev. Cass Charrette, People’s Water Board, Poor People’s Campaign Detroit People’s Platform Faculty-Staff-Student Alliance for Climate and the Environment (FSSACE), Oakland University Jennifer Fassbender, Coalition to Oppose the Expansion of US Ecology Barbara Ford, R.N., President of Davison Association of Block Clubs Nadia Gaber, PhD University of California San Francisco/UC Berkeley, We the People of Detroit Community Research Collective  Georgia Street Collective Mary Grant, Public Water for all Campaign Director, Food & Water Action  Rev. Denise Griebler, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Detroit; Michigan Coalition for Human Rights Mary Ellen Howard, RSM, Sisters of Mercy, People’s Water Board Dr. Shea Howell,  James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership Kim Hunter, Engage Michigan Darryl Jordan Co-Director, East Michigan Environmental Action Council/Cass Corridor Commons    Alice B. Jennings, Partner, Edwards &Jennings, PC Marian Kramer, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization; Highland Park Human Rights Coalition Emily Kutil, University at Buffalo,

People’s Water Board Meeting Feb 11 at the Commons

Mama Lila Cabbil

WHEN: Tuesday, Feb 11 at 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM WHERE: Cass Corridor Commons, 4605 Cass Ave, Detroit, Michigan 48201 Join us at our regularly scheduled second Tuesday meeting at the Commons. We will be sharing our plans for World Water Day on March 22 as well as reflecting on the first anniversary of Mama Lila Cabbil’s homegoing.