March, 2007

A victory in the struggle for affordable water

BY MAUREEN D. TAYLOR, CHAIR, MICHIGAN WELFARE RIGHTS ORGANIZATION

Demanding water in Detroit. PHOTO/MWRO

Detroit, MI--A people's victory was won on Feb 21, 2007 when eight of the nine Detroit City Council persons voted to forestall a water rate increase in a city where 45,000 or more homes don't have running water.

This victory is already under attack by corporations and privateers who are concerned about the loss of control over water rates and their ability to privatize this commodity. All kinds of problems were created for them because of this vote. So, they are already caucusing in an effort to return to those Detroit City Council members who are afraid. If enough pressure is applied, some of them will vote to increase water rates. Clearly, they don't represent the interests of low-income and blue collar workers.

The struggle for affordable water began in 1999, and in earnest since 2003, with the appointment of Victor Mercado, a privatization specialist, as the head of the Detroit Water and Sewage Department. Water Czar Mecardo earns $260,000 per year which makes him the highest paid city official, who lives outside the city in plush West Bloomfield. So important is this devil to the plan to eventually privatize all water operations, that when the mayor of Detroit ordered all city employees to take a 10 percent pay cut, Czar Mecardo went to Federal (retired) Judge Feikens, to beg for his salary to stay as is. His request was granted while Detroit workers get laid off, and Detroit residents cut cut-off from water.

The next step to secure this victory is to launch an intensive community organizing effort to point out two features. One, that it is not low-income people's inability to pay water bills that is at the crux of the privateers' desire to increase water rates. The poor are being blamed and framed. We don't have to increase water rates by almost 10 percent in the City and almost 5 percent in suburban communities. Czar Mercado says poor people are responsible for the $24 million in uncollectible water bills. That's a damnable lie! He says that everyone else's water has to be increased to make up for poor people who are not paying their fair share. That's another damnable lie! The second point is that the Water Affordabilty Plan, which would keep water on for Detroit and suburban households, submitted almost three years ago, has been ignored, then revised, and now gutted by Czar Mercado and his privateers, who are trying to secure an opportunity to raise even more billions of dollars at the expense of low-income and blue collar workers.

The Water Affordability Plan is the first systematic change worked out and fitted to Detroit in how water rates would be charged and collected since the inception of municipal owned water. Detroiters own the water processing plant, and we taxed ourselves years ago to pay for its operation. No one can take it from us, and no one will be allowed to use it to make us more impoverished than we are already. The Water Affordability Plan allows for all people--middle or low-income--to pay something toward the use and sanitation of water on a sliding sale. Locking poor people out of a payment strategy and shutting them off from water is another example of how private corporations are moving into position, encouraged and aided by local government and the Courts, to privatize water--and make access to water a labor market discussion rather than a right for every person. Stand strong, Detroit!

From the Editors

The $100 billion water industry in America is growing fast! The giant water corporations--like Suez, Vivendi, and RWE--are set to make mountains of profit by taking over the remaining 85 percent of U.S. public water companies. Who will afford the soaring rates? The only solution is to take over these giant corporations and make them public, not private property, so every human being has water.

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