![]() For the vast majority, customers’ rates - and customers’ rights - are unregulated at the state level, overseen instead by local officials and boards with standards that vary from region to region. The unwieldy system of treatment plants, pipes, and pumps that delivers water to and from homes is managed by a vast national network of water utilities – across the United States, there are over 50,000 drinking water and about 15,000 wastewater utilities. “Many local water and sewer utilities can’t generate enough to invest in improving their systems, so it’s a vicious cycle,” he says. Larry Levine, director of urban water infrastructure with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), says: “Historically, water was an afterthought because the cost of it was so low.” But in the last two decades, he explains, water and sewer rates have been rising a lot faster than inflation, beyond many households’ ability to pay. Somehow, water has been left out of the basic social safety net. While there are many government aid programs aimed at helping at-risk households access food, power, and even telephone and internet plans, there are currently no permanent national or state-wide aid programs for water. They have been engaging in water access and affordability issues for decades – but they’re fighting an uphill battle. In Detroit, a city known in advocacy circles as ground zero for water shut-offs, Orduño works with the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and the People’s Water Board Coalition. Shut-offs by local utilities, water laced with lead or other contaminants, and crushing water debt have left people across the country without access to a substance essential for survival. The struggle of life without water is a daily reality for many households throughout the United States, a problem highlighted by the pandemic: A study by Cornell University estimated that water shut-offs may have contributed to 9,000 additional deaths in the United States during the COVID-19 crisis. The story Orduño shared should be an isolated, tragic occurrence - but it’s not. His wife and daughter were hauling water in bottles to bathe him.” ![]() ![]() He had so many health problems that they couldn’t keep up with the bills, so their water was shut off. “He was a disabled former police officer. “There’s one family that sticks in my mind,” she says. On the gritty streets of Detroit, community organizer Sylvia Orduño has been working to help the city’s most vulnerable residents for over twenty years.
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