February 26, 2020
DETROIT — Water is life, the old saying goes. But does denying it to thousands of people pose a threat to public health?
More than 150 years of science may say yes, experts say, but that may not be enough as the Detroit City Council prepares a resolution asking Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to declare the city’s water disconnections campaign an “imminent danger to public health” and impose a moratorium on them for the needy.
It’s an uphill fight because Whitmer’s administration has denied a similar request by the ACLU of Michigan, finding there’s no proof of an epidemic or widespread harm as is required by the Michigan’s Public Health Code.
Officials in Detroit, which has shut service to more than 141,000 residential accounts since 2014 as part of a payment collections campaign, said there is no evidence of widespread health impacts.
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Please consider joining in with Fandango’s Who Won The Week prompts, ‘cos the things you talk about are interesting (to me). https://fivedotoh.com/2020/02/23/who-won-the-week-02-23-2020/ , although I don’t think last week was a particularly good example.
I’ll be posting a decent one later today.
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And, wouldn’t it have been a good idea to have published the water co’s profits year on year, alongside the shutoffs.
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Exactly. I know that creative accounting, as in statistics, can make things seem different than what they are. I think the municipality “owns” the water and the water treatment and delivery systems, which brings up two points. How does one “own” the waters of the lakes, rivers, and oceans? And the “municipality” is funded by we the people’s tax dollars, whether from local, state, or federal levels. What’s bad is our governor is the daughter of one of the former/current? bigwigs in one of the largest insurance companies in Michigan. You know, healthcare middlemen? The ones who decide what treatment you get — or don’t? For the governor to say that having no water isn’t a health hazard is just plain evil! There is no other word for it.
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Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll see what I can do. I recently found Bridge and am really impressed by what they cover. It’s a non-profit publication that doesn’t fear to tread where many of the corporate-owned ones do.
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https://strokesurvivor.me.uk/2020/03/01/who-won-the-week-1-march-2020/
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Thanks for sharing!
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