| | | Rebecca Fritz opens her past-due bill from the City of Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue |
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| Most Americans give little thought to water bills, paying them on time and in full. But for a subset of homeowners and renters, water debt is constant and menacing. In fact, more than 1.5 million households in 12 major U.S. cities with publicly operated water utilities owe $1.1 billion in past-due water bills, according to a new Circle of Blue investigation. With the added financial pressures of the Covid-19 crisis, experts warn the problem will get worse. |
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| | | Near the Russell Woods neighborhood in Detroit, Rebecca Fritz is a single mother with four children at home under the age of 13. When she moved into the empty home, the pipes were busted and water was running across the floor. Because the home had been vacant, she didn’t receive a water bill for three years. She didn’t want to notify the water department because she was broke. © J. Carl Ganter/CircleofBlue.org |
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| The debt that households accumulate puts them at risk of having their water turned off. Yet debt is a blind spot in the debate about water affordability. Despite being a crucial component of household financial insecurity and water access, water debt is largely unexamined by researchers and policymakers.
Circle of Blue has compiled nine things you need to know about water debt. |
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| | | Photo © Brian Lehmann/Circle of Blue |
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| The story of Texas is the state’s devout allegiance to the principle that mankind has dominion over nature. In 2020, the pandemic, climate disruption, and ever-present challenges with water supply and use are writing a much different story of vulnerability to nature’s forces, and to government’s uncertain capacity to adjust.
Water, Texas — publishing every Monday in August — examines crucial aspects of the state’s resource challenges: demand and supply in the Texas Hill Country, energy development risks to the greater Big Bend region, water innovations in three major Texas cities, how the new border wall intrudes in the ever-present civic conversation about water supply and growth in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and the influence of water and drought on the Texas economy. |
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| | | Jacob's Well, Texas. Photo © Brian Lehmann/Circle of Blue |
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| After the coronavirus pandemic subsides, soaring population growth and development will again challenge planning and water supply in Texas. |
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| | | Metropolitan Transportation Authority crews examined downed trees and power lines along MTA tracks near Croton Falls, New York. Photo courtesy of Flickr/Creative Commons user MTA |
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| Tropical Storm Isaias cut power to more than 2 million customers in the Northeast when it passed through the region on Tuesday. For those with wells and no backup generators, the loss of electricity delivered a double blow: no running water either.
“If they don’t have power, they can’t run the well pumps,” Larry Sima, president of the Connecticut Water Well Association, told Circle of Blue. |
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The volume of Covid-19 news can be overwhelming. Our live blog, updated throughout the day, helps you sort through it. It's a library for how water, sanitation, and hygiene connect to the pandemic — in the US and around the world.
Featured Covid-19 + water coverage from this week include: Government Neglect Hurts Hungarian Healthcare When It Is Most Needed UN Project Focuses on Women’s Hygiene in Bangladesh Development Organization Aids 20 Million with Water Access Across Africa |
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The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, situated snuggly between Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan on the Blue Nile, has brought years of controversy to the Horn of Africa. Adding to that tension, water started pooling in the dam’s reservoir in July, absent an agreement between the three countries on how the process to fill the dam would proceed. |
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What's Up With Water - August 3, 2020
For the news you need to start the week, tune into “What’s Up With Water” fresh on Monday’s on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and SoundCloud.
This week's episode features coverage on how internationally last year was deadly for environmental campaigners. A record 212 land and water protectors were killed in 2019, according to Global Witness, which has tracked and verified activist murders for eight years.
For news in the U.S., Flint residents who have been harmed by the city’s lead crisis scored a significant victory in court last week. Meanwhile, in Texas, a study predicts that the state will be drier over the next century than it has been in the last thousand years.
Finally, this week's featured Circle of Blue story takes a closer look at the worsening water situation in Texas. When the pandemic relinquishes its grip, soaring growth and industrial development will once more overwhelm planning and water resources. You can listen to the latest edition of What's Up With Water, as well as all past editions, by downloading the podcasts on iTunes, following Circle of Blue on Spotify, following on iHeart Radio, and subscribing on SoundCloud. |
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| From Circle of Blue's Archives: |
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| | | The average price of water in 30 large cities, like San Antonio, showed smallest annual increase since 2010, survey finds. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue |
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| The country’s metropolitan centers, by and large, are forging ahead on their own, not waiting on Beltway politics to be resolved before making investments to prepare their water systems for the decades ahead.
Those investments are reflected in the cost of drinking water, which is rising but not as steeply as in previous years. In its 2019 annual survey of water prices in 30 major U.S. cities, Circle of Blue found that the average price of residential drinking water for a family of four using 100 gallons per person per day rose 3.2 percent last year. It was the smallest increase since the survey began in 2010, and it continues a decade-long deceleration in water rate increases for this group of cities. |
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