In Detroit, Residents Go Years Without Tap Water

Detroit drew heated criticism last year when it shut off service for thousands of delinquent water customers. More than 30,000 shutoffs later, the city is at the center of a national debate over how water utilities should handle customer delinquency.

“Citywide, a third of all residential accounts in Detroit — 68,000 of 200,000 — are at least 60 days past due,” The Detroit News reported, citing city records.

The policy struggle begs a question, recently posed by the News: “How do you survive without running water for more than two years?” The answer is alarming, demonstrating the struggles endured by the one percent of Americans who live without tap water.

“First, get a trash can. Put it under the roof to collect water to flush the toilet. Then, get a bucket and remember what your grandparents taught you in the early 1950s, before indoor plumbing reached all of rural America,” the report said.

Fayette Coleman, a Detroit resident without running water, put it like this: “You use your brain. You scramble. You survive because you’re used to dealing with nothing.”

Coleman, 66, has not had running water in her house since 2013.

“One thing I really miss is washing my clothes. Once every couple of months, when I’m able to get some money, I can go to the laundromat,” she said.

She previously held a job at a factory. Now she lives on Social Security checks, making less than $954 per month.

“The crumbling home is one of at least 4,000 in Detroit — and perhaps many more — whose water was never turned back on after massive shutoffs attracted international attention last year,” the report said.

“Coleman gets by using bottled water for drinking, much of which she gets from charity. She heats water for sponge baths and flushes the toilet only after bowel movements. Otherwise, she does without,” the report said.

Mass shutoffs in Detroit last year garnered international attention and raised a debate over whether water is a human right and what the means, the Detroit Free Press reported.

When the policy came to light, the United Nations blasted Detroit for its neglecting its residents. U.N. experts “criticized the department's aggressive practice, saying that stopping access to water for those who can't afford to pay 'constitutes a violation of the human right to water and other international human rights,'" The Huffington Post reported.

Protests have faded, but the difficulties have not, the News reported.

“Within a block of Coleman’s house on Fielding near Lyndon, at least three neighbors have endured shutoffs, including one who spent months walking up the street, twice a day, to fill buckets at a friend’s before service resumed in mid-November,” the report said.