Subscribe to Receive the Daily Report

Thursday, June 23rd, 2016

Clean water should be a basic human right. Why are we charging so much for it?

Author:     Ben Adler
Source:     Grist
Publication Date:     Jun 22, 2016 5:10 pm
Link: Clean water should be a basic human right. Why are we charging so much for it?
Stephan:   The failure of the United States to maintain its infrastructure, particularly the water and sewage aspect is a growing crisis that the corporate media can't be bothered to talk about -- it would take too much time away from their morning 'til night coverage of Donald Trump, I guess. This has been made very clear in how the Flint, Michigan  catastrophe has been treated. It gets more or less zero coverage, so you might think the situation had been fixed. However, as I  reported a few days ago such is not the case. People in Flint, still drink bottled water and cook with bottled water. But Flint is just one little case in a much larger collapse. You will remember the story I ran the other day on 2,000 cities and towns that have lead or other issues. And if that weren't bad enough, there is also the fact that the price of potable water has skyrocketed. This report tells the story.
Credit: www.vernkummersplumbing.com

Credit: www.vernkummersplumbing.com

Aging infrastructure + warming climate = rising prices. That’s the basic conclusion of a new report showing that clean water is getting more expensive in cities across the country — in some cases, far more expensive than what poor residents can reasonably afford for what should be a basic human right.Rates vary hugely across the country — water will cost you five times as much in Seattle as in Salt Lake City, for example — but on average, the cost of clean water and wastewater services has risen 41 percent over the last five years, according to an examination of national data by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, a human rights advocacy organization.

In general, researchers say water should cost less than 3 percent of a family’s pre-tax income. But in several cities that the organization looked at, average residents are paying much more: 8 percent in Baltimore for families living at the poverty line, for example, and 7 percent in Detroit.

The fundamental problem: Municipalities treat water as a pay-as-you-go product, rather than a public good supported through tax revenue, such as […]

Read the Full Article