By: Dharna Noor | July 1,
2019
Happy summer! Water bills just
went up by another 10% in Baltimore.
The average household in
Baltimore will now spend roughly $1200 a year on water, an increase of about $8
per month. This is the first of three annual rate hikes of roughly 10% per year
approved by the Board of Estimates in January. The city says they must increase
bills to pay to fix aging water and sewage infrastructure. Under federal
consent decree from the Environmental Protection Agency, Baltimore must spend
$1.6 billion on these repairs.
The increase, enacted on July
1, came days after the city’s first
Code Red Extreme Heat Day of the year on Saturday, June 29, when the
heat index reached 100 degrees. In a press release announcing the heat
advisory, the Baltimore City Health Department advised residents to “drink
plenty of water.” The heat index—the temperature compounded with humidity—may
top 110 degrees by July 4.
Even before this rate hike,
the price of water in Baltimore doubled since 2012. A study
released earlier this month from the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund shows that the
city’s water affordability crisis is disproportionately impacting Black Baltimoreans.
With this rate hike, bills will exceed 2% of median income (the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency’s affordability standard) for Black households
in 118 of 200 census tracts. By next year, that will increase to 131 of 200
census tracts.
Officials won’t delay the rate
hike even though residents have not received water bills for two months due to
a ransomware attack on the city that locked all public workers out of their
computers. The city will waive late fees, but will distribute bills that reflect
the increase whenever they are able to use their computer system again. The
Department of Public Works (DPW) said customers
can pay an estimate based on their previous bills, or set aside money to pay
past bills once they’re sent out.
Environmental and
affordability advocates with the Baltimore Right to Water Coalition held a
press conference outside City Hall on Monday. They rallied under a sign that
read, “WATER JUSTICE NOW.” One protestor held a large cardboard cutout of a
silver faucet pouring dollar signs.
“Rate hikes without a real,
comprehensive affordability program in place is nothing short of injustice,”
said Rianna Eckel, an organizer with Food and Water Watch, at the podium.
“Water cannot be accessible just for the wealthy.”
By the United Nations’ metrics,
to be affordable, water bills should not exceed 3% of a household’s income.
“With the rate increase, more
than 40% of families in our city will be billed more than this amount,” said
Eckel. “While we recognize the need for improvements to this aging system, the
Department of Public Works has failed to propose a meaningful comprehensive
water affordability program to ensure that low-income families still have
access to water.”
To counter these increasing
bills, the coalition is advocating for the passage of the Water Accountability
and Equity Act, which was proposed by
then-City Council President and now-Mayor Jack Young in December. It is
currently in City Council’s Taxation, Finance and Economic Development
Committee and is scheduled for a working meeting later this month, after which
it will go to a hearing in the full council.
The legislation would cap
residents’ water bills based on their household income level. Households making
50% of the federal poverty limit would pay a maximum of 1% of their income, and
households that make 100 to 200% of the federal poverty level would have their
bills capped at 3% of their income. It would also create the Office of the
Customer Advocate, an independent office to hear grievances and appeals.
DPW did instate a
different water affordability program, Baltimore H2O Assists. It is expected to
lower an average bill for a household of three from about $98 per to about $61
per month.
DPW said they would begin
accepting applications for the program on Monday, July 1. But at the press
conference on Monday, Ellyn Riedl, a staff attorney with Maryland Volunteer
Lawyers Service, said DPW had no applications available that day.
Riedl was attempting to help a
client, a 91-year-old homeowner who is homebound and lives on Social Security
alone, sign up for the program. On Monday morning, she went to DPW’s office in
the Abel Wolman Building on Holliday Street, but the receptionist did not have
any application forms. Instead, she was asked to leave her contact information
on a sign up sheet, and was told that someone would follow up with her.
“I wasn’t given a time table
for that, so I don’t know how long it’s going to take them to call me,” said
Riedl.
She also wasn’t told what
paperwork her client would need for the application.
“Are they going to need a tax
return? Do they need pay stubs? I don’t know,” she said “So even when they
follow up with me it’s still going to take longer to go through the application
process because I may need to get that information that I don’t already have.”
DPW spokesperson Jeffrey
Raymond said application materials should have been available today.
“There apparently was a brief
time this morning when one of the staff members at the desk accidentally left
the application document out of the materials (which included the FAQ) that
we’re handing out to customers,” he said in an email.
He said the mistake has now
been corrected.
To sign up for the program
Raymond said: “For now, customers just need to provide very basic information:
name, address, phone, email address, and water account number, as well as
standard acknowledgments. We’ll follow up regarding income statements, etc.”
Riedl says Young’s Water
Accountability and Equity Act would make information about affordability
application processes more clear and accessible. “It would need to be in
writing, it would need to be advertised,” she said.
Unlike DPW’s H2O Assists
program—or any water affordability programs in Baltimore—the proposed measure
would also apply to renters, who make up more
than half of the city (unless they get their landlords to put water
bills in their name, which “can benefit the landlord because it could make the
property more affordable without costing the landlord anything,” said DPW’s
Raymond).
“The people are the most
low-income in this city are also largely renters, so the idea that those people
are shut out from getting any assistance at all is really baffling,” said Molly
Amster, Director of Jews United for Justice’s Baltimore branch.
Studies show that Baltimore is
getting hotter. As the climate crisis pushes on, summers will bring even more
oppressive heat and humidity.
Earlier this year, the
University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science released a study and interactive map that
shows that if global greenhouse gas emissions increase at their current pace,
“Baltimore’s climate in 2080 will feel most like today’s climate near Cleveland,
Mississippi.” Even if we reduce global emissions to comply with the 2016 UN
Paris Climate Accord, “Baltimore’s climate in 2080 will feel most like today’s
climate near Jonesboro,
Arkansas.”
In other words, Baltimore
temperatures will climb no matter what.
“As summers get hotter, we
need to make sure no one is at risk because of the lack of access to water,”
said Eckel.
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