Michele Oberholtzer is a free-lance writer, engineer, environmentalist, community activist and adventurer living in Detroit.
Michele Oberholtzer
By Michele Oberholtzer
Detroit water issues had a turn in the national media spotlight this week with a special feature on The Daily Show on Monday and an NPR live-theatrical story telling event, Water ±, that's touring the country, and came to the Fillmore in downtown Detroit on Wednesday.
The opening monologue of the Water± performance included the touching line: “All water has perfect memory, and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
Water can’t speak for itself, so its narrative was shared second-hand through a multi-media, story telling performance with twelve vignettes covering a range of perspectives on water, from fires to flood, from shut-offs to drought, and one little ditty on a beaver dam.
The undercurrent throughout the evening's performance was the issue of climate change and natural disasters like floods. But only one story in the series was of a direct man-made crisis.
Enter Detroit
With over half of all customers behind on their water bills, the show mentioned that the drought in Detroit resulted this summer with water shut-offs to over 17,000 accounts. With multiple residents per household, this represents easily 40,000 individuals without water.
The city eventually set up programs to assist people with paying bills. Some simply paid their bill when the water stopped flowing. According to the presentation, over half of the shut-offs have been reversed. Put another way, nearly half of the shut-offs are still in place.
How many are still without water? It’s almost impossible to know, especially since a shut-off can be reversed by anyone with a long water-key. This illegal act was defended through the portrayal in the show of one woman who decried shutting off water in the homes of young children who would either go without or potentially be removed from their parents’ care.
One story during the show portrayed an American woman visiting Ethiopia, who gained an appreciation for the preciousness of water when she had a single cup (“Big Gulp” size) with which to wash herself. In that case, the water simply didn’t exist. In Detroit’s case, the water is there, but only for those who can pay.
The segment ended with a simple phrase: “Water is money.”
'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart'
Earlier this week, "The Daily Show" covered the Detroit water shutoffs in a five-minute feature titled Water Hoarding. The issue by no means was breaking news, but it just became real in a whole new way to Comedy Central’s millions of viewers (who have both water, and television, it’s safe to guess).
After months of bitterness, it’s a relief to see the shutoffs depicted in a satirical snapshot.
Nolan Finley of The Detroit News was the villain of the episode with his wholly unsympathetic view of the poor of Detroit, who he characterized as trying to get free water. Most "Daily Show" interviews follow a nonconfrontational formula where the correspondent appears to agree with the target in order to draw responses he or she can later poke fun at or find flaws.
This time, correspondent Jessica Williams was not so restrained. She directly challenged Finley, accusing him of mischaracterizing the issue and rolling her eyes.
The Most memorable part came when Williams challenged the notion of freeloading Detroiters with what she called the perfect scheme: “Step 1-- be poor. Step 2 -- don’t pay your water bill. Step 3 -- have your water shut off. Step 4 -- what is step 4?”
Viewers may have rightfully sympathized with a city facing the daunting problem of offering a service that so few are paying for, were it not for the double standard in how corporate debt is handled.
The segment noted that the Lions, the Red Wings and Palmer Park Golf course collectively owed millions in water bills, but were not subject to water shut-offs. Some payments have been made since this issue became public and the current debt of those corporations is not clear, but it appears that those who owe the most are often treated with a lighter hand than those whose shut-offs would harm the most.
It’s always difficult to render a complex issue down into a syndicated snippet, but both the Water performance and The Daily Show offered a reminder of the fundamental issues in question, and of the arguments to both sides.
From the city’s perspective, shut-offs are a financial necessity in the face of bankruptcy and chronic non-payment. From the residents’ perspective, shut-offs are a draconian attack in the face of widespread poverty and chronic mismanagement.
Perhaps the shame of having our personal issues projected on the national stage will force us to continue looking for answers, if only out of embarrassment and shame.
Regardless of whether we settle our claims over it, water takes no side. It carries on, untroubled by our affairs because water, with its perfect memory, never forgets who’s in charge.
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Oberholtzer is the founder of The Tricycle Collective, a charitable group that helps Detroit families facing foreclosure to keep their homes, as well as Bring-a-Ling, selling Detroit-themed bicycle bells for a good cause. She is a mechanical engineering graduate of the University of Michigan. Her writing is at oberdoit.com.
