Towns across Michigan face increasingly desperate choices as they struggle to maintain their infrastructure – many of them with a shrinking number of taxpayers to foot the bill.
"As some rural towns lose population and government funds shrink, some drinking water systems are one failure away from crisis." "Throughout the Great Lakes region and across the U.S., water systems are aging. In some communities, this means water bills that residents can’t afford or water that’s unsafe to drink. It means that vulnerable systems are even more at risk in a
Rural Michigan’s shrinking populations, growing poverty, and diminished state and federal assistance have fueled a crisis of underfunded drinking water infrastructure.