December 22, 2020
Governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed legislation to stop water shutoffs during the pandemic. It’s one of several bills she signed Tuesday. The governor’s office has released the following: Today, Governor Whitmer signed Senate Bills 241, 676, 1137, 1234 and 1246 as well as House Bills 5481 and 5824 into law.
Senate Bill 241, creating the Water Shutoff Restoration Act, promotes access to clean water and protects Michiganders from the spread of COVID-19 by ensuring that every occupied residence has access to clean running water so that they can regularly hand-wash consistent with CDC guidance. The bill prohibits water shutoffs due to nonpayment and mandates that water services be restored to residences where shutoffs have occurred, in most circumstances, through March 31, 2021. This bill was sponsored by Senator Stephanie Chang, D-Detroit.
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Michigan Radio reporter Sarah Cwiek, Abdul El-Sayed, and Monica Lewis-Patrick talk to Stateside about Detroit s water shutoff moratorium
Credit Ali Elisabeth / Michigan Radio
Now, Duggan says the city has cobbled together enough public and private dollars to continue the moratorium through 2022. And he said it’s the city’s intention to find a way to end water shutoffs permanently going forward.
For people who have followed the saga of Detroit’s water shutoffs for years, this was a welcome but somewhat surprising turn of events. Since Detroit began its shutoff policy in 2014, in the midst of its municipal bankruptcy, Duggan and Detroit Water and Sewerage Department Director Gary Brown have been adamant that the policy was necessary to get people to pay their bills and fund utility services. They pointed to various payment plans and water assistance programs offered to low-income Detroit residents, programs that Brown has repeatedly called the most generous in the natio
Today on
Stateside, COVID has turned life upside down for many people. For homeless LGBTQ youth, their lives were already in a state of crisis. We speak with two people at the Ruth Ellis Center about what life looks like for these youths right now. Plus, Detroit extended its water shutoff moratorium until 2023. What that will mean for residents and the city.
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Alabama
Montgomery: Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday extended a mask order until Jan. 22 as the state experiences a record-setting surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. Ivey and State Health Officer Scott Harris announced the extension during a news conference at the Alabama Capitol. The order, which requires face coverings to be worn in public when interacting within 6 feet of people outside one’s household, had been scheduled to expire Friday. The Republican governor cited the rising case numbers as she announced the extension. Ivey said she has not seriously considered another lockdown. Alabama this week hit a record for the number of patients in hospitals with COVID-19 with more than 2,000 people hospitalized. The state also saw a record number of daily cases with more than 3,000 new infections being reported daily. The seven-day
At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the city put a moratorium and city officials announced a plan yesterday to extend that moratorium through 2022, with a complete end to the austerity measure to follow. It’s a huge change in direction for the city which has resisted calls to end the policy.
“We’ve seen the mayor do these kinds of big announcements that seem to be more of a political ploy or a media ploy.” Monica Lewis-Patrick, We the People of Detroit
The move comes after years of hard-fought efforts by water activists and residents to call attention to the public health crisis they said the shutoff policy represented.