Detroit’s Water War: Former Ann Arbor Official at the Center of a Scandal. Again.
SUE MCCORMICK’S woes started with former Ann Arbor Chief of Police Barnett Jones. In January 2013, the Detroit Free Press caught Jones serving as both the full-time Chief of Police in Flint, Mich. and head of McCormick’s department of security and integrity at the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. In essence, Jones was working two six-figure jobs in cities that are 70 miles apart. Officials in Flint said they didn’t know Jones also was working as chief of security and integrity for the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department.
After the Free Press broke the story, Sue McCormick said she “remained confident” in former Ann Arbor Police Chief Barnett Jones. Her department also sent out a press release January 11, 2013 affirming confidence in Jones and pointing out his long background in police work. Flint, which is being run by an emergency financial manager, was paying Jones $135,000 a year as the city’s Chief of Police. The water department is paying him $138,750. McCormick, who started at the Detroit Water and Sewage Department in January 2012, hired her old Ann Arbor pal Jones in May 2012, just one month after Jones “retired” from his job in Ann Arbor—another former Ann Arbor city employee who “retired” with a fat pension and benefits, then moved on to a job paying six-figures.
McCormick’s efforts to shut off tap water to as many as 300,000 has been called, “economic shock therapy at its most ruthless and racist” by media, including the U.S. edition of The Guardian, a British daily. Writer Martin Lukas writes, “It was six in the morning when city contractors showed up unannounced at Charity Hicks’ house.
“Since spring, up to 3000 Detroit households per week have been getting their water shut-off – for owing as little as $150 or two months in bills. Now it was the turn of Charity’s block – and the contractor wouldn’t stand to wait an hour for her pregnant neighbour to fill up some jugs.
“Where’s your water termination notice?” Charity demanded, after staggering to the contractor’s truck. A widely-respected African-American community leader, she has been at the forefront of campaigns to ensure Detroiters’ right to public, accessible water.
“The contractor’s answer was to drive away, knocking Charity over and injuring her leg. Two white policemen soon arrived – not to take her report, but to arrest her. Mocking Charity for questioning the water shut-offs, they brought her to jail, where she spent two days before being released without charge.”
Just as she did in Ann Arbor, McCormick has hired contractors to do the work. It was McCormick who pushed the outsourcing of the city’s compost facility to WeCare Organics. Since the 2010 outsourcing by City Council of the city’s composting program to WeCare Organics, a company based in New York, the per cubic yard price of compost has risen from $10-$12 to $18-$20 per cubic yard. Promised savings never materialized.
In Detroit, upward of 150,000 customers, late on bills that have increased 119 percent in the last decade, are now threatened with shut-offs. Local activists estimate this could impact nearly half of Detroit’s mostly poor and black population – between 200,000 and 300,000 people.
The official rationale for the water shut-downs – the Detroit Water Department’s need to recoup millions – collapses on inspection. Detroit’s high-end golf club, the Red Wing’s hockey arena, the Ford football stadium, and more than half of the city’s commercial and industrial users are also owing – a sum totalling $30 million. But no contractors have showed up on their doorstep.
Guardian reporter Martin Luckas connects McCormick’s efforts to target poor, black customers as another example of “shock doctrine” in action.
“The targetting of Detroit families is about something else. It is a ruthless case of the shock doctrine – the exploitation of natural or unnatural shocks of crisis to push through pro-corporate policies that couldn’t happen in any other circumstance.”
Detroit’s public water system, a prized resource worth billions and sitting on the Great Lakes, is now the latest target for those who want to push the privitization of publicly-owned resources. The water shut-offs are a way to make the balance-sheet more attractive in the lead up to its privatization.
In Ann Arbor, McCormick told Council that “The city’s compost operations have struggled to bring in revenue, losing $683,000 last fiscal year (2009). The year before, the city saw a loss of $568,000 (2008).”
What she didn’t say was that she left the compost program to sink without a project manager for past several years. The total number of tons collected increased from 11,255 in 2003 to 20,270 in 2009. Likewise, the amount requested by Sue McCormick to run the Ann Arbor compost program rose significantly, even while “profits” plummeted.
As Detroit activists and human rights groups continue to protest against widespread water shutoffs in Detroit, the Council of Canadians mobilized on last week to deliver a convoy of water in a show of international support to beleaguered city residents.
The Windsor chapter of the council brought 750 gallons of water into Detroit to help those faced with long-term service shutoffs.
“In a region that holds 20% of the world’s freshwater, the water cut-offs are a source of growing international outrage,” said Maude Barlow, national chairperson for the Council of Canadians. “Water is a human right, and it is unacceptable in a country of plenty, surrounded by the Great Lakes, the largest source of fresh water in the world, that people should go without.”
