We are in a national environmental justice crisis in which Black communities lack equal access to plumbing, face higher risks of water contamination, and suffer disproportionately from water unaffordability. In our latest brief, Water/Color 2023, TMI provides an overview of the drivers of racial inequity in water access, highlights examples of recent and ongoing water and wastewater crises in urban and rural Black communities, reviews strategies to address water affordability through legislation and litigation, and provides recommendations for steps federal, state, and local governments can take to ensure all people have access to clean, safe, and affordable water.
Without water you can’t do anything. I lost my family, my wellbeing,my self-esteem. It was humiliating, like I was less than human.”
In 2019, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), along with the Covington & Burling law firm and Cleveland counsel (now Avery Friedman), filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio against the City on behalf of residents affected by what they claim to be discriminatory and unfair collection practices for unpaid water debt.
The lawsuit, which brings claims under the Fair Housing Act and the Ohio Civil Rights Act, challenges Cleveland Water’s water lien policy for allegedly placing Black residents at increased risk of losing their homes. According to the lawsuit, Cleveland Water converted thousands of unpaid water bills to liens on customers’ properties, and the water department placed materially more water liens in majority-Black Census blocks than in majority-white blocks in Cuyahoga County, even when comparing neighborhoods with the same median income.
We have been totally left out of everything. All the communities around us are on the new sewer system and yet our community is still on septic tanks. When it rains here most of the people in our community are getting flooded out, they are not able to flush their toilets or take showers and it causes mildew and mold to fester in people’s homes. It feels like we are being walked over.
In 2021, Baltimore applied for over $300 million in CWSRF funds from the state of Maryland. Despite its history of problems with clean drinking water, Baltimore was not awarded any funds from the state to address its clean water issues.
Municipal discrimination in the provision of water services runs deep. As long as American cities have been segregated by race, local officials have found ways to deprive Black people of access to affordable water. In recent years, there have been significant strides in recognizing the human right to water and increased attention paid to the ever-growing problem of water affordability.
However, few studies have made an explicit link between race and the price of water, nor have they explored the connection between the failure to pay a water bill and the loss of Black homeownership. Water/Color chronicles the disproportionate impact of the rising cost of water on Black communities and how discrimination in the allocation of water has exacerbated wealth gaps and other disparities. TMI’s new brief, Water/Color 2023, is an update to our original 2019 report Water/Color: A study of race and the water affordability crisis in America’s cities. Read the original 2019 report here.
To effectively address ongoing water crises and long-standing racial inequity in water access, quality, and affordability, more federal funding is needed and it must be disseminated through a racially-equitable process. Our recommendations:
