Lawmakers, at the urging of researchers and advocates, are starting to take notice of the information gap. “I was surprised to find that it was not.” “I suspected that that number would be easy to ascertain,” Davis said. “But all these regional reports are finding the same basic trends: low-income families are spending a growing share of their budget on water, and policies to minimize shutoffs are at best scattershot and incomplete.”ĭavis also discovered, in filing public records requests, that utilities did not have readily available data on the number of shutoffs or liens in a given year. “Unlike water quality under the Safe Drinking Water Act, there hasn’t been a nationwide effort to collect data and enforce minimum standards on water affordability,” Laura Feinstein, author of the Pacific Institute report, told Circle of Blue. Late fees and reconnection charges ranged from $12 to $166. Policies for customer notification, late fees, repayment plans, customer assistance, and the time between a missed payment and disconnection of service varied widely among utilities. In California, meanwhile, Pacific Institute researchers found that water shutoff data is not tracked in a meticulous manner. To turn off water or to reconnect service, municipalities charged between $10 and $100 dollars, an amount that can be difficult for some families to repay, argued Luke Wilson, a report co-author. Earlier this year, the Center for Water Security and Cooperation, a research group, highlighted the role of late fees and penalties in Maryland towns as an obstacle to water service for poor households that fall behind on their bills. The Massachusetts report is the latest examination of the influence of local and state laws on access to municipal drinking water. National Picture Develops from Local Reports Combined, they shut off water to 1,500 residences in 2018. Unlike Quincy, they disconnect water service to enforce bill payment. The two largest cities in the study - Boston and Springfield - take a different tack. Those were the highest numbers in the study. Last year, the city of 110,000 people placed liens on 2,829 properties because of water debt, according to the report. Lowell, though it does allow for shutoffs, tends to use liens. In addition to bill assistance policies, Davis and her team used public records requests to gather data on shutoffs and liens, two side effects of water rates that are growing faster than inflation.ĭavis found that cities typically favored one approach or the other. Communities with high poverty rates and old water, sewer, and drainage systems are most exposed to the increase in costs and have the biggest challenges with affordability at the household level. The future in Massachusetts looks a lot like the rest of the nation: rising water rates to pay for overhauling outdated infrastructure. When it’s not a crisis they can implement policies that will help in the future.” “If these communities don’t anticipate the need to deal with inequality, they’ll be unprepared when the time comes,” Davis, the report’s lead author, told Circle of Blue. A separate study found the white home ownership rate in Boston, Cambridge, and Newton nearly twice the black home ownership rate. Only two of the cities in the survey had home ownership rates above 50 percent. In state with significant racial disparities in home ownership and low home ownership in general, those policies result in skewed access to public assistance. Martha Davis, a Northeastern University law professor, found that bill assistance policies and payment plans in Massachusetts cities favor homeowners. In the absence of national data and because drinking water and sewer service is governed at the local and state level, studies like this one are presenting the clearest picture of the laws and policies that influence access to municipal water for poor households. The cities, which include the 10 largest in the state, range in population from 670,000 people (Boston) to 40,000 (Chelsea).
Those details come from a new Northeastern University study that investigates water affordability policies in a dozen Massachusetts cities.
Nearly all have water-bill assistance programs that target homeowners, the elderly, or disabled, but not specifically those who are low-income. Others place liens on the property that result in extra fees and can lead to foreclosure. Some Massachusetts cities shut off water to enforce timely bill payment. In the absence of national data, local studies are filling the gap in understanding water affordability laws and policies.
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