As Detroit’s water provider continues to carry out its plan to turn off the taps for tens of thousands of nonpaying customers across the city, activists are resorting to civil disobedience in an attempt to stop what they call a human rights violation. 
 
 Some 50 demonstrators on Thursday held a protest outside the offices of Homrich, a company contracted by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) to stop the flow to residences at least two months past due on their accounts. At least nine of the activists were arrested by Detroit police and charged with disorderly conduct when they temporarily blocked trucks from leaving the company’s parking lot. They were released on bail hours later. 
 
 While the protest was relatively small, activists say it’s a sign of things to come if DWSD continues shutting off water lines. The activists say that in a city with a poverty rate of 44 percent, and where water bills are higher than in much of the country, Detroit should work out a solution with poor residents instead of leaving them dry. Otherwise, they say, they’ll have no other choice but to take to the streets. 
 
 “I warned the water department that if they did not immediately stop the shutoffs, these things will take place,” said Demeeko Williams, an activist with the Detroit Water Brigade. “People are mad. This is the first resistance, and there will be more.” 
 
 Critics say that DWSD has been unnecessarily aggressive in pursuing delinquent accounts since it began ramping up shutoffs in April. Williams said the department has shut off accounts of families with young children, as well as houses with the disabled and elderly residents. 
 
 The water department says it needs to shut off the water to recoup some $175 million in outstanding bills. But DWSD has also been accused of ignoring the debts of large entities — like a golf course that owes $437,000 and the state of Michigan itself, which owes $70,000 — while going after people who owe as little as $150 on their accounts. 
 
 DWSD says there are sufficient payment plans and assistance programs in place to help those who fall behind on their bills. 
 
 But nearly 50 percent of DWSD’s accounts are behind on payments, according to the department, and Detroit’s already-high water prices are on the rise, now averaging $75 a household — almost double the national average. 
 
 Activists say those high numbers give residents no choice but to protest. 
 
 Last month, Detroit activists successfully petitioned a U.N. panel to call the water shutoffs a violation of human rights. 
 
 “The households which suffered unjustified disconnections must be immediately reconnected,” the U.N. experts said. 
 
 Earlier this week, a group from Windsor, Ontario, crossed the border to deliver 1,000 liters of water in a display of support for Detroit residents. And protests have been held outside DWSD’s offices every Friday since the shutoffs began. 
 
 The pressure seems to be partially working: DWSD announced a $1 million fund on Tuesday for residents struggling to pay. 
 
 But even with the $1 million, activists say many others are likely to lose access to water over the summer. If the shutoffs continue, they say, DWSD can expect larger protests. 
 
 “We didn’t come out here as a symbolic gesture. This is serious. This is direct action, and it’s only the beginning,” said Elena Herrada, a Detroit school board member and candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives who was arrested during the protest on Thursday. “Nobody is coming to save us. This is what we have to do.” ||||| DETROIT, MI -- Detroit police on Thursday arrested eight people, including religious leaders, who were protesting controversial water shutoffs for overdue bills in Detroit, Officer LaShawn Peoples of the Public Information Office confirms. 
 
 He said the arrests were for misdemeanor disorderly conduct and the ages of the arrested ranged from 28 to 70. 
 
 According to activist Justin Wedes, an activist and co-founder of the Paul Robeson Freedom School, he and nine others were arrested during the protest. 
 
 Detroit police could not immediately be reached for arrest count verification Friday afternoon. 
 
 Watch police detain some of the protesters here. 
 
 Nearly 50 picketed in Detroit outside of and blocked the gates of a company contracted by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to shut off water to delinquent customers beginning at 6:30 a.m. . 
 
 The issue of Detroit customers, many of whom live below the poverty line, losing access to water has been call a civil rights issue and garnered national attention. 
 
 Detroit congressman John Conyers sent off letters Friday to Pres. Barack Obama, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Director and Chief Executive Office of the Detroit Water and Sewage Department Sue McCormick requesting "immediate federal action" in the form of funding for the problem. 
 
 The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department on Wednesday announced plans to use $1 million from its Detroit Residential Water Assistance Program to help low-income customers avoid shutoffs. 
 
 In May, about 46,000 notices were delivered to non-paying customers and water was cut off to about 4,500 of them. In total, officials report 90,000 city residents and businesses are behind on their water bills. 
 
 The water department is reportedly responsible for about $6 billion of Detroit's $18 billion debt. ||||| Economy Detroit Shuts Off Water To Thousands Of Broke Residents CREDIT: Shutterstock 
 
 As the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department moves to shut off water to thousands of residents who are delinquent on their bills, a coalition of activists is appealing to the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights to intervene on behalf of the bankrupt city’s most vulnerable citizens. 
 
 Their report, filed Wednesday with the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation, alleges that the DWSD crackdown is part of an effort “to sweeten the pot for a private investor” to take over the city’s heavily-indebted water and sewer system as part of Detroit’s broader bankruptcy proceedings. 
 
 One of the activist groups behind the report, the Detroit People’s Water Board, notes that city residents have seen water rates more than double over the past decade at the same time that the city’s poverty rate rose to nearly 40 percent, putting the cost of basic running water beyond reach for tens of thousands of households. Earlier this week, city lawmakers voted to raise water rates by a further 8.7 percent. 
 
 Almost exactly 50 percent of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department’s 323,900 total accounts were delinquent as of March, according to the Detroit News (via Nexis), with a combined $175 million in unpaid water bills outstanding. The department announced at that time that it would begin an aggressive campaign of water shutoffs, and a DWSD spokesman said that it has shut off water to nearly 7,000 separate clients since the beginning of April. DWSD mailed warnings about the shutoffs in March, but the People’s Water Board report says that some residents it interviewed either never received a warning notice or had their water shut off before the payment deadline printed in the notices had passed. 
 
 One key piece of the activists’ complaint has to do with allegedly disparate treatment of residential and commercial clients by the DWSD. The People’s Water Board claims that delinquent business entities “have not been targeted in the same way as residential users,” a claim the department strongly disputes. 
 
 “There are no sacred cows. We aren’t discriminating in terms of individuals or businesses,” DWSD spokesman Bill Johnson said in an interview. “Last month we shut off about 3,600 accounts, both businesses and residential. Everybody is getting cut off who is $150 or 60 days in arrears. That is our policy and we’re ramping up our enforcement of that policy.” 
 
 The department has not yet had time to break out the data on water shutoffs by client category, Johnson said, but he hopes to be able to report exact figures on the number of business clients who have lost water access soon. 
 
 The DWSD’s roughly $5 billion in debts have turned out to be the most difficult piece of Detroit’s bankruptcy, after initially seeming to be on track for a rapid resolution. Neighboring counties have balked at absorbing the city system into a regional water and sewer authority, and subsequent plans to privatize the city’s water services have been criticized as too rapid, too costly, and too damaging to residents’ quality of life. The system’s massive backlog of delinquent bills makes it harder to convince anyone, whether private company or public authority, to shoulder the DWSD’s obligations. But if the water shutoffs were aimed at making the department look like a shinier prize in bankruptcy negotiations, they would likely be targeted at corporate clients directly, for the same reason that Depression-era gangsters robbed banks: that’s where the money is. 
 
 While the vast majority of the nearly 165,000 delinquent accounts reported in March are residential clients, those private households owe much smaller amounts than the commercial and industrial clients who are delinquent on their DWSD bills. Fewer than 11,000 delinquent accounts relate to commercial or industrial clients. But those delinquencies average more than $7,700 per business, according to the numbers published in the Detroit News in March, compared to an average debt of less than $600 per residential delinquency. Non-residential clients account for almost half of what DWSD is owed despite being less than 7 percent of total delinquencies, according to the March figures. The People’s Water Board obtained a document with more recent figures which shows a similar distribution of the delinquencies but lower total debts to DWSD as of May. 
 
 “We are asking the UN special rapporteur to make clear to the U.S. government that it has violated the human right to water,” said Maude Barlow, the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and a key member of the coalition that put the report together. In addition to creating international pressure to stop the Detroit shutoffs, Barlow said, the UN’s intervention could lead to formal consequences for the United States. “If the US government does not respond appropriately this will also impact their Universal Periodic Review,” she said, “when they stand before the Human Rights Council to have their [human rights] record evaluated.” A request for comment from the UN official to whom the report was submitted went unanswered. ||||| The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department announced Wednesday that it is intensifying efforts to collect unpaid debts from its delinquent commercial customers. 
 
 Darryl Latimer, deputy director, said shut-off crews are now mobilizing to go out and cut service to delinquent commercial customers, which make up about 12% of the approximately 90,000 accounts that are at least 60 days past due. 
 
 Meanwhile, the DWSD has been shutting off water service aggressively for its delinquent residential customers. Latimer said the department executed 7,210 shut-offs in June. Combined, shut-offs in April and May totaled 7,556. 
 
 ■ Related: Nearly $1 million available for Detroit water customers who've received shut-off notices 
 
 ■ Related: Emergency water supplies on tap for Detroiters faced with shutoffs 
 
 Activists who have protested the shut-offs as an affront to human rights have for weeks criticized the water department for ignoring commercial deadbeats. In response, water officials steadfastly maintained that their collection efforts, which began in March, included commercial properties. 
 
 But the department’s contractor to help carry out the shut-offs is equipped to handle only residential properties. The department had to make arrangements for its own employees to cut off service for commercial customers, Latimer said, adding that the recipients of the 46,000 shut-off notices sent out in May included commercial properties. 
 
 “Some of those (commercial) customers probably have gotten shut-off notices. We just haven’t moved to shut them off. The contractor couldn’t shut them off,” Latimer said Wednesday. “They’re not equipped to shut off a larger industry like a Ford Field or what have you.” 
 
 The department released a list of 40 commercial and industrial accounts with the highest delinquent balances. In addition to mailings, the department is physically posting shut-off notices on those buildings in case they house rentals for apartments or office spaces. 
 
 Vargo Golf, which owns Palmer Park Golf Course and Chandler Park Golf Course, tops the list, with a delinquent account balance of $437,714. Another Vargo Golf account for a separate property has a delinquent balance of $100,528. The list, available at freep.com, includes an account for the State of Michigan, which owes $70,246. 
 
 A message was left with Vargo Golf seeking comment. 
 
 The list of delinquent commercial customers did not include Ford Field, the Detroit Lions or Olympia Entertainment, the Ilitch-owned company that leases the Joe Louis Arena. Activists protesting the water department shut-offs have claimed the operators of Joe Louis are let off the hook despite outstanding water bills. Latimer said Olympia Entertainment, which operates Joe Louis Arena, recently sent some checks for water payment. 
 
 The water department’s shut-off campaign — which has coincided with Detroit’s landmark bankruptcy case — has drawn international attention. 
 
 Water officials say shut-offs happened in past years, but the collection efforts intensified this year because the delinquent debt in Detroit forces higher rates for the city’s paying customers. An 8.7% rate hike took effect this month, increasing the average Detroiter’s bill from $65 to $70. 
 
 Ann Rall, a founding member of the Detroit People’s Water Board and a volunteer with the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, said the water department is unfairly targeting residents. 
 
 “Everybody who is involved in the struggle to the human right to water does point out that its inequitable to be picking on the least powerful people and only now going after the corporate accounts,” Rall said. 
 
 A coalition of welfare rights organizations appealed to the United Nations to have service restored to customers and to prevent more shutoffs. 
 
 Latimer said he has not had any interactions with the United Nations. 
 
 He addressed the notion that water is a human right while stressing that the DWSD has to pay for water delivery and is a nonprofit enterprise. 
 
 “I think that water may be a human rights issue. That’s not our issue,” Latimer said. “Water is a human right. But delivering to your home, purified. Who pays for that?”
– At least eight people were arrested yesterday in Detroit for protesting water shutoffs in a city where almost 40% of residents live below the poverty line. Dozens picketed in front of a facility affiliated with the city's Water and Sewerage Department to try to stop what activists call a “human rights violation,” reports Al Jazeera America. Police tell MLive that the individuals charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct range in age from 58 to 70 and include members of the clergy. (Watch video of the protest and arrests here.) The Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann, one of the arrested protesters, tells the Detroit Free Press that police tried to "move us forcibly, and we sat down. … We [were] here to appeal to the workers to stop shutting off the water." The coordinator of a local activist group says "police officers should be arresting rapists and murderers instead of arresting peaceful people." A Detroit Police rep counters that protesters still have to follow rules: "You cannot impede pedestrian or vehicle traffic." The Free Press counts 7,210 shutoffs in June, up from 7,556 in April and May combined, as part of what Al Jazeera reports is an effort to recover $175 million in unpaid bills. As of March, nearly half of the city's 323,900 DWSD accounts were delinquent; activists have asked the UN to intervene.