Competing Crises With billions of dollars in unpaid water bills,U.S.citizens and utilities are coming up short on cash and ideas

摘要

In the fleeting hours of 2020, former U.S. President Donald Trump signed a second coronavirus relief plan into law. Among other things, it promised a program to help low-income families pay their water and wastewater utility bills. The amount allotted to the promised program is $638 million. Of that, nearly $20 million will go to tribal nations. "While communities and utilities work to offer customer assistance and flexibility to those in need, the scope of the public health and economic crisis requires a federal hand," said a group of clean water organizations, including the Water Environment Federation (WEF; Alexandria, Virginia), in a joint statement on December 21. The need for funds was highlighted earlier in 2020 when an investigation by the water news organization Circle of Blue found that "more than 1.5 million households in a dozen major U.S. cities with publicly operated water utilities owe $1.1 billion in past-due water bills." Due to continued shutoff moratoriums, those bills have continued to grow since Circle of Blue's August 2020 reporting. Although some states have set early 2021 expirations for their moratoriums, questions remain and pressure builds about how bills will be paid during a pandemic in which clean water has taken center stage as a public-health necessity.