Peoples’ Water Board demonstrates at Detroit Water Board Building Aug. 21, 2012.
Detroit water/sewer system is third largest in U.S., serves 40 percent of Michigan population
Environmental groups oppose privatization; union threatens strike
Bond manager SBS says rate increases are imperative, wants more debt
By Diane Bukowski
September 9, 2012
DETROIT – Despite adamant opposition from Detroit Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD) workers, environmental groups, and union leaders, the city’s Board of Water Commissioners (BOWC) unanimously authorized Phase II and III of a 5-year, $48 million consulting contract with the EMA Group, Inc. on Sept. 7.
EMA recommends the elimination of 81 percent of the DWSD workforce over the next five years, reduction of job classifications from 257 to 31, changes in business process and IT design, and outsourcing of “non-core” services.
- EMA Exec. Brian Hurding at BOWC meeting Sept. 7, 2012. He refused comment on flooding of Toronto subways, homes and streets due to sewage back-up after rainstorm in June, after 16 yers of EMA oversight. He earlier refused to return a VOD phone call to his office in Toronto.
A Minneapolis-based firm with offices throughout the U.S. and Canada, EMA claims DWSD will save $.9 billion over 10 years through their plans.
“We have a number of pressures, including increasing citizen expense, the deferment of infrastructure investment needs, mounting system debt, and rising personnel costs including health care and pension costs,” DWSD Director Sue McCormick, who has headed the Department for nine months, told the BOWC.
DWSD is the third largest water and sewerage system in the U.S. It provides water for 40 percent of the state of Michigan’s population, over 1,079 square miles including Detroit and six surrounding counties, and wastewater service over 946 square miles. (See DWSD website at http://www.dwsd.org.)
- WWTP worker Susan Ryan tells BOWC EMA plan will destroy DWSD sewage system.
DWSD water has long been recognized as among the safest in the country, despite federal oversight since 1978, after the city’s first Black Mayor, Coleman A. Young, Jr., took office. The system is not running a deficit. Until recently, Wall Street rating agencies scored its bonds at top levels.
Susan Ryan is a senior Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) worker with 15 years on the job.
“This reduction in staff will cause the complete failure of our sewage system,” she told the BOWC at its hastily-called “special” meeting. “They are selling you a fantasy. You are flushing $48 million down the toilet.”
- Mike Mulholland, Sec’y.-Treasurer AFSCME Local 207 at Aug. 15 protest outside Huber DWSD plant.
She and Mike Mulholland, a 29-year WWTP worker and union representative, told the BOWC that lesser cutbacks in previous years have resulted in high levels of sewage contamination of the area’s waterways, among other problems.
After EMA spent 18 years advising and managing Toronto’s water system, that city experienced record flooding of its world-famed subway system, neighborhood homes, and streets in June, attributed to sewage back-ups.
“You have not shown any data explaining the need for these cutbacks.” Sierra Club member Melissa Damaeschke told the BOWC. “You have not shared the EMA studies. There is no transparency and this will cause public unrest. We fear this will take away public ownership of our system.”
- Representatives of Sierra Club, Peoples Water Board, and Food and Water Watch at BOWC Sept. 7 meeting protested EMA plan.
DWSD has released power point presentations on EMA’s plans on its website. But it has so far refused to make public copies of “due diligence” studies on EMA which Fausone said back up the company’s reliability, reports by EMA, EMA contracts, and a huge notebook of documents on the EMA proposal provided to the BOWC Sept. 7.
Catherine Phillips is chief negotiator for the Detroit locals of Michigan Council 25 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). She said DWSD management has also refused to give any of those documents to the union.
- AFSCME Co. 25 negotiator Catherine Phillips speaks to reporter after BOWC meeting Sept. 7, 2012.
“DWSD has never been broke, it has all the money and resources,” she said. “We are angry. They want to take away everything that the people of Detroit have built. Now they want us to go sit at the bargaining table and in good faith negotiate an agreement to send our members out into the streets. Well, whatever they get from us, they’re going to have to take it.”
AFSCME Local 207, the largest DWSD local, has been mobilizing for a city-wide strike for several months.
U.S. District Court Judge Sean Cox, a right-wing member of the Federalist Society.
Meanwhile, said Phillips, Council 25 will argue its case against orders by U.S. District Court Judge Sean Cox in an Oct. 9 hearing in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio. Last year, Cox changed the make-up of the BOWC so that ultimate control of rates and contracts rests with its suburban members, most of them connected to various corporations and banks.
He also instituted draconian anti-worker changes.
Suburban and out-state forces have long campaigned for control of DWSD, a racially-charged situation since Detroit’s population is close to 84 percent African-American, and the DWSD workforce is also predominantly Black. EMA claimed it will ensure “diversity” in future workforces at the plant, but refused to commit to any numbers.
(Left to right) DWSD Director Sue McCormick, nine months on the job, BOWC Detroit member Linda Forte, a Comerica bank exec, BOWC chair and Oakland Co. member James Fausone, who was president of an environmental remediation, industrial service, and waste transportation company for three years, BOWC member Macomb County rep. Fred Barnes, who owns his own engineering consulting company and is a West Point graduate, and former BOWC chair Mary Blackmon of Detroit, also head of Wayne County RESA. Board members asked questions but all gave excuses for their votes in favor of the EMA cutbacks.
During the Sept. 7 meeting, BOWC chair James Fausone tried to justify personnel cutbacks by pitting DWSD customers against the workers.
- The late Mary Shoemake (l) of Call ’em Out, participates in protest against DWSD water shut-offs during Kwame Kilpatrick administration.
“Water rates are unaffordable for most of our customers,” he said. “Thirty percent of Detroit customers can’t pay their water bills on time. Sewage rates have gone up over the last 10 years in Detroit 10.1 percent, and in the suburbs 5.2 percent, with water rates rising 6.4 percent in Detroit and 7.2 percent in the suburbs.”
However, no written guarantees of rate reductions are included in documents that DWSD has made publicly available so far. On Aug. 29, a prominent municipal bond management firm told the BOWC that in fact customers must be prepared for more rate increases.
During a workshop that day, Siebert, Brandford, Shank & Co. (SBS) told the BOWC that to “enhance DWSD credit,” primary goals must include “educating the public about [infrastructure] projects and the need for water and sewer rate increases.”
Then Detroit CFO Sean Werdlow, SBS rep Brian Doherty, Fitch Ratings’ Joe O’Keefe, Standand & Poor’s Stephen Murphy and Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams pressure Council to approve disastrous $1.5 billion pension obligaton certifcate loans Jan. 31, 2005. Werdlow is now a managing partner of SBS, which conducted workshop for BOWC Aug. 29 stressing need for rate increases and more debt. UBS is one of several companies being sued by Boston and other municipalities for fraud for manipulating interest rates before 2008 economic bust.
SBS partnered with global giant UBS to get the City of Detroit to borrow a record $1.5 billion in “pension obligation certificates” in 2005, during the Wall Street profit bubble which burst in 2008. To stave off default on UBS-SBS debt in 2009, the city agreed to funnel all of its casino tax revenues through a trustee, US Bank NA, to ensure payment. Its state-revenue sharing funds have been similarly handed over.
Despite McCormick’s earlier report that 40 percent of DWSD expenses currently come from debt payments, SBS currently recommends additional borrowing to pay for upcoming infrastructure needs.
Detroit additionally labors under the constraints of a “consent agreement” negotiated under Michigan’s Public Act 4. PA 4 hands dictatorial control of municipalities and school districts in deficit to unelected “emergency managers.” The “consent agreement” hands similar control to a “Financial Advisory Board” and state officials. In November, Michigan voters will decide whether to repeal PA 4.
The Mayors’ Water Council of the U.S. Conference of Mayors said in a blistering report in 2011 that what cities really need is increased federal investment in their water and sewerage infrastructures.
“The Federal government, (i.e., Congress and the relevant Federal Agencies) has performed one of the most sophisticated acts of avoiding responsibility for the policies it has imposed on the nation’s cities in modern history when it comes to public water and wastewater,” says the Mayors’ report.
“Local government was a willing partner with Congress in setting the lofty goals of the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts . . . but the Federal government has abdicated its role as ‘partner’ in this effort. Instead of sharing the responsibility to finance the necessary infrastructure Congress has taken the position that achieving the goals of the water laws is not a federal responsibility.”
The report goes on to say that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has instead assumed the role of “prosecutor” in situations related to compliance issues, much as it has done in Detroit.
It sets a “National Action Agenda to Renew and Strengthen the Intergovernmental Commitment to Water and Wastewater Structure.” (See sidebar.)
Related documents and articles:
ema_phase_2_resolution; DWSD ema_phase_2_and_3_proposal; dwsd_phase_2_and_3_presentation_09072012; US Mayors Water Council report
http://www.candgnews.com/news/algae-lake-muck-contains-human-waste
http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/08/22/toronto-under-water-sewage-in-wake-of-ema-plan/
http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/08/19/former-head-engineer-weighs-in-on-dwsd-restructuring-plan/
http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/08/12/picket-dwsd-huber-facility-wed-aug-15-4-pm-save-our-water-dept/
http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/07/30/shut-detroit-down-save-our-water-department-save-our-city/
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/aug2012/ints-a13.shtml
EMA cannot unilaterally drop some job classifications and add some more that will result in a a big layoff of “Protected Classes”. DWSD protected class-the largest is African American Women who make up 81% of their workforce. Since this percentage is factual, DWSD must follow the EEOC’s guidelines for altering employment terms. This is FEDERAL LAW. The Uniform Guidelines for Employee Selection Process is what ALL Employers mst follow. This UGESP covers changing classifications of protected employees. Again! the unions are giving the City of Detroit and DPS more power than they federally have by intentionally leaving out the demographics of city employees. This is why the City has been able to get away with so much. They intentional left our race out of all negotiations in order to help the City bypass the Civil Rights Act.
Diane-
Another great article. We have been anticipating this action for some time and so much of the deceit and back door bribery has been at the hands of the members of the African American community.
Questions have been asked, ‘why action has not been taken to the UN and charges of human rights violation’ been leveled on all those responsible, and strangely enough, no response has ever been given.
So what group of individuals, trusted community and social activists may be working behind the scenes to help facilitate this action?