tax payers of the City are being asked time and time again to accept another water rate hike.
According to the Detroit Department of Water & Sewerage, the cost to treat 1000 gallons of water is $2.
Consider also that as people leave the city there are fewer water customers: factor in a $12.5 million dollar
decline in water sales and the fact that some residents are struggling to pay the current rates, we see that the City
cannot afford to waste treating water for abandoned buildings.
According to figures from the Detroit Water Department and calculations from Crains, in a
March 14, 2014 article called Scrappers Cost Detroiters More Than Money: School Days, Treated Water,
Manpower Also Casualties, the water department puts about 610 million gallons or 81.6 million cubic feet of
water from its treatment plants into the network every day. Of that, 27% or 164 million gallons is lost. One of
the contributors to that loss is vandalism at abandoned buildings. By our calculations, that is $329,400 lost
every day. The annual cost of lost treated water is $120,231,000. Crains figure is even higher:
At a standard $18.90 per 1,000 cubic feet that the department bills to city residential customers
after their first 3,000 cubic feet (one of the lowest price points within its billing structure) that
would come out to nearly $417,000 worth of treated water lost per day.
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