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| Great Lakes Water Authority facilities in Detroit. |
Sixteen of 18 local communities have unanimously agreed to a formal protest of a both a recently proposed water and sewer rate increase from the Great Lakes Water Authority and the payments toward the unpaid Highland Park debt that have been ongoing since 2017. Affected communities would include, among others, the cities of Belleville; Inkster; Northville; Plymouth; Romulus; Wayne and Westland along with the townships of Canton; Northville; Plymouth and Sumpter. Representatives from the cities of Northville and Westland were absent from the meeting.
The formal protest will be sent to the State of Michigan demanding that the local communities be held harmless for 27 percent or $19,882,700 of the $54,233,700 unpaid debt of the City of Highland Park.
The resolution of protest claims that Highland Park has paid less than 1 percent of the water charges since 2012 which have been passed on to the other communities who purchase water from the Great Lakes Water Authority. Those communities recently received notification from The Great Lakes Water Authority of a further water rate increase of 3.7 percent and an increase of 2.4 percent in sewer rates effective July 1.
The debt is connected to a determination by state officials in November of 2012 that the Highland Park Water Treatment Plant was creating a public health risk. Required repairs to the facility were estimated to take three to four days and during that time, state officials requested water service for Highland Park be provided from Detroit Water and Sewerage. The requested repairs to the Highland Park treatment plant were never performed, according to the formal resolution of protest presented last week, and the debt to the Detroit system has continued to mount.
The debt, according to an analysis by the Conference of Western Wayne, will increase to more than $60 million by the end of next year.
The resolution demands that the State of Michigan and the Great Lakes Water Authority excuse the members from the payment of the Highland Park debt and includes a refusal to pay any more toward the debt this year or beyond. The resolution demands that the State of Michigan take steps to solve the dispute and return the nearly $14 million the communities have already paid toward the Highland Park debt since 2017.
In addition, the resolution asks the state to develop a long-term infrastructure solution for the Highland Park plant and create a safeguard to see that an overpayment of this kind does not occur in the future. The conference members also have called on respective state legislators and Wayne County commissioners to intervene with the state to absolve the local communities of the Highland Park debt and reimburse the local amounts already paid.
Wayne Mayor John Rhaesa who is the chairman of the Conference of Western Wayne commented in news reports that this billing was “crazy, just crazy” as his community had been assessed more than $99,000 of the debt.
In a social media post, local residents were urged to write letters and call the Governor's office to protest paying for the Highland Park debt. The email link provided was: https://somgovweb.state.mi.us/GovRel.../ContactGovernor.aspx
The mailing address listed was: Governor Gretchen Whitmer P.O. Box 30013 Lansing, Michigan 48909. The office phone is (517) 335-7858.
