Not long ago I had suggested on a blog that the unemployed of Detroit be taught how to dismantle buildings and recycle the materials.
It's good to know someone else thinks like me.

Federal money to pay Detroit bills, the travesty. Oh wait, don't we already do this? How many million taxpayer dollars found their way into political crony's pockets? If I don't pay my water bill, small as it is, the water company shuts off my water, why should they be any different? Sorry, pay you bills and nothing happens, Detroit found that out the hard way. Thank you Great Society programs.

So, based on their average monthly bills, and the past-due amounts, these people haven't paid a bill in years... Anywhere else, it's about 60 days and they shut your water / electricity / phone off. How are they special?

The utilities there must be stressed, the city used to be 1.8 million, and all those hookups are there, while some 75,000+ abandoned homes have been slated for tear down and timber recycle (this month's Popular Mechanics), the houses are worth more for their old growth timber than they are as a house in Detroit...

They are actually reverting it back to farmland.

This is a fairly humorous issue to me... Water IS free. Dig a well and you'll have plenty of water (most of the time - barring drought and people MOVING water away from areas).

What isn't free is a company collecting all water that would normally be seeping through the ground to the water table, and the service of delivering that water up to people who would rather pay for it than set up the system to get it themselves.

Once upon a time, people walked for miles with a water jug to pump a few gallons of water out of a community well. Instead of demanding the federal government provide "free water," perhaps a few protesters could spend their time sweating to dig a community well...?

I keep telling everyone that this is straight out of the pages of Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957. Sadly few have read it...

Lake Erie has a serious algal infestation right now. Toledo had to turn off water because of that for several days in the last week.

You can join many of the Michiganians who have moved to Florida like me, mkozicki. My aunt and uncle's community even has Michigan Day every year.

I think the water department is owned by the City of Detroit. Detroit is bankrupt and asking the rest of the people in the state to bail it out.

From this

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140...

They are saying "Officials have said more than $89 million is owed in delinquent bills, including more than $43 million from 80,000 residential accounts.".

So what do they want? They are not paying the bill but don't want to be shut off and the rest of the state should bail out Detroit that owns the water plant? So the people that don't use the water should pay for it so that the people in the bankrupt city can keep getting it free?

Some days I wonder why I even go to work.................

They are taking water from the same Lake Erie as Toledo, aren't they, or do they take it from the Detroit River?

Humanitarian crisis = those who pay the bill get screwed again.