Water Extortion? Cities Can Shut Off Your Water, Fine You, Arrest You & Take Your Kids If You Don’t Pay

The Double Standards of City Water Ordinances Across America: They Can Shut Off Your Water, But You Can’t. Is it legalized extortion?

Cities all over America shut off water to tens of thousands of homes annually. The charge late fees and  monthly fees just to have water. Yes, it costs money for the city to provide water. However water is necessary for life. It’s needed to stay clean and sanitary and if you don’t have water you can’t. It provides a clear and present threat to public and private health and safety. Yet cities all over the USA and abroad threaten people with almost extortion level threats and fines if you’re not hooked up to their utilities.

Baltimore threatened to turn off the water supply to 25,000 homes without water.

“…Starting this week, 25,000 households in Baltimore will suddenly lose their access to water for owing bills of $250 or more, with very little notice given and no public hearings. Rita, a renter in Southeast Baltimore who asked to remain anonymous for this story in order to protect her two children from being taken away, told ThinkProgress she was served with a shutoff notice last week. Maryland law states that a child that is “neglected” may be taken out of his or her home and put into foster care. One characteristic of “neglect” as defined by the Maryland Department of Human Resources is a child with “consistently poor hygiene” that is “un-bathed, [having] unwashed or matted hair, noticeable body odor.”“I love my kids, and I’d do anything for them,” Rita told ThinkProgress. “But if I turn on the shower or the sink and there’s no water, how can I give them a bath?” ~ SecondNexus

Let’s cut through the BS, shall we…

Look at it this way.

If you shut off your own water (or electricity by disconnecting from the grid) and you refused to turn it on or you disconnected yourself completely from the city’s water utility and refused to hook it back up the city will fine you, can condemn your property or will threaten to condemn it, arrest you, forcibly remove you from your property, and throw you in jail. They can even take your property under blight laws.

They do so under the health and safety ordinances in place. They will claim it’s unsanitary to not have water and septic hooked up, and they will say it violates health and safety regulations and poses a clear and present health and safety risk to you and the public at large.

They will send someone to your house and fine you, they will warn you, and then they will arrest you for not complying with health and safety regulations.

Double Standard

Yet they will break those regulations by turning off your water if you don’t pay them. That seems a bit like extortion.

Extortion is “the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.”

Not being connected to the city’s water utility by their own regulations is unsanitary and poses a significant health and safety risk. Yet, at the same time they completely IGNORE the fact they are doing exactly the same thing by turning off your water.

It’s ok for them, but not you. 

It’s a double standard.

And you pay the price no matter what.

They play by their rules and have a separate set of rules for you that you are expected to live by. If you break those rules, you can end up being fined, thrown in jail.

Taxes & Fees

People already pay property taxes and other fees to the cities and townships. This goes for renters too in the form of rents paid to the landlord. The people who own apartment buildings and rental properties pay a property tax. In that tax should be money for water. Period.

Turning of someone’s water, especially if they have children, is unsanitary and dangerous, not just to the family in the home, but the neighbors as well. Cities should be held accountable for such action which endangers the health and safety of children and the residents.

Not having water is in fact unsanitary. Turning it off for non-payment is a ridiculously absurd practice. It’s one sided.

Water is used for bathing, cleaning, cooking and waste removal. It keeps you clean and healthy. Without it you cannot flush the toilet, you can’t wash clothes unless you go to a laundromat,  you can’t wash dishes to have clean plates and forks to eat with, you can’t bathe which could make you sick and consequently you could lose your job, you can’t give your kids a bath which is very unsanitary and poses a health risk for the kids. Not to mention if you don’t bathe your kids, CPS (Child Protective Services) could come and take your kids away. Are they likely to? Probably not, but they can. The point is it’s getting ridiculous.

Cities should stop imposing double standards on the people and then charging them fines and late fees and disconnecting the very thing keeping them alive. It’s borderline extortion.

Water is not a privilege. Access to water is a human right that should never be governed by cities or taken away.

We all have a right to health and safety.

Especially for our children.

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source: www.offgridworld.com

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