This July 13th article provides further information regarding the ongoing crisis affecting the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD). Interestingly, the numbers provided do not quite make sense with respect to those in recent (June 22nd) articles discussed here.
Specifically, delinquent accounts dropped from 150,000 to 90,000, total outstanding debt from US$118M to US$90M. These numbers are extremely impressive, given that only 21 days have passed.
The most recent article gives information on the efficiency of the DWSD's investigations of water theft (not the same as delinquent accounts). Specifically, we can see that DWSD employees can investigate about 60 suspected accounts per day. Unless there is another team inside DWSD dedicated to resolving delinquent accounts, or the DWSD is using automated or analytical methods, it is hard to imagine how 60,000 accounts could have been dealt with in 21 days, at a rate of 2857 accounts per day. This would seem worth mentioning or explaining in the article.
My point here is not so much to criticize, without full information, the DWSD or the reporting. Rather, it is to point out some inconsistencies in the reporting of this human and financial crisis. These inconsistencies have real consequences, and they detract from:
- the optimal flow of information needed to keep stakeholders abreast of each other, and
- the necessary and healthy debate needed to resolve this ongoing crisis
Access to accurate and timely information about the technical and financial status of a public utility is paramount to ensure that it is adequately run and regulated. Transparency is crucial to building and maintaining trust between those who run the water and sanitation utilities, those who consume their products, those who protest their alleged anti-social or anti-environmental policies, those who regulate their activities, those who write the laws that define their operational framework, etc... And that trust is the basis for crisis resolution.
Unfortunately, transparency has not historically been a strong suit for water and sanitation utilities, and this can partly explain the suspicions that surround the business (whether the utility is public or private). I will discuss this further in another post, and in particular how the utility must organize itself to be capable of sharing information with stakeholders.
