detroit water and sewerage department

Two major water system operators in southeast Michigan and Oakland County plan to work together to better control heavy storm water runoff.

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) and the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA), along with Oakland County, plan to spend $68 million on three projects.  They want to prevent tens of millions of gallons of untreated rainwater from flowing into the Rouge River.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) is providing $800,000 to expand an ongoing COVID-19 detection program in wastewater.

The expanded program, which has been running as a pilot since spring, will test untreated sewage in some Detroit zip codes, as well as certain targeted zip codes in suburban communities like Sterling Heights, Oak Park, and West Bloomfield.

The ACLU and other civil rights groups are suing the city of Detroit and others over Detroit’s water shutoffs.

Detroit has shut off water service to around 100,000 homes since 2014 for non-payment. Close to 25,000 homes were disconnected in 2019.

A team of Michigan State University researchers hopes Detroit sewage will hold clues about the trajectory of COVID-19.

The group has been sampling raw sewage as it arrives at a Great Lakes Water Authority water treatment plant every week since mid-April.

Monday, the Flint city council may reconsider a contract to build a back-up drinking water source.

Saturday was the 6th anniversary of the Flint Water Crisis. On April 25th, 2014, Flint’s drinking water source was switched as part of an effort to save money. But improperly treated water from the Flint River damaged city pipes and released lead into Flint’s tap water.

In a letter to the state, Detroit Water and Sewerage Department says it’s aware of fewer than 10 homes that continue to be without water service.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer has ordered that all municipalities reconnect households that had been shut off for nonpayment during the COVID-19 crisis. Detroit launched a program in early March that allows households to reconnect for $25, then an additional $25 per month for the duration of the pandemic.

Detroit is turning on water service to thousands of households that had been shut off—but some say it’s moving too slowly.

Detroit established an affordable program to restore and prevent shutoffs for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. As of Friday, the city’s water department had restored service to 434 households.

The city of Detroit plans to put $500 million into its water and sewer systems, in what officials call the city’s first large-scale upgrade of its water infrastructure since 1930.

The five-year capital improvement project calls for the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to replace or re-line more than 50 miles of water mains and sewer collection pipes this year alone. It also calls for more green infrastructure projects to manage storm water.

Part of downtown Detroit is under a boil water advisory following a water main break.

The Great Lakes Water Authority and Detroit Water and Sewerage Department responded to a 42-inch break around 11 pm Saturday night.

Most Detroiters facing possible water shutoffs will get a short reprieve this week.

According to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, the reprieve is due to the July 4th holiday coming right in the middle of the week, not the high heat that’s expected to continue for the next few days.

The head of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department says a portion of Michigan’s new lead and copper rule is an “unfunded mandate”— and one that Detroit can’t comply with without some help from state and local government.

So far this year, Detroit has shut water to more homes than exist in all of Muskegon. One in 10 residential customers lost service, at least temporarily, in Detroit.

Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality is vowing to strengthen lead-in-water rules because of the Flint water crisis. At a public meeting in Lansing Wednesday night, state regulators said they cannot wait on the federal government to finish its own version of the new rules.

The Detroit branch NAACP hosted an event Friday to raise awareness about Detroit's aging water infrastructure, and to call on the federal government to update and repair it.

Detroit's situation is part of a nationwide infrastructure crisis, but the need is critical in the Great Lakes region, advocates say, because more than 30 million people depend on the lakes for their drinking water. 

Detroit is trying to prevent street flooding by regularly cleaning the sewer grates and catch basins on the side of the road.

The city announced the new program Tuesday.

“Lately we’ve been getting less frequent rain but the intensity of the rains has been more severe. So not only is it a nuisance but it also can be hazardous,” Detroit Water and Sewer Department’s chief engineer Palencia Mobley said.

It likely wouldn’t prevent major street flooding like what happened in 2014, but the situation should improve, Mobley said.

This week, community organizers in Detroit are bringing in experts to talk about the health implications of city-imposed mass water shutoffs. They want to highlight a research project done at Henry Ford Health System that showed a statistically significant correlation between water shutoffs and water-associated illness.

But Henry Ford Health System spokeswoman Brenda Craig warns the study was not conclusive because the city only provided block-level data, not specific addresses that have been turned off.

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) has partnered with the DivDat Kiosk Network to make water bill payments more convenient. 

More than 15 percent of Detroit homes have their water shut off due to late or unpaid bills. 

DWSD conducted a soft-lauch in March to assess people's attitudes toward the kiosks.  

Last year, more than 27,000 Detroit homes had water shut off because of what the city says were unpaid bills. In some neighborhoods, 1-in-5 homes lost water access. To find your neighborhood, type in your Detroit address in the box in the upper right. When the map zooms in, click on the map for more information.

An equipment malfunction at a Great Lakes Water Authority plant has caused parts of Detroit, Hamtramck, and Highland Park to be placed on a boil-water alert.

Cheryl Porter, Chief Operating Officer at the GLWA, says the advisory is a precautionary measure.

"It's not likely that we had an issue but we wanted to be careful and cautious and issue [the advisory] just in case," Porter said.

She says the alert was put in place in response to a water pressure drop. A change in pressure can make pipe water susceptible to bacteria.

After heavy storms led to flooding in Detroit this summer, 800 people filed claims asking for help dealing with the damages.

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and the Great Lakes Water Authority will eventually have to figure out which claims each department is responsible for settling.

But in the meantime, officials are going to start paying out settlements. Director of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department Gary Brown says he wants to get money in the hands of customers as soon as possible.

Detroit found more lead in drinking water samples this summer than it has in recent years, and there’s a few reasons to account for the uptick.  

Unofficial results posted this month by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department show Detroit’s water is safe to drink by federal standards.

Flint residents will continue to drink water from Detroit well into next year.

While Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump was making the rounds in Flint on Wednesday, learning about the city’s drinking water crisis, the city’s state appointed oversight board quietly approved extending a deal that delivers fresh water from Detroit.

Flint switched back to Detroit water last fall.  The new extension will keep the water flowing through next Spring.

Two recent cases of Hepatitis A in Detroit are sparking a larger public health response.

That’s because the people who tested positive for the virus had both recently dealt with basement sewage backups, which have plagued an area of Detroit’s east side during rainfall this summer.

It’s not entirely clear how they got Hepatitis A, but contact with sewage is a known path of transmission.

But just in case, the Detroit health department will offer the vaccinations for free or at low cost to all Detroiters affected by the recent flooding over the next week.

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department is about to process an “unprecedented” number of claims, although it’s uncertain what claimants can expect to get out of the process.

It’s the result of a July 8 rainstorm that caused sewage to back up into basements across a swath of Detroit’s east side. A similar, smaller event happened in the same area just last week.

DWSD has urged affected residents to file claims, and many have.

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department says 22,000 owners of surface parking lots and other parcels covered in impervious materials like concrete need to start pitching in for the city's $125 million annual cost for wastewater treatment.

Gary Brown is Director of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department.