Binding civil and civic infrastructure : the need for transparency and accountability in Baltimore's water crisis

Abstract

With declining federal assistance for essential infrastructure upgrades, water and wastewater utilities have increasingly relied on customer revenue to fill funding gaps. This has led most recently to "water crises" in cities such as Baltimore and Detroit, where residents who cannot afford to pay increasing rates have been disconnected from water services altogether. Although utility disconnection is a common practice to collect unpaid revenue, the scale and duration of these shut-offs is unprecedented, and, in both cases, the result of concurrent urban fiscal and social crises. In the absence of legislation that secures the right to water for all American citizens, people addressing the problems have typically tried to identify sources of infrastructure funding that would be more equitable, or calculate levels of payment that are truly affordable. In light of these debates, this thesis asks whether processes of deliberation between the government and the public might serve a critical role in alleviating the problem. After investigating Baltimore's financial structures and exploring causes of confrontation between the public and the utility, this thesis suggests transparency and accountability reforms that enhance planning processes which involve citizens so Baltimore's DPW can move beyond the practice of just counting meters, to one of seeing and hearing customers. The thesis argues that, short of improving the infrastructure, the processes of citizen engagement, particularly via the collaboration of various state and utility departments, will help improve the technical and financial efficiency of the utility and create greater equity for customers through providing data and records that bolster various processes and programs, from account classification to collection to customer assistance to information about cognate programs such as affordable housing -- all of which will make it easier to assess and determine equity. The ultimate goal is to meet the financial and physical needs of water and wastewater utilities, while also addressing issues of equity, with a focus on deliberation and data collection that places an emphasis on process that leads to both desired outcomes.