Detroit’s water affordability crisis is tied to the uneven distribution of stormwater management costs – a fraught history explains why |
Beginning in July 2026, Detroiters will be paying higher water and sewer bills.
That’s because The Great Lakes Water Authority, or GLWA, voted unanimously on Feb. 25, 2026, to increase water rates by 5.8% and sewer rates by 4.26% for its customers. GLWA raised rates by similar amounts in 2025.
Residents at GLWA’s last rate hearing spoke of their difficulty keeping up with utility bills. For low-income customers across the GLWA system, rate increases aggravate a deeply entrenched water affordability crisis.
In the coming years, utility bills will likely continue to rise, driven by maintenance costs to upgrade infrastructure nearing the end of its life cycle.
Utility bills are the primary source of revenue for public water and wastewater systems. Yet both the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, or DWSD, and GLWA are caught in what utility experts call an affordability gap. That is, the discrepancy between what it costs to maintain essential infrastructure and what ratepayers can reasonably afford.
Utilities across the country are facing down a similar contradiction. For DWSD customers, the gap is wider still because they carry a greater burden for water quality improvements that benefit the wider metropolitan region.
I am a political ecologist at Loyola Marymount University, specializing in the politics of resource management in the Great Lakes.
While water affordability is a long-standing concern for communities within the GLWA system and across Michigan, the crisis remains the most acute in Detroit. Taking a look at the fraught history of wastewater management helps to explain why.
Who pays to keep waterways clean?
Since the late 1990s, water bills in Detroit have risen by 400%.
At $87.54 per month, DWSD’s average residential water bill can consume up to 25% of disposable income for households living below the poverty line. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sets an affordability threshold of 4.5% of disposable income to cover water bills.
About three-quarters of a DWSD residential water bill pays for wastewater and stormwater treatment. These revenues also help to maintain Detroit’s wastewater treatment plant, which serves the city and 76 suburban communities.
My research, which combined archival research and interviews with state regulators, Detroit city staff, DWSD and GLWA representatives and grassroots water affordability advocates, documents how Detroit’s water affordability crisis involves a less visible form of........