DETROIT – Everywhere he goes, there’s concrete. On his driveway to get his car to go to breakfast. Driving on the road. In the parking lot of the coney island where he eats his eggs.

So when Russ Bellant sits down over his omelette at the Motown Cafe and Grill in one of America’s most industrialized cities, he has one question for its owner.

“Has your water and sewer bill gone up?” asks Bellant, a retired city employee and neighborhood activist with a salt-and-pepper beard and a knack for annoying City Hall.

Of course the bill has gone up.

Because Detroit, desperate for cash and facing a host of infrastructure woes, is now charging residents and businesses for rain that falls atop all that concrete before wending its way through the municipal sewer system.



August 2019: Detroit shut off water to 11,800 homes this year. Most are still off.

May 2019: She was born to fight – and did for 3 years without water in Detroit

In the past year, monthly water and sewer bills for the small restaurant have jumped to $284 from $90, owner Luljeta Duhani tells Bellant. Of that, $131 is for what the city calls a drainage fee but what critics contend is a tax on rain.

“It’s incredible. That means, every year, I’m paying $1,572 for rain,” she says.

She lets the word linger.

“For rain.”