By Commissioner Ted Terry, Super District 6, DeKalb County Board of Commissioners
Across DeKalb County, thousands of working families wake up every day carrying the weight of economic pressure: rising rents, inflation, stagnant wages, and, yes, unpaid water bills. For many, this burden isn’t the result of negligence or entitlement, but of a broken system that too often fails to see the human being behind the ledger line.
As elected officials, we have a solemn responsibility to govern with compassion, and that means we must stop treating water debt as a personal failure. It’s a systemic one, and it demands a nuanced response.
Right now, DeKalb County has a total of $104 million in unpaid water bills, and more than 90,000 delinquent residential water accounts. That’s nearly half of our entire customer base. At face value, those figures are staggering, but they should also give us pause. Are we to believe that tens of thousands of our neighbors are irresponsible? That they simply refuse to pay? Or do these numbers tell us something deeper and more troubling about the decades of broken billing systems, meter reading errors, and a lack of customer advocacy?
Like so many systemic challenges, DeKalb’s water crisis didn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of years of neglect. And the nuance in these conversations matters. More than $40 million of the county’s $104 million in unpaid water bills is tied to apartment complexes and condominium communities, many of which operate on outdated master meters and have long suffered from governance issues, low fees, and chronic infrastructure neglect. Places like Whitehall Forest and Brannon Hill—each owing over $3 million in water debt—have become tragic case studies in system failure. These communities have suffered from years of mismanagement, non-existent homeowners associations, and little to no accountability.
The results are devastating. With no viable mechanism to collect, the debt continues to mount while residents are left to live in deteriorating conditions, surrounded by violence, blight, and fear. I’ve walked these communities. I’ve sat with families in living rooms scarred by bullet holes and listened to their stories. These are not bad actors—they are seniors on fixed incomes, working parents, and refugees who came here seeking safety and stability. They are survivors of a failed system, not its cause, and we must stop punishing them.
Some argue, “We can’t let people get free water.” However, the truth is that no one is getting free water. Nearly all delinquent accounts have made some payment—often under confusion, stress, or dispute. What we’re grappling with isn’t about avoiding responsibility; it’s about restoring trust. Years of inaccurate meter readings, faulty billing systems, and a lack of customer advocacy have created doubt—doubt about the accuracy of bills, about fairness in collections, and about whether the system is working for anyone at all. This isn’t about absolving debt blindly. It’s about due process. People deserve to know what they owe, why they owe it, and what assistance is available. Until we restore that basic transparency, we cannot expect faith in the system—or compliance with it. Our goal is to develop a system that safeguards the vulnerable while implementing effective, long-term solutions.
Utilities are essential services. They cannot function without payment. CEO Cochran-Johnson is right to say that we must restore sound billing and collections practices. We need rules. We need structure, yes. But we also need equity, and that means we must acknowledge that the rules were never fair to begin with.
This is also why we created the 10×10 program—a 10-year infrastructure investment plan paired with real consumer protections approved by the Board of Commissioners—to move forward, not back. To reset. To reconcile. To right the ship.
But that alone is not enough.
We must also provide a structured pathway to recovery for those who are willing to pay but have simply fallen too far behind to catch up. That is why I am calling for a Water Bill Amnesty Program for income-qualified households—modeled on the successful programs in Chicago and New York City.
Under Chicago’s Utility Billing Relief Program, low-income households received a 50% discount on their water and sewer rates and were eligible for full debt forgiveness after one year of on-time payments. In New York City, a tiered amnesty initiative allowed customers to settle their balances by paying a portion of the principal, with significant amounts of interest forgiven. These approaches didn’t just show compassion—they showed results. New York City collected over $80 million in unpaid water bills through this model, and over 85% of customers stayed current on their accounts afterward.
This is the kind of smart, equitable governance DeKalb needs now. An amnesty program would help our most vulnerable households—seniors, working families, and people with disabilities—avoid shutoffs while generating real revenue recovery for the County. It’s not a blank check. It’s a lifeline tied to accountability and performance.
At the same time, we must acknowledge that certain properties—like Brannon Hill and Whitehall Forest—present a different kind of challenge. These are not simply delinquent accounts. These are communities that have spiraled into physical, legal, and economic collapse. Without legitimate homeowners associations or governance structures, there is no meaningful way to collect water debt. These complexes are not just in debt—they are in crisis. And in these rare cases, we must be prepared to consider debt cancellation not as a reward, but as a necessary tool to stabilize and eventually rebuild.
We don’t need a moral crusade. We need a moral compass. And that compass must point us toward justice for the disaffected, the abused, the forgotten—those who did not create this crisis but are now asked to carry its cost.
We have a chance to turn the page. Let’s do so with humility, clarity, and compassion. The people of DeKalb deserve nothing less.
