By Angelique Willis
Should we “value” water by putting a price on it?
That question lies at the heart of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW), a high-profile group whose reports drew significant attention at the UN 2023 Water Conference. The Commission’s message, in simple terms, is that water has been treated as “too inexpensive,” and that stronger pricing tools, new economic frameworks, and expanded financing models could help address water crises.
The “Just Water Futures” webinar series brought together scholars and organizers who pushed on this idea. The discussion made clear that when powerful actors talk about “valuing” water through prices and global finance, such language can serve as a pathway to commodifying water, while local rights, histories, and lived struggles are pushed to the margins.
And for the Great Lakes States, that carries a serious additional warning.
At first glance, “valuing” water can sound like responsible planning. Yet in practice, price-based approaches have a habit of changing the conversation from rights to returns. Once water is treated as an economic asset, the people who hold financial and political power tend to gain more influence over decisions, while communities most impacted by shutoffs, contamination, and unaffordable bills are expected to adjust to “market realities.” That is exactly why many water justice voices are wary of reforms that rely heavily on pricing, investment frameworks, and new financial partnerships without first securing strong, enforceable protections for communities.
In rights-based frameworks, safe and affordable water is treated as a public good that governments and institutions are obligated to protect. A central message of the webinar series was that human and community rights must come first. The “how” of management and finance matters, but it comes after the “who” and the “what”: who has decision-making power, and what protections exist for the people whose lives depend on the system working. When the order is flipped, and financing and efficiency become the starting point, communities can end up facing the same old outcome in new packaging, with decision-making moving upward, accountability becoming thinner, and local realities treated as obstacles rather than as the foundation of policy.
The Flint water crisis is a clear example of what it looks like when “efficiency” and financial logic come first, and community protections come later. After the city was placed under a state-appointed emergency manager, Flint’s water source was switched in April 2014, as a cost-saving measure, from Detroit’s system to the Flint River without upgrades to corrosion-control measures, while local elected officials were sidelined. The result was a cascade of harm and a breakdown of accountability that residents had been warning about, showing how quickly “technical” restructuring can become a rights crisis when decision-making moves upward and away from the community.
That rights-first lens also helps clarify another theme that kept surfacing throughout the webinar series: “the commons” is not just a label that can be dropped into a report. In this context, the commons is water held and governed as a shared community resource, shaped by local rules, collective decision-making, and mutual responsibility, with people’s needs placed ahead of profit. It is less a buzzword and more a lived practice built through relationships, organizing, and everyday governance. In many places, community-run water systems hold far more than pipes and meters; they carry traditions of shared stewardship, mutual care, and the ongoing work of keeping neighbors connected and safe. When institutions borrow the language of the commons while advancing top-down or market-driven solutions, that meaning can get thinned out, turning collective power into a slogan rather than real control over the water people rely on.
For example, Michigan’s water history makes these warnings feel immediate because the state has already seen what happens when decision-making drifts away from residents. In Flint, Benton Harbor, Detroit, and Muskegon Heights, failures are often framed as technical choices or administrative fixes, only to reveal deeper patterns of disinvestment, weakened public accountability, and decisions made without meaningful community power. That is why privatization and “regionalization” plans, no matter how often they are framed as measures of efficiency, resilience, or affordability, warrant close scrutiny. These approaches can quietly shift authority away from residents and toward distant boards, consultants, or private operators, making it harder for communities to demand transparency, fair rates, and responsive service when issues arise.
If the leaders of the Great Lakes States pursue restructuring or coordination across water systems, the starting point must be rights-based and community-centered. This means treating safe, affordable water as a public good and ensuring that residents have meaningful influence over rate-setting, service decisions, and accountability mechanisms. It also means slowing down long enough to ask the governance questions that matter before celebrating big structural changes: Who will make the decisions? Who benefits from the change? Who carries the risks? And what happens when residents disagree, or when outcomes fall short?
From there, the path forward becomes clearer. A healthier direction is to prioritize strong public and community solutions that keep water governance rooted in democratic control. Public-public partnerships can help utilities share technical capacity without introducing a profit motive, and regional coordination, where it truly makes sense, can be designed through democratic regional boards where affected communities have seats, voting power, and clear transparency requirements. In this approach, affordability is treated as a core obligation rather than an afterthought, with protections that prevent households from being priced out of basic necessities.
In the end, the question isn’t whether water can be priced; it’s what gets lost when pricing becomes the main story. The Great Lakes States have already seen how quickly “technical solutions” can turn into lived harm when communities are excluded from decision-making. A just water future here means something simpler and harder at the same time: safe and affordable water as a public good, and governance that stays accountable to residents. Because the measure of a water system isn’t how well it performs on paper, it’s whether people can trust it, afford it, and shape it.
