John,

Everyone deserves access to clean water. It’s a human right.

But thousands of people in my city are now at risk of having their water shut off, as we’ve reached the end of a hard-fought moratorium on shutoffs. Across the country, about 1 in 6 households are behind on their utility bills, which puts them at risk of eviction and homelessness.

Communities of color are disproportionately affected, spending a greater portion of their income on ever-increasing utility bills and living paycheck to paycheck.

In the richest country the world has ever known, it is an outrage that millions of Americans struggle with access to water and other life-sustaining services. To allow people to live in those inhumane conditions solely because they’re poor—solely because they can’t afford to pay water bills—is just wrong. Our basic human needs should not be treated as commodities for profit.

We need to end dehumanizing water shutoffs and invest in cleaning up water. The Biden administration has this power, as does Congress.

Sign now to tell Congress and the Biden administration: Access to clean water is a human right. That’s why we need to end water shutoffs, erase debt on water bills, and fully remove lead pipes across the country.

I’ve fought alongside grassroots groups, including the national No Shutoffs Coalition, which has already presented President Biden with a draft executive order on this issue.

We can pay off people’s water debt and pay for updates to water infrastructure in many ways, including by reducing the bloated Pentagon budget. For example, the cost of replacing every lead pipe in our country is $60 billion. Last year Congress passed a military budget that was $80 billion more than the prior year. We could cover the costs from this alone!

I started the bipartisan Get the Lead Out Caucus to help ensure that everyone has access to clean, safe, and lead-free water. We took the Caucus on a tour of lead contamination hotspots across Michigan and continue to raise awareness about the urgency of fully funding lead pipe removal.

I also helped secure more than $1.1 billion in federal funding to assist low-income households who need support in paying off their water bills and paying for fees to reconnect their water service. Now, we’re making sure it actually gets implemented on the ground in a way that’s equitable and changes people’s lives for the better.

But there’s still much more work to do.

I’ve introduced bills to end water shutoffs nationally, and to wipe out utility debt accumulated during the pandemic by low-income households. We need to make sure these policy changes actually happen, and soon.

Please sign now to tell Congress and the Biden administration: We urgently need to end water shutoffs, erase debt on water bills, and clean up water by removing lead pipes across the country. This is how we protect water as a human right.

Our communities deserve urgent and bold changes. Thank you for being by my side in this fight.

In solidarity,

Rashida