What’s on Your Ballot Is Connected to What’s in Your Tap

Every year, Imagine a Day Without Water asks us to consider a simple question: What would life look like without water?

Imagine waking up and turning on the faucet, only for nothing to come out. No water to brush your teeth. No water to make your coffee before breakfast or take your medication. No shower before work or school. No washing clothes, preparing dinner, flushing the toilet, or giving your child a bath.

For most of us, even imagining a single day without water makes it clear just how essential water is.

However, for families who have experienced a water shutoff, struggled to keep up with rising bills, or lived with unsafe water, a day without reliable water access isn't simply something to imagine.

It is a reality they know all too well.

At the Water Equals Life (WEL) Coalition, we believe no Michigan family should have to experience that reality because they cannot afford their water bill. Our Coalition brings together organizations and advocates from across the state around the shared goal of ensuring clean, safe, and affordable water is available to every Michigander.

That is why, on this Imagine a Day Without Water, we are asking Michiganders to recognize something else. Water access is a voting issue.

Water may not dominate election-year headlines, but elected officials' decisions directly affect what happens when we turn on the tap.

Public policy shapes how we invest in aging water infrastructure, how communities replace lead service lines, how we respond to flooding and climate change, and whether families facing financial hardship receive temporary water bill assistance or can afford their water rates.

And voters have the power to ask questions about them.

This year, as candidates ask for our votes, we should be asking these questions:

• What is your plan to ensure every family has access to safe, affordable water?

• And what policies will you support to make water affordability permanent rather than dependent on temporary assistance programs?

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These aren't partisan questions, because water is a non-partisan issue. They are questions about the basic needs our families and communities depend on every day.

They are also questions every candidate for public office should be prepared to answer.

Together, We Have an Opportunity to Act

Michigan understands the consequences of failing to provide safe water, perhaps better than most states.

Our communities have experienced water shutoffs, lead contamination, aging infrastructure, flooding, and rising costs. But those experiences have also produced years of community organizing, research, advocacy, coalition building, and community-led solutions.

The WEL Coalition was built out of that work.

Our members have come together around the belief that Michigan does not need another patchwork of temporary assistance programs. We need a permanent, statewide approach to water affordability that recognizes water as a basic need and ensures families receive a water bill that they can afford. 

Michigan lawmakers have an opportunity to move that solution forward.

The Affordable Water Now legislative package, House Bills 4555 and 5170–5173, would establish a statewide approach to water affordability, connecting household water costs to a family's ability to pay while providing protections against shutoffs, a pathway to debt forgiveness, protections for renters and other vulnerable households, and greater transparency and accountability within our water systems.

For the WEL Coalition, this distinction is critical.

Assistance can help a family through a crisis.

Affordability helps prevent the crisis in the first place.

For too long, our response to unaffordable water rates has focused on what happens after a family cannot pay. They fall behind. Debt accumulates. They seek assistance. And when available funding is exhausted, families may once again face the same unaffordable bills.

A permanent affordability program asks the question: What would it look like to make the bill affordable from the beginning?

That is the structural change the WEL Coalition is advocating for through the Affordable Water Now legislative package.

It is the kind of policy distinction voters deserve to understand, and the kind of question candidates and elected officials should be prepared to answer.

Our Votes, Our Water Future

Imagine a Day Without Water was created to remind us of the enormous role water plays in our lives and the importance of continued investment in the systems that make reliable water service possible. 

That message is especially important this year.

Water may not always be treated as a defining election issue, but voters overwhelmingly recognize its importance. The 2026 Value of Water Index found that 92% of voters identify reliable water access as a very or extremely important issue. The challenge is turning that shared value into sustained public attention and ultimately, public policy.

We should be asking candidates whether they understand the difference between water assistance and true water affordability. And when we enter the voting booth, we should understand where candidates stand on the policies that determine whether our communities have clean, safe, and affordable water.

Because elections aren't only about the issues that dominate television ads and campaign mailers. They are also about the everyday conditions in which we live. The bills we pay. The neighborhoods where we raise our children. And the water flowing from our taps.

This Imagine a Day Without Water, don't just imagine what one day without water would mean.

Ask what the people seeking your vote will do to make sure every Michigander has access to it.

Then keep asking after Election Day. We invite you to join us.

Download the WEL Coalition's Affordable Water Now Advocacy Toolkit to learn more about the legislation, understand the difference between affordability and assistance, and get the tools you need to talk with candidates, lawmakers, and your community about why water affordability matters.

Together, we can make sure water is not only part of the conversation this election season, but a priority for the people elected to represent us.