Thread: FL-Immokalee workers may be denied water service

March 31, 2009


Immokalee workers may be denied water service

By JANINE ZEITLIN
jzeitlin@news-press.com

New rules passed in Immokalee may be depriving some illegal immigrants of a basic need: water.

Immokalee Water & Sewer District officials said they’re trying to conquer a pair of issues with the resolutions passed late last year: unpaid bills and compliance with Federal Trade Commission identity-theft prevention required by May 1.

Bonita Springs Utilities adopted similar measures, but stories of people being turned down for water haven’t surfaced.

A family with four U.S.-born children has been without water in their Immokalee home almost a month, relying on water they boil from a neighbor's hose.

Thousands of migrant workers stream into the Collier County agricultural town during harvest season. Many are here illegally and lack the valid U.S. or state-issued photo ID required. They must also show a lease in their name.

“In the first place, this is inhumane,â€

This is EXCELLENT! I wonder how long before the ACLU and The Race gets involved. They will cry discrimination BUT Americans get there water turned off if they don't pay. I can't imagine them having a case? Illegals are taught to have entitlement personalities...It's unbelievable.

[quote]“In the first place, this is inhumane,â€

I agree US citizens,especially now,are having a difficult time paying their water bills and their water is turned off.

Cape Coral Fl. is raising the cost of water and the average bill will be $150.00 a mth.

IMO everyone in the world should have FREE safe drinking water.It is,after all,a basic human need we cannot do without.

Miguelina wrote:

Water is a SCARCE natural resource and everyone is required to PAY for it.

I don't believe we're really paying for the water itself, we're paying for the services that are necessary to provide the water. Actually, I live in a rural area and don't pay anything for my water (well water).

I can't imagine paying for water or sewer!

I also always have to be close to a water source, have a woodstove, and gas range.
With those three things in my life I feel safer.

When everything goes down in America sooner rather than later, what will city people do if power is cut off?
I'm a redneck but I think we will do better in the Depression than others will.

I feel like I'm camping in my own house already.
It feels more like a guys bachelor pad than a home.

I take a bath (3 inches) twice a week now. I wash up the other days.
I do one load of laundry and one load in the dishwasher once a week too.
I have 20 gallons of water in 4 big jugs in my bathtub.
I have to be able to give my animals water.
A gas range means you eat and cook in power outages.

I only go 300 miles a month in my truck (1993 F-150.)
My fuel bill is $40 a month. When I go somewhere I combine trips to that town.
I now only go get my mail once a week too.
My house is 62 degrees and I wear a coat inside.
I'm not heating the upstairs where I sleep so I've been known to wear a hat some nights.

Since I retired I told myself I WAS going to be able to survive on my check.
These are the sacrifices I'm most willing to do.
Some of you would not be able to stand living this way, especially if you NEED people around you.
I like it! It's more simple. This practice makes me feel prepared for when things get worse.

That sounds awesome WA! It's like your camping everyday! I would LOVE to live like that, but I do not think my wife would go for it!

Originally Posted by NoBueno

That sounds awesome WA! It's like your camping everyday! I would LOVE to live like that, but I do not think my wife would go for it!

Ya, you have to live alone to be happy camping in your home. My animals like it. I use to be a perfectionist, I have worked hard NOT TO BE ONE. I mean I use to pick up lint off the floor after I vacuumed EVERY day.
Now I'm cured!!! I just don't care about it now.

It started because I was moving and put everything in storage. Then the bad market. I moved everything out of storage and into my cellar. I sell things on Craig's list. One night someone bought my bedroom set for $500. I still haven't brought the new set up from the cellar. I'm on my mattress and boxspring on the floor and I have 3 piles of clothes I rotate thru. I can't find my stuff in all the packing boxes, so I gave up.

I have no livingroom furniture but my computer which is on an extra kitchen table because I sold my computer desk too! TV is in an armior, two outside adirondack chairs and 3 bird cages. I sit in my office chair when in there. I have to laugh.

Someone might be coming to buy my other kitchen table so I have to find something else to put the computer on.

It will be more fun to camp this summer than this past winter.

I tried going with out a phone for a month, that sucked. I'm thinking about dropping Cable TV. I will if I could get most news in Podcasts oron the radio. That site www.hulu.com is where you can see shows you miss or on the shows website. I don't know, it sounds kind of rough... any thought on it? Remember, I'm a news hound

Sounds like a couple of acquaintances I met in Fla. Steve from Montana, that owns some garnet mines, lives in a house he built himself and still has no electricity. He goes hunting once a year, gets a moose for meat to last him and his dogs through winter.
Richard in Arizona has electric but no cable TV. His finest moment, after his wife died, was selling everything out of this house in yard sales, and a phone call was that he actually got 10 cents per dinner plate!
Yes, our homes are stuffed with junk and furniture, but all my collections of pottery and porcelain teacups make it my home.
WA, my first apartment, I bought a mattress and box spring and my dad put together a platform bed supporting them by making a rectangular frame, topping that he took two doors, gluing them together side by side and surrounding the doors with moulding for reinforcement. It kept me off the floor because every morning I would be greated by a posse of bugs in the bathroom. That was my major piece of furniture, along with the metal steamer trunk and the fake fur "rug". I managed to buy a couple pieces of furniture for "entertaining" but the coffee table (a stainless steel piece of sculpture which I loved was way beyond the budget) I built my own. A beer-drinking friend saved the Budweiser cans and I glued them together three-high and topped it with a thicker piece of plexiglas. This was in the late 60s, early 70s, and there were plenty of books on how to be creative.
Converted into Houses showed what could be done with recycling commercial buildings into homes, and Wood Butchers Art was incredible with hand-made ornamentation. As far as insulation I have seen a few examples where a house was built, not with insulation on the inside, but walls made of concrete with bottles filled with water layered in, which since they were painted black on the inside of each bottle absorbed the warmth of the sun during the day and dissipated heat when there was no sun.
Sorry for the length, but I have been interested in independent living since I bought my first issue of Mother Earth. Go for it, WA!

I actually have a nice house on 3 rural acres, it's a big Cape with a full dormer on back.
I just am choosing to live like this for now. I find it liberating.
I keep thinking that I should let some homeless vets rent rooms?
I feel so bad for them after what they have been thru.