Benton Harbor Community Water Council
Emergency Water Delivery and Distribution UpdateNovember 6, 2021
Our volunteers had another great week of helping our friends and neighbors get the some of the emergency water they need to survive during the Benton Harbor Water Crisis! Residents were so grateful that we were taking the time to come to their homes to deliver water.
Despite the many positive things about this week, there were two big problems:
• No forklift - We worked the entire week without a State of Michigan forklift. We so were fortunate that a local businessman volunteered his forklift and his time on Tuesday to assist us with unloading bottled water from a semi-trailer! We were so appreciative of his help. On both Wednesday and Friday, we had to manually unload the semi-trailer, which was incredibly hard on our volunteers. A donor rented a forklift for us for next week’s water deliveries, which will be a tremendous help. We’re still optimistic the State of Michigan dedicating a forklift to our site!
• No payment - Our volunteers still haven’t received payment for their work, so we’ll keep pushing to be sure they are compensated for their efforts to help our community.
Tuesday (11/2), Wednesday (11/3), and Thursday (11/4)
Our volunteer team went door-to-door to deliver water to Benton Harbor residents. Over these three days, we delivered 6,500 cases to more than 2,000 homes.
Friday (11/5)
Our drive-through distribution site hasn’t been added back to the water distribution site list, but we still loaded 2,500 cases into the cars of residents who came to our site.
Total cases November 2-5, 2021:
6,500 cases delivered to residents and 2,500 cases loaded into resident cars.
Thank you for your continued interest in our fight for safe drinking water in Benton Harbor!
Our volunteers had another great week of helping our friends and neighbors get the some of the emergency water they need to survive during the Benton Harbor Water Crisis! Residents were so grateful that we were taking the time to come to their homes to deliver water.
Despite the many positive things about this week, there were two big problems:
• No forklift - We worked the entire week without a State of Michigan forklift. We so were fortunate that a local businessman volunteered his forklift and his time on Tuesday to assist us with unloading bottled water from a semi-trailer! We were so appreciative of his help. On both Wednesday and Friday, we had to manually unload the semi-trailer, which was incredibly hard on our volunteers. A donor rented a forklift for us for next week’s water deliveries, which will be a tremendous help. We’re still optimistic the State of Michigan dedicating a forklift to our site!
• No payment - Our volunteers still haven’t received payment for their work, so we’ll keep pushing to be sure they are compensated for their efforts to help our community.
Tuesday (11/2), Wednesday (11/3), and Thursday (11/4)
Our volunteer team went door-to-door to deliver water to Benton Harbor residents. Over these three days, we delivered 6,500 cases to more than 2,000 homes.
Friday (11/5)
Our drive-through distribution site hasn’t been added back to the water distribution site list, but we still loaded 2,500 cases into the cars of residents who came to our site.
Total cases November 2-5, 2021:
6,500 cases delivered to residents and 2,500 cases loaded into resident cars.
Thank you for your continued interest in our fight for safe drinking water in Benton Harbor!
