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April 4, 2009
Water, sewer not turned off just because of no valid ID, Immokalee
official says By TRACY X. MIGUEL IMMOKALEE — Anyone who starts water and sewer service
or wants to disconnect that service in Immokalee now must show a
government-issued ID. And that’s it. Allegations that water and sewer customers had their
service turned off because they couldn’t show a valid U.S.
identification are simply untrue, Eva Deyo, executive director of the
Immokalee Water and Sewer District, said Friday. A story in Friday’s Daily News may have led readers to
the conclusion that customers were being randomly asked for legal ID and
having water and sewer service turned off if they didn’t produce it. Not so, Deyo said. Deyo said there were two cases Friday in which
customers wanted service turned off but the agency refused because the
person couldn’t produce a valid ID. “One of them was my son, and I would not turn his
water off (just at his request),” Deyo said, pointing out that he didn’t
have a valid ID with him. “I can’t make an exception for him if I can’t
make one for anyone else.” Six Immokalee families contend otherwise, according to
their attorney and a community activist. Sister Maureen Kelleher, managing attorney for Legal
Aid Service of Collier County, has taken up the cause for the farmworker
families who allege that they had water and sewer services and lost
them, according to Catholic Charities caseworker Jim Kean and other
community leaders. Kean and other community activists contend it’s
because those families couldn’t produce a government-issued ID. When asked whether the six families’ service was shut
off because of nonpayment, Deyo said that’s possible. One family of six who refused to be identified in any
way said they went into subsidized farmworker housing Feb. 14. On March
5, they contend, Immokalee Water and Sewer turned off water and sewer
for the family and locked the underground utility meter. The father couldn’t produce a U.S. government issued
ID, although he had a passport from a Central American country. Deyo said her agency began locking meters as a policy
because new customers would start using the water without properly
registering with Immokalee Water and Sewer. “We just turned the water off without putting a lock
on it,” Deyo said of the former policy. “Obviously, people were coming
in and physically turning the water on without coming in to do the
paperwork.” The six families without water and sewer service have
been relying on the kindness of neighbors in their complex, using
neighbors’ toilets and bath tubs, said Kean, a volunteer Catholic
Charities caseworker who e-mailed Collier County Commissioner Jim
Coletta asking for help Thursday. In October, the Immokalee Water and Sewer board of
directors unanimously approved a policy that required new customers to
show a government-issued ID when starting up service. That policy has
been in place and enforced since October, Deyo said. The agency board in November adopted another policy in
reaction to Federal Trade Commission regulations to remedy rampant
national identity theft issues. “After that policy went into effect, if someone showed
us a fake ID, we could not give the ID back. We had to keep it and call
the Sheriff’s Department,” she said. “It’s like counterfeit money. You
can’t give that back either to the customer. You have to notify
authorities.” Kelleher, a member of the board of directors of
Immokalee Nonprofit Housing Inc. and Florida Nonprofit Services, said
she doesn’t believe that the Federal Trade Commission regulation should
be narrowly construed. “Part of the actual advice to creditors (was) they
could look to banks as to what (banks) are doing, and banks accept
foreign government photo IDs,” Kelleher said. Immokalee Water and Sewer is “overreaching to the nth
degree,” Kelleher said Friday. Kelleher said she understands that the water company
is under the gun to come out with a policy on security checks. Deyo said it’s just good business policy to be more
diligent in checking IDs because property owners often were left with
bills from tenants they didn’t even know were living there. “It’s not like we target to see if a customer is legal
or not legal,” she said. All water and sewer board members are volunteers and
receive no compensation, Deyo noted. “They’re community leaders,” she said. “It’s not like
they’re trying to hurt the community.” Asked if it was constitutional to turn off someone’s
water because he or she couldn’t provide U.S. government-issued ID,
Kelleher would only say this: “There are legal theories that are clearly
at play (but) I believe the water companies and employees will come
around to seeing the FTC rules are not so Draconian.” In a Friday e-mail to Coletta, Deyo wrote that the
water district “is not going out and turning off the water, or
terminating services for existing customers. ... “We are requiring valid U.S. government issued photo
identification to turn on new services,” Deyo wrote. Olga Hernandez, who is program director for Immokalee
Multicultural Multipurpose Community Action Agency, said: “America needs
to wake up.” “I’ve never seen it this bad,” Hernandez said, noting
that there is clearly discrimination at play, and it’s never been so
extreme in Immokalee. Hernandez has been working in the agricultural
community for some 40 years. Deyo told Coletta in her e-mail that the district is
working with the community, including Adan Labra, an organizer with the
Farmworker Association of Florida. Labra, however, said in Spanish on Friday that denying
water to immigrants is a human rights abuse. Labra, who has been with the organization in Immokalee
for five years, said in Spanish that the recent action “without a doubt”
was targeting illegal immigrants, which continues to grow throughout the
country. “It’s wrong,” Labra said in Spanish. “I think that
water is a natural resource that should not be denied.” Labra also was concerned about children, who are
American citizens, being at risk of getting sick because they didn’t
have water or were carrying it in bottles from a friend’s house. Coletta asked the Daily News to retract the comments
he made Thursday, saying he was reacting to what he now calls false
information he received from Kean at Catholic Charities and the Daily
News. He called on the Daily News to retract false
statements and issue a clarification. “My apologies to any and all offended parties for
comments that I made based on erroneous information given to me,” he
said in the e-mail. Later Friday afternoon, he said: “The information that
I got that I acted on was less than complete.” |