Water That Kills
In 2013, the city of Flint, Michigan decided to save money by switching its water supply from its provider at the time, the Detroit Water and Sewage Department, to the Karegnondi Water Authority, a corporation that distributes water in cities across the state of Michigan. The switch would save the city $200 million over the next 25 years. After Flint’s Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz told the state treasurer that the city was joining the KWA, Detroit’s water system told him that it would cut off Flint’s water supply. In the time it took for the new pipes connecting to the KWA to be built, Flint needed an alternative water source. The city officials turned to the Flint River, which had been the city’s main source of water until the 1960s. In the press conference the city held regarding the safety of the water in the Flint River, Michael Prysby of Flint's Office of Drinking Water claimed, “The quality of the water being put out meets all of our drinking water standards and Flint water is safe to drink.” The city’s mayor, Dayne Walling, also reassured the residents, saying, “It's regular, good, pure drinking water, and it's right in our backyard." Even with the concerns from the residents over the safety of their drinking water, city officials decided not to take immediate action, instead taking a wait and see approach. While all things seemed to be going well, nobody at the time could have predicted the dire consequences of this decision.
The problems started to surface when residents complained that the water quality was not good enough. In May, some Flint residents started to complain about the smell and color of the water. Upon further investigation from the city officials, fecal bacteria such as E. Coli and Coliform Bacteria were detected in the water, prompting the city to advise residents to boil their water. While the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality assured that the city addressed the problem by increasing chlorine levels in the water, the problems with water quality continued. In January of 2015, high levels of disinfection byproducts that occur when chlorine interacts with organic matter were detected. Since some of the byproducts were known to cause cancer in humans, the city started to buy bottled water for its residents.
However, there were even bigger problems with the water. In 2015, a test conducted by the city on Flint resident Anne Lee Walter’s home, whose daughter was diagnosed with lead poisoning in April of that year, revealed a lead content of 104 parts per billion, seven times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s limit of 15 parts per billion. Furthermore, there was an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, a severe lung disease, that killed 12 and infected 87 people, the third largest outbreak of the disease in US history. Even more concerning was the fact that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality revealed that the city did not have corrosion control treatment at the Flint Water Treatment Plant which could increase the amount of lead flowing through the water supply pipes.
At first, the spokesman of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) denied that there was a problem with Flint’s water supply claiming that the test at Walter’s home was an outlier. However, a month later, in August, the Michigan Radio reported that the MDEQ dropped two samples on lead levels in the city, which kept Flint under the levels in which federal action would need to be taken. With this report, further tests were conducted to determine the scope of the problem.
In September of 2015, a team from Virginia Tech led by tested hundreds of homes in Flint and found serious levels of lead in the water. While officials, such as Brad Wurfel from the MDEQ, denied the reports, another study conducted by Hurley Medical Center in the local area concluded that 2.1 percent of children age five and under had lead levels above the prior to the switch to Flint River water, compared to 4.0 percent after the switch.
After the tests were conducted, the city started to take measures to address the problem. At first, the city implemented a lead advisory to its residents and started providing free filters and water testing for them. Furthermore, the city announced that it would switch back to the Detroit water supply and the mayor declared a state of emergency. State regulation officials from the MDEQ resigned, city governor Rick Synder and President Obama declared a state of emergency and soon after the Environmental Protection Agency issued an emergency order, leading to testimonies from officials in the Flint government.
The crisis in Flint is not to be overlooked. In cities with aging infrastructure, the municipal government needs to identify students with special needs and help them get better education. This is especially true for schools that predominantly serve African-American students. In Flint, after the water crisis, the Education Law Center and The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan filed a lawsuit on behalf of the 30,000 children in Flint exposed to lead. The lawsuit was done to ensure that schools would be at the forefront of response to the crisis and also identify students with special education needs and provide them with the appropriate resources to make sure that students’ behavioral needs are addressed with positive support rather than punishments. Flint can be a model for other cities with aging infrastructures to follow. Hopefully, crises like the one in Flint do not happen again.