Michigan’s borders directly touch three major fresh water supplies: lakes Michigan, Huron, and Erie, yet residents of Flint, Michigan have gone years drinking what was said to be safe, brown water.
According to CNN, 40 percent of Flint residents are below the poverty live, and 15 percent of homes are boarded up and abandoned. In 2011, Flint fell into a financial state of emergency, and so officials looked for ways to cut costs and for the last two years, the water supply has been switched from Lake Huron to the Flint river. Previously, residents had been paying the city of Detroit for their access to Lake Huron, but officials saw the river, which had been noted by citizens to be dirty, as the optimal choice.
The river water made the tap run a brown color, which led to many investigations from those outside the state government. After studying the river, researchers from Virginia Tech found that it had a high iron concentration and was 19 times more corrosive than the Lake Huron supply, according to CNN. A class action lawsuit was filed against the state Department of Environmental Quality after it was discovered that they were not treating the river water with an anti-corrosive agent, which is in direct violation of the law.
This has been going on for two years.
The city now issues bottled water to the residents of Flint, but that’s not enough. Doctor Mona Hanna-Attisha began studying the blood levels of toddlers, finding that their blood lead levels went so far as tripling in some cases.
In October, the city switched back to using Lake Huron as the main water supply, but the damage has been done to the pipes in residential homes, making it so that lead continues to run through the water. Because of the poverty line, many cannot afford to get their homes fixed.
The people of this city should not be expected to stress their wallets for a mistake made by city officials. I understand that budgets have to be cut, but when doing so, research should be mandatory. Questions have to be asked, the biggest question being: How will this affect the residents? Consideration for everyone’s health was practically thrown to the wind. This whole predicament could have easily been avoided, is the worst part. Someone should have tested the river to see if the water meeting every requirement necessary for it to be considered a clean drinking source. The water being brown should have been the first indication that perhaps something was wrong with it. And if someone did test the water, why did the now obvious result not come through and lead to the shutdown of the plan. Budget cuts should first cover luxury benefits — not a basic human need to survive like water.
A friend of mine is from Michigan and brought the issue to my attention. He told me about how many Michigan residents hold “Water Parties” with their block where they exchange bottled water and a system is set in place for different houses on certain dates to share their clean water resources with people on their street.
According to CBS news, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder publicly issued a request for President Obama to issue an emergency and major disaster declaration with regards to the water crisis. (Here's a link to the CBS article. The best way for problems as such to be fixed is for these stories to become national news. That way, every resource can be put toward the issue. President Obama making this declaration would be the best thing for Flint citizens, and we all await a hopeful quick response.