Once the home of the American auto industry, Flint, MI has gone from a thriving city to one of the country’s forgotten metropolises. Currently, the city is embedded with a water crisis which has now received national attention.
The city’s water, which was supplied from Flint’s river, had been highly contaminated, and as a result, a series of ailments began to occur across the city. Among those ailments was the exposure to lead contaminants in the water that poisoned the residents of Flint. There were also local cases of Legionnaire's disease, as well as a spike in dramatic hair loss, rashes and other skin diseases.
The city that both General Motors and the United Auto Workers Union first started in is now a shell of the city it once used to be. With American automakers abandoning the city for cheap labor across the other side of the globe, Flint’s residents have struggled economically. The current household median income of a Flint resident is below $25,000 annually. This is just half of the annual median income of the state of Michigan. All this of course before the contamination of the city’s water supply began poisoning its residents.
After declaring a state of emergency in 2011 in an effort to ease financial pressures from a looming $15 million debt, Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder appointed several emergency managers over the span of four years to help sort the economic woes of the city.
In June 2013, Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz contracted an engineering firm to help consult switching Flint’s water supply from Detroit to the city’s own river water. The purpose was to save an estimated $19 million over the span of eight years.
Shortly after the switch in Spring 2014, residents began reporting abnormal smells and discoloration of the water. Late in the summer of that year, the presence of E. coli bacteria was detected, prompting city health officials to issue a boil advisory.
Yet the government did very little to address the matter until months later, when GM halted operations due to corroding engine parts caused by the city’s water. Only then did the issue begin to receive proper attention from the government and media alike.
No federal aid had been provided to Flint until 2016, when President Barack Obama declared a federal state of emergency that resulted in $5 million in aid.
A month later, a bipartisan attempt to supply $250 million was momentarily paused when Republican Senator Ted Cruz and several others held up the bill so that they can review it. In late February, hours before a Republican National debate, Cruz lifted the hold on the bill.
Of the $250 million, $200 million would be used to develop and fund two loan programs that would help states and their local bureaus with drinking water infrastructure improvements. The remaining $50 million would be used to aid medical programs that help children who suffer from sicknesses caused by lead poisoning as well as other toxins.
Recently, Presidential candidates such as Democrat Bernie Sanders have requested that Snyder resign from office, while others like Flint native and moviemaker Michael Moore have called for the arrest of Snyder. Currently, there are no charges filed against Snyder and he has yet to step down from office.
