It has been over 1,600 days and Flint, Michigan still does not have clean water.
And the contaminated waters effects will damage lives for a lifetime.
On April 25, 2014, Flint, Michigan switched from water purchased from the City of Detroit to water pumped from the Flint River. This was Governor Snyder's way to save money. I'm sure he could have just cut his salary, but that's neither here nor there. It wasn't long before people began complaining about the waters poor quality.
In October 2014 General Motors took its local auto plant off of the Flint water. According to them, the water was corroding engine parts. That January, the state office building had filtered water coolers installed to improve the water quality.
Shortly after that, it was found out that in addition to disease-causing bacteria and carcinogens, the Flint water was loaded with lead.
The levels of lead were 13,000 parts per billion. According to professor Marc Edwards, an internationally recognized water safety expert at Virginia Tech University, "If one glass of that water was ingested, that could hospitalize a child."
On Sept. 24, 2015, A group of doctors urged Flint to stop using the Flint River for water after finding high levels of lead in Flint children. They were dismissed as state regulators insisted the water is safe.
And then on June 14, 2017, it Michigan Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon was accused of failing to alert the public about an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in the Flint area.
Almost 5 years later, Flint, Michigan is still dealing with contaminated and poisonous water and its long-term effects.
The local government in Flint, Michigan decided that the people living in the communities they were charged in taking care of were so unimportant and disposable that they forced them to drink water so contaminated that it corroded car engines. Let that sink in. And make no mistake, this was not an oversight or an accident. After so many complaints, they decided that the water wasn't good enough for them to drink, which is why the installed filters in their state building, but purposely continued to let these communities of color use this water. Pregnant women and children drank and bathed in this water for years.
Lead-contaminated water leads to anemia, slowed growth, and hearing problems in young children. For pregnant women it causes underdeveloped fetuses and premature births.
And now, 5 years later researchers from the University of Kansas and West Virginia University have said that the lead-contaminated water in Flint may be linked to higher fetal death rates and lower fertility rates in Flint. They have said that fertility rates had decreased by 12%, while fetal death rates increased by 58%.
How long will it be before we call this as it is? The local government knowingly poisoned an entire black community, and have continued to deny it while making minimal efforts to fix the water supply. Officially 12 people have died from Legionnaire, and 119 from pneumonia, but many think the death toll connected to the water may be way higher. Add in the fetal death rates and lower fertility rates ... this is black genocide.
