In the seven months since Barack Obama visited Flint, Michigan, to examine the impact of the city’s lead-tainted water system, Amariyanna “Mari” Copeny has been busy.

From organizing toy drives and meet-and-greets with the president’s successor, to raising awareness on social media about Flint, Copeny - who is known by her nickname, “Little Miss Flint” – has become a face of the water crisis in the city of 100,000.

It was Copeny, nine, whose words spurred Obama’s visit to Flint, months after officials urged residents not to drink the water – and two years after residents first began pleading with the same officials to address the contaminated liquid flowing from their faucets. In a letter to Obama, Copeny asked to meet with Obama while she was in Washington for congressional hearings focused on Flint’s water.

“My mom said chances are you will be too busy with more important things,” Copeny wrote at the time, “but there is a lot of people coming on these buses and even just a meeting from you or your wife would really lift people’s spirits.”

Copeny’s mother received a call letting her known that, actually, he would be coming to Flint instead, and would like to meet her.

The visit was welcomed, but it did little to alter the new normal in Flint: despite moves to repair the water system and reassurances from officials that the water is safe, many residents including Copeny still won’t drink the water.

“Nothing’s changed,” she said by phone with a faint voice, “because the water’s been making my skin itchy. You can’t drink it, too.”

Independent studies revealed the percentage of Flint children with elevated blood lead levels spiked after the city began using the local river as its main source of water in April 2014. The state later admitted that officials failed to require Flint’s water department to use corrosion control agents that would have prevented lead from leaching off water pipes and flowing into households. As a result, officials said, all children under the age of six in the city – about 8,000-9,000 – needed to be treated as if they had been exposed to lead.

Thirteen people have now been criminally charged in Flint for their roles in the contamination, and officials say more charges are still to come. Water from the corrosive Flint river isn’t being used any more, the US Congress has approved $170m to remove lead pipes in the city, and officials have pointed to promising signs of a water system that’s being repaired.

And earlier this month, researchers who first aided the effort to uncover the lead contamination announced new results that Flint’s water quality has dramatically improved. But many remain deeply skeptical of the proclamation, after having been assured previously by city and state officials that the water was safe to drink, even when it wasn’t.

Mari Copeny waits in line to enter a hearing room on Capitol Hill in Washington on 17 March. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

“While some tests are coming back and showing improvement, there are other tests that are coming back as being negative,” said Copeny’s mother, Loui “Lulu” Brezzell.

Brezzell said she was aware of at least one resident who just this month received a high lead test. About 31,000 people have been tested for lead poisoning since October 2015, state records show, when Michigan’s governor, Rick Snyder, conceded that officials failed to require Flint to properly treat its water.

Testing by the Genesee County health department, which oversees Flint, has identified 230 children under 18 with blood lead levels greater than 5 micrograms per deciliter, a level deemed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be “much higher than most children’s levels”. Researchers say there is no safe level of lead exposure. The potent neurotoxin is also only detectable for up to 30 days.

Brezzell said Copeny was administered a test, and it returned a low result. But she is skeptical about whether the test would show lead exposure because of its timing.

“We didn’t realize we had lead in our water, so we delayed testing until way over 30 days, which is the time that lead stays in the blood,” she said.

Brezzell said her family uses their household water for “maybe two to three minutes to shower”, but with anything else – cooking, drinking, brushing their teeth – “it’s all bottled water”.

“The fact remains our water still smells like bleach,” she said. “It’s still giving us rashes, it’s still giving us headaches … We’re hypersensitive to what they are putting in the water.”

Copeny drew renewed attention in September when Donald Trump visited the city for a campaign stop. The Republican generated headlines for a brief spat with the pastor of a church in Flint, but it was the photo of Trump with a stone-faced Copeny that exploded across social media.



Brezzell said the photo was misconstrued.

“At that moment of time, it wasn’t him she was afraid of – she was afraid of the secret service,” Brezzell said.

“As the election got closer and she was listening to more of what he was saying,” she continued, “he was not her favorite candidate.”

Brezzell said she was hopeful that Trump will uphold his pledge to invest in infrastructure, but “I’m not going to hold my breath”.

More resources are still needed to finish replacing lead pipes, and address the health needs of residents. The city’s mayor said just over 625 homes in the city have had pipes replaced, while thousands remain.

Residents claimed a minor victory last month, when a federal judge ruled Michigan needs to deliver bottled water directly to homes in the city. But Copeny said more work still needs to be done.

Her message to America: “Don’t forget about Flint.”