Flint res­i­dents knew there was a seri­ous prob­lem with their water when it came out of the tap brown and foul-smelling after the city of Flint changed its source from Lake Huron to the Flint Riv­er two years ago. They didn’t know, how­ev­er, that lead lev­els were so high that the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency could clas­si­fy it as haz­ardous waste. It took Michi­gan Repub­li­can Gov. Rick Sny­der and the Michi­gan Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Qual­i­ty more than 17 months to acknowl­edge the prob­lem. As a result, tens of thou­sands of Flint res­i­dents have been — and con­tin­ue to be — poisoned.

Most municipal water departments in the United States work very hard to keep the water coming out of the tap as safe as possible, but they do not have the authority or money to change pipes and fixtures or stop the more than 23 billion pounds of toxic chemicals generated annually by U.S. industry from entering their water supplies.

The names of the peo­ple who made the deci­sions behind the poi­son­ing are known. Sny­der set the wheels in motion with a scheme that sac­ri­ficed the health of the peo­ple of Flint on the altar of aus­ter­i­ty. In 2011, he end­ed pub­lic over­sight by appoint­ing his own man — an ​“emer­gency man­ag­er” — to cut costs and run the city. Flint went through a series of four emer­gency man­agers in as many years. When the extent of poi­son­ing was known, Sny­der did noth­ing. He failed to warn peo­ple against drink­ing the water and he failed to pro­vide a safe alternative.

It’s infu­ri­at­ing. But anger is not action. What can we do to pre­vent the next munic­i­pal drink­ing water dis­as­ter? It is already here, flow­ing into the water glass­es of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans. Chica­go, Philadel­phia and hun­dreds of oth­er cities with old pipes have a lead prob­lem. And that’s just the start of the munic­i­pal water pol­lu­tion cri­sis. In most of the coun­try, once-clean drink­ing water sources are now pro­found­ly pol­lut­ed—by treat­ed and untreat­ed sewage, by chem­i­cal-inten­sive agri­cul­ture, by waste from con­fined ani­mal feed­ing oper­a­tions and by indus­tri­al dis­charges. Even in Flint, the sto­ry begins not with lead pipes but with failed attempts to ​“treat” the source of the city water sup­ply: the open sew­er that is the Flint River.

Pipes and fix­tures can be replaced, but all of the chem­i­cal con­t­a­m­i­nants in our drink­ing water can­not be removed, no mat­ter how advanced the tech­nol­o­gy. The solu­tion is to pre­vent them from get­ting there in the first place.

Flint: The whole story

Just as there’s no mys­tery about the tox­ic com­bi­na­tion of racism and neolib­er­al­ism that caused the Flint water cri­sis, there is no mys­tery about the chem­istry that caused the lead to leach from Flint’s pipes. Lead rarely occurs nat­u­ral­ly in water. It enters our drink­ing sup­ply either from indus­tri­al or waste­water-treat­ment dis­charges or, more com­mon­ly, because it leach­es out of lead pipes, sol­ders and brass fix­tures in the dis­tri­b­u­tion network.

Some con­di­tions make the lead leach faster. This is what hap­pened in Flint when, under the con­trol of an emer­gency man­ag­er, the city switched its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint Riv­er and then added chem­i­cals that made the sit­u­a­tion worse.

It’s not that the Flint Riv­er has ele­vat­ed lev­els of lead in it. The trou­ble — besides the high bac­te­ria lev­els and untold num­ber of harm­ful chem­i­cals — is that its water is cor­ro­sive. Depend­ing on the rain­fall con­di­tions at the time of mea­sure­ment, as much as half of the riv­er is made up of waste­water from the city’s sewage treat­ment plant. Before it’s released into the riv­er, the waste­water is treat­ed with chlorine.

Pulling drink­ing water from a riv­er of treat­ed sewage is not unusu­al. A 1980 EPA study (the most recent one con­duct­ed) indi­cat­ed that more than 24 major pub­lic water util­i­ties got their water from rivers in which sewage treat­ment plant dis­charges con­sti­tut­ed over 50 per­cent of the flow dur­ing low-flow con­di­tions. In 1985, there were about 6,700 munic­i­pal waste­water treat­ment plants. Since then, an addi­tion­al 10,000 have been built, which col­lec­tive­ly dis­gorge 33,657 mil­lion gal­lons per day of efflu­ent into rivers, lakes, streams and oceans. To give you an idea of how that com­pares to pub­lic water use, 23,800 mil­lion gal­lons per day are used for drink­ing water, land­scap­ing, toi­lets, show­ers and sinks, and anoth­er 18,200 mil­lion gal­lons per day go to indus­try and com­mer­cial businesses.

The Flint sewage treat­ment plant, locat­ed on the banks of the Flint Riv­er, keeps 20,000 pounds of chlo­rine on hand. The waste­water leav­ing the plant — which aver­ages 32 mil­lion gal­lons per day, but can be as high as 75 mil­lion gal­lons per day — is chlo­ri­nat­ed before being dumped into the Flint River.

Dis­in­fect­ing waste­water with chlo­rine is a com­mon prac­tice in waste­water treat­ment that helps the efflu­ent stay below reg­u­la­to­ry lev­els for col­iforms— an indi­ca­tor of fecal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. (This does not mean the Flint Riv­er is with­out col­iform bac­te­ria. Tests pub­lished by the city of Flint show high col­iform lev­els in the riv­er. Sewage treat­ment over­flows, leaks and ille­gal sew­er pipes dump­ing into the riv­er could be the cause of this.)

Adding chlo­rine to water is an effec­tive way to dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduce path­o­gen­ic bac­te­ria. But chlo­rine solves one prob­lem only to cre­ate anoth­er: It helps cre­ate the chem­i­cal con­di­tions that free up lead from pipes, sol­ders and fix­tures. The city could have less­ened the cor­ro­sion by adding a cor­ro­sion inhibitor, such as orthophos­phate, to the water — a mea­sure that would have cost just $100 a day — but chose not to.

How­ev­er, the city had anoth­er prob­lem that couldn’t be so eas­i­ly ignored. Chlo­rine mixed with water cre­ates a class of chem­i­cals called dis­in­fec­tion byprod­ucts (DBPs). There is epi­demi­o­log­i­cal evi­dence of a close rela­tion­ship between DBPs and can­cer. The EPA reg­u­lates just four of the more than 500 known DBPs, one of which, tri­halomethanes (THMs), was already in the Flint Riv­er at con­cen­tra­tions in vio­la­tion of EPA drink­ing water stan­dards. The city need­ed to low­er bac­te­ria lev­els in its water, but couldn’t add more chlo­rine with­out rais­ing con­cen­tra­tions of THMs, so it switched to chlo­ramine (chlo­rine plus ammo­nia), which solves the prob­lem of THMs but leach­es lead even faster than chlo­rine. (Chlo­ramine also cre­ates its own DBPs, but these are not regulated.)

Chloramine’s high­ly cor­ro­sive effects are well-doc­u­ment­ed. In 2001, after a switch from chlo­rine to chlo­ramine, tests showed Wash­ing­ton, D.C., water was leach­ing lead from the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem. Civ­il engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sor Marc Edwards of Vir­ginia Tech, an expert on water treat­ment, sound­ed the alarm. Just like the whistle­blow­ers in Flint, the munic­i­pal­i­ty and the EPA ignored him. It took two years for the D.C. water author­i­ty to noti­fy the pub­lic about high lead lev­els in the water. Then the city began par­tial lead pipe replace­ment — a solu­tion that has been shown to, coun­ter­pro­duc­tive­ly, ​“result in sig­nif­i­cant­ly ele­vat­ed lev­els of lead in tap water … for weeks and months,” as EPA chemist Michael Schock told Envi­ron­men­tal Health Per­spec­tives in 2010. (Sci­en­tists are still try­ing to fig­ure out why this happens.)

The D.C. case was wide­ly pub­li­cized. But if the city of Flint was to con­tin­ue using Flint Riv­er water, it had to address the imme­di­ate prob­lem of the can­cer-caus­ing THMs, the chlo­rine byprod­ucts. So the city made the switch from chlo­rine to chloramine.

Flint, like all cities in the Unit­ed States with pipes over 30 years old, has lead in its dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem. The same sto­ry of chlo­ramine cor­ro­sion unfold­ed in Flint as it had in D.C. In sum­mer 2015, Dr. Mona Han­naAt­tisha, a Flint-based pedi­a­tri­cian, got a tip from a friend at the EPA that Flint might have a leach­ing prob­lem, and began study­ing hos­pi­tal blood sam­ples. A paper she co-authored in the Feb­ru­ary 2016 issue of Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Pub­lic Health showed that inci­dence of ele­vat­ed blood lead lev­els in Flint chil­dren dou­bled, and in some neigh­bor­hoods near­ly tripled, after the city began using water from the Flint River.

Trick­le-down poisoning

Water dis­tri­b­u­tion pipes in the Unit­ed States were ini­tial­ly made of wood, then iron, then lead. Lead pipes, first man­u­fac­tured in the mid-1800s, had almost com­plete­ly dis­placed iron by the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry — they last­ed longer and were eas­i­er to work with. But lead is also poi­so­nous, espe­cial­ly to chil­dren, who absorb more lead than adults and are more sus­cep­ti­ble to its irre­versible health effects, such as nerve and brain damage.

It didn’t take long for press accounts of lead poi­son­ing to sur­face. In 1890, the Mass­a­chu­setts State Board of Health advised the state’s cities and towns to avoid the use of lead pipes. By the 1920s, cities across the coun­try had banned them. But the lead min­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­tries pushed back, estab­lish­ing the Lead Indus­tries Asso­ci­a­tion in 1928, which aggres­sive­ly advo­cat­ed for the con­tin­ued use of lead sol­der and pipes. Against the moun­tains of data on ill­ness­es and deaths, indus­try pre­vailed. It wasn’t until 1986 that fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions banned lead in new drink­ing water dis­tri­b­u­tion systems.

But much of the old lead pip­ing still remains. In the post-Rea­gan era, local gov­ern­ments pay for 95 per­cent of sew­er infra­struc­ture and 99 per­cent of pub­lic water infra­struc­ture. Munic­i­pal­i­ties with mon­ey are slow­ly replac­ing pipes and invest­ing in their water sup­ply sys­tems. The city of Madi­son spent $19.4 mil­lion to replace its lead pipes over an 11-year peri­od, begin­ning in 2001. Flint, one of the most eco­nom­i­cal­ly depressed cities in Amer­i­ca, couldn’t afford new pipes. Reaganomics failed cities like Flint. Today, the city has 8,000 poi­soned chil­dren to show for it.

EPA gone MIA

Where is the EPA in all of this? Evis­cer­at­ed. It start­ed when Rea­gan took office in 1981 and appoint­ed Anne Gor­such, a Col­orado state rep­re­sen­ta­tive who vocal­ly opposed fed­er­al reg­u­la­tion of ener­gy and the envi­ron­ment, as admin­is­tra­tor. She cut the bud­get by 22 per­cent, hired peo­ple rep­re­sent­ing indus­try while fir­ing long-time EPA staff, relaxed exist­ing reg­u­la­tions and resist­ed new ones. She was cit­ed for con­tempt of Con­gress in her involve­ment in the mis­use of over a bil­lion dol­lars in Super­fund mon­ey. Her deputy, Rita Lavelle, went to jail over the scan­dal. The agency has been under assault by indus­try-friend­ly Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans ever since.

Cur­rent drink­ing water reg­u­la­tion has lit­tle to do with the real­i­ties of what is actu­al­ly in our drink­ing water. Like all chem­i­cal reg­u­la­tion in the Unit­ed States, reg­u­la­to­ry respons­es hap­pen — if at all — decades after health threats are doc­u­ment­ed. Reg­u­la­tors turn a blind eye to prob­lems that can only be reme­died through rad­i­cal changes in how we do things (for exam­ple, where we source our drink­ing water or how we grow our food). As a result, drink­ing water reg­u­la­tions are inad­e­quate, and those on the books are not being com­pe­tent­ly mon­i­tored or prop­er­ly enforced.

Reg­u­la­tions to pro­tect pub­lic health are set with­in the bound­aries of what water treat­ment plants can do to address the many tox­ins in pub­lic drink­ing water sup­plies, like per­flu­o­ri­nat­ed chem­i­cals, her­bi­cides, lead and DBPs. Most munic­i­pal water depart­ments in the Unit­ed States work very hard to keep the water com­ing out of the tap as safe as pos­si­ble, but they do not have the author­i­ty or mon­ey to change pipes and fix­tures or stop the more than 23 bil­lion pounds of tox­ic chem­i­cals gen­er­at­ed annu­al­ly by U.S. indus­try from enter­ing their water sup­plies. The fed­er­al rules are meant to accom­mo­date those lim­i­ta­tions: Look at a few things, don’t look at many oth­ers, and set the thresh­olds at lev­els the treat­ment plant oper­a­tors can con­sis­tent­ly meet.

The stat­ed reg­u­la­to­ry goal for lead in drink­ing water is zero, but since the EPA doesn’t think water treat­ment author­i­ties can meet this lev­el, it set the accept­able con­cen­tra­tion at 15 parts per bil­lion. Test below that and you are not in vio­la­tion of the drink­ing water reg­u­la­tions, but you are still poi­son­ing children.

In Kirk­wood, Mo., a leafy sub­urb of St. Louis that gets its drink­ing water from the Mis­souri Riv­er, peo­ple who drink tap water are drink­ing 2,4‑D and atrazine — car­cino­genic her­bi­cides applied on farms locat­ed in the river’s water­shed — every day. ​“Safe” is a mov­ing tar­get in the water busi­ness, though your body has some fixed ideas about it.

So who is tasked with pro­tect­ing the pub­lic water sup­ply? The EPA’s Office of Water over­sees two deeply trou­bled divi­sions — the Office of Ground Water and Drink­ing Water (OGWDW) and the Office of Waste­water Man­age­ment (OWM) — both of which act to under­mine U.S. drink­ing water safe­ty. Marc Edwards, the Vir­ginia Tech pro­fes­sor who stud­ied D.C.’s water, wrote in a blog post on Jan­u­ary 22, ​“When we exposed cheat­ing in Wash­ing­ton D.C., New Orleans, Durham and else­where, OGWDW offi­cials stabbed us in the back, and sup­port­ed wrong­do­ers in every sin­gle case.”

The Office of Water’s obfus­ca­tion, arro­gance and anti-sci­ence ori­en­ta­tion is doc­u­ment­ed by David Lewis in the book Sci­ence For Sale. The office is respon­si­ble for ​“biosolids”: sewage sludge that is dried or oth­er­wise ​“treat­ed.” The word biosolids was coined as part of a pub­lic rela­tions effort to rebrand sewage sludge, a prod­uct of waste­water treat­ment, as safe for dis­pos­al on farm­land. Hun­dreds of peer-reviewed papers show its tox­i­c­i­ty, but the OWM uses every trick in the PR hand­book to pro­mote its use on farms, pub­lic land and in sludge-con­tain­ing ​“com­post,” which is sold at Home Depot and oth­er gar­den sup­ply cen­ters. Why? The same rea­son Flint’s water was poi­soned: It saves munic­i­pal­i­ties mon­ey to dump sludge on land rather than treat it as a haz­ardous waste.

When a Cal­i­for­nia farmer ques­tioned the EPA’s deci­sion to allow dis­pos­al of sewage sludge on farms and pub­lic lands, OWM chemist Alan Rubin report­ed­ly harassed her, writ­ing in a note to her, ​“Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee!”

We might begin clean­ing up our water by clean­ing house at the EPA. Depart­ments like the Office of Water are often con­trolled by the indus­tries they’re meant to reg­u­late. Lock the revolv­ing doors and give voice to the peo­ple who real­ly care about envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion. Build a cul­ture in the U.S. — and in the EPA — that sup­ports bio­com­pat­i­ble prac­tices: chem­i­cals and tech­niques that are in har­mo­ny with life. The devel­op­ing field of ​“green chem­istry” is look­ing for ways to do just this; but we need the pub­lic will and the poli­cies to help put these ideas into practice.

Pol­lu­tion is every­where. Where do we start? How about the pol­lu­tion sink for our dis­card­ed human and chem­i­cal wastes: the sew­er. The more than 85,000 chem­i­cals we use dai­ly in our homes, hos­pi­tals and indus­tries find their way to the sew­er, mak­ing waste­water treat­ment plants sen­tinels for harm.

Go up the sew­er pipe to stop tox­ic dis­charges. Then rethink the entire sew­er jug­ger­naut. It’s only 150 years old. We don’t use hors­es any­more to car­ry our goods into the city, maybe we should stop using water to car­ry our wastes out.

Pri­va­ti­za­tion: The wrong solution

Of course, a sys­temic approach would involve fun­da­men­tal changes that cor­po­rate cap­i­tal­ism will resist. Why not con­trol the con­ver­sa­tion — and the assets — by own­ing the water? In a 2007 paper, Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta soci­ol­o­gist Michael Gold­man explained how the World Bank has changed the dis­course on water pri­va­ti­za­tion from nonex­is­tent to the glob­al sta­tus quo. Today, a coun­try can­not get a World Bank loan unless it sub­mits a plan for pri­va­tiz­ing its water sys­tem. In 2008, Gold­man Sachs called water ​“the petro­le­um for the next cen­tu­ry” and esti­mat­ed that it is a $425 bil­lion ​“indus­try.”

Here in the Unit­ed States, a Wis­con­sin bill was defeat­ed ear­li­er this year that would have made it eas­i­er to pri­va­tize water ser­vices. It was intro­duced at the request of Aqua Amer­i­ca, a Penn­syl­va­nia com­pa­ny that owns water util­i­ties in eight states.

Pri­va­ti­za­tion could be on the hori­zon for Flint. The city went through what was essen­tial­ly a dry run when cit­i­zen over­sight was removed. Things didn’t work out so well. But at the right price, a pri­vate cor­po­ra­tion might step for­ward to ​“res­cue” the failed gov­ern­ment effort.

The pri­va­ti­za­tion nar­ra­tive goes like this: The munic­i­pal­i­ty fails at pro­vid­ing clean water in the nec­es­sary quan­ti­ty, so the water ser­vice — along with its infra­struc­ture — is sold, often at yard sale prices, to a pri­vate company.

But the fail­ure of the munic­i­pal water sys­tem was caused by the same peo­ple sell­ing off the water author­i­ty. The best-man­aged util­i­ties have strong cit­i­zen over­sight and an admin­is­tra­tion act­ing for the pub­lic good.

We’ve been down this road before. Pri­vate water com­pa­nies date back to at least 1652, when ​“The Water Works Com­pa­ny” incor­po­rat­ed in Mass­a­chus­setts. It is not a new idea, but it is one that has failed to pro­vide safe and plen­ti­ful water to the pub­lic. Pri­vate com­pa­nies come and go. They also are not com­pelled to pro­vide ser­vices to those who can­not pay. The best exam­ple of a water pri­va­ti­za­tion fail­ure is in Cochabam­ba, Bolivia. Protests erupt­ed in 2000 when the gov­ern­ment pri­va­tized the city’s water, sell­ing it to a pri­vate con­sor­tium dom­i­nat­ed by an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny, Bech­tel, and the cost of water sky­rock­et­ed. One per­son was killed and after three months of vio­lence, Bech­tel was sent pack­ing and the pri­va­ti­za­tion was reversed.

For inspi­ra­tion on how to demand invest­ment in pub­lic water, we can look to 19th-cen­tu­ry Boston. In his 1826 inau­gur­al address, May­or Josi­ah Quin­cy III, name­sake of Boston’s Quin­cy Mar­ket, said this about the city’s then-pri­vate drink­ing water:

If there be any priv­i­lege which a city ought to reserve exclu­sive­ly in its own hands, and under its own con­trol, it is that of sup­ply­ing itself with water. … No pri­vate cap­i­tal­ists will engage in such an enter­prise with­out at least a ratio­nal expec­ta­tion of prof­it. Besides, it being an arti­cle of the first neces­si­ty, and on its free use so much of health as well as com­fort depends, every city should reserve in its own pow­er the means, unre­strained, of encour­ag­ing its use, by reduc­ing as fast as pos­si­ble, the cost of obtain­ing it, not only to the poor but to all class­es of the community.

Short­ly after Quincy’s son, Josi­ah Quin­cy, Jr., became may­or of Boston in 1846, the city’s water became public.

The anti­dote to denial

Unimag­in­able quan­ti­ties of tox­ins, in immea­sur­able com­bi­na­tions, have become part of our envi­ron­ment and part of us. Chron­ic dis­ease is the lead­ing cause of death and dis­abil­i­ty in the Unit­ed States and accounts for 86 per­cent of our health­care costs.

One of the ill­ness­es seems to be polit­i­cal paral­y­sis. San­dra Ste­in­graber, in her book Rais­ing Eli­jah, address­es the sub­ject of ​“well-informed futility”:

Iron­i­cal­ly, the more knowl­edge­able we are about such a prob­lem, the more we are filled with par­a­lyz­ing futil­i­ty. Futil­i­ty, in turn, fore­stalls action. But action is exact­ly what is nec­es­sary to over­come futil­i­ty. Just down the street from well-informed futil­i­ty resides denial. … In the face of knowl­edge too upset­ting to bear, there is noth­ing to do but look away.

Her anti­dote to futil­i­ty and denial? ​“To rise up in the face of the ter­ri­ble knowl­edge and do some­thing.” In oth­er words, to act like ​“a mem­ber of the French Resistance.”

Since Flint, there’s been a new spot­light on lead in drink­ing water. But chil­dren in minor­i­ty neigh­bor­hoods have been exposed to lead from water and oth­er sources, like peel­ing lead paint, for a long time. The Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol con­sis­tent­ly reports that black chil­dren have the high­est risk of lead poi­son­ing in the Unit­ed States, some­times two or three times more like­ly than white chil­dren to have ele­vat­ed lead lev­els in their blood. It’s been this way for decades. Lead mit­i­ga­tion is well under­stood. Pipes can be changed. Fil­ters can be used. Water author­i­ties can influ­ence how much lead is leached from pipes by influ­enc­ing the chem­istry of the water, by choos­ing safer water sources and by pro­tect­ing those sources from con­t­a­m­i­nants like her­bi­cides and pes­ti­cides from farm runoff and sewage outfalls.

What would it take to change our water sup­ply lines? A New Deal for water infra­struc­ture. Every four years the Amer­i­can Soci­ety for Civ­il Engi­neers issues a ​“Report Card for America’s Infra­struc­ture.” The last grade for drink­ing water, in 2013, was a D. The report said it would take $2.1 tril­lion to replace the nation’s aging pipes. The EPA has iden­ti­fied $335 bil­lion in water sup­ply infra­struc­ture needs over a 20-year peri­od. What­ev­er the num­ber, it is going to be high. So, too, will be hopes for new and improved tech­no­log­i­cal fix­es at water and waste­water treat­ment plants.

But Flint serves as a warn­ing that try­ing to ​“clean” pol­lut­ed water will only take us so far. The demand should be for chem­i­cal pol­i­cy reform that gets rid of harm­ful chem­i­cals and invests in a new gen­er­a­tion of bio­com­pat­i­ble chem­i­cals. It should include a rad­i­cal shift in agri­cul­tur­al poli­cies that sup­port organ­ic prac­tices. And if there is to be a New Deal for water infra­struc­ture, let it be for eco­log­i­cal infra­struc­ture that is built on a frame­work of prevention.

Boston and New York are exam­ples of cities that have gone to extra­or­di­nary lengths to get their water from clean sources, and it shows at the tap. Boston gets its water from the Quab­bin Reser­voir, 65 miles west of the city. The 39-square-mile pub­lic water sup­ply was cre­at­ed in the 1930s. Devel­op­ment around it is restrict­ed by the state. No indus­tries and no sew­ers dis­charge into its waters. New York, for its part, has two mas­sive tun­nels, with a third almost com­plet­ed, that bring in water from reser­voirs and lakes on pro­tect­ed land in upstate New York.

Both cities dis­charge their waste­water far from their drink­ing water sources: Boston’s treat­ed sewage goes 9.5 miles out into the ocean. New York’s out­fall pipes are clos­er to shore, but the state is try­ing to raise the cap­i­tal to build an extend­ed ocean out­fall pipe. These are not eco­log­i­cal solu­tions for the dis­po­si­tion of waste­water, but it is safer than dump­ing it into drink­ing water. The dis­pos­al of waste­water and sewage sludge will cause pol­lu­tion prob­lems wher­ev­er they go, but keep­ing them out of our drink­ing water and food while we back off of their pro­duc­tion is fun­da­men­tal to pro­tect­ing human health.

Tech­no­log­i­cal respons­es to the eco­log­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe in Flint and in scores of oth­er cities, like replac­ing lead pipe sup­ply lines, are nec­es­sary, but pal­lia­tive. Tech­nol­o­gy should be the ser­vant of prevention.

Resis­tance to the sys­temic poi­son­ing we are expe­ri­enc­ing in the U.S. begins with say­ing: Enough! We are hear­ing this in Flint. Town halls and com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings are filled with peo­ple rais­ing their voic­es and demand­ing change. In Feb­ru­ary, Flint res­i­dents Beu­lah Walk­er and Justin Wedes went to the Unit­ed Nations to talk about Flint and ask for a fact-find­ing mis­sion from the U.N. to come to the belea­guered city.

Forg­ing our con­nec­tion to each oth­er is as impor­tant as dis­con­nect­ing our sew­ers from our drink­ing water. Water pol­lu­tion at the scale we have in Amer­i­ca feels insur­mount­able, and it will be if we do not orga­nize for fun­da­men­tal changes in where we get our water, what we put into it, and where it goes when we are done with it. Nobody lives upstream anymore.