April V. Taylor

Michigan is surrounded by the Great Lakes, which accounts for 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water. This causes many people to assume that clean, safe water is readily available to the state’s residents at an affordable cost. However, the cities of Detroit and Flint prove otherwise. Flint has some of the highest water and sewer rates in the country, with an average household incurring $150 in monthly charges.

Price isn’t the only issue in Flint. In April 2014, the city’s emergency manager changed the source of the city’s drinking water from Detroit’s system to the Flint River. The move was supposed to save residents money, but the savings has come at the expense of residents health.

One of the first issues to arise was evidence of E. coli and other bacteria, which led to three separate boil-water advisories. The next nine months residents were faced with dangerously high levels of total trihalomethanes, a carcinogenic byproduct of chlorine. The high levels are a violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act.

A group of Flint residents recently filed a lawsuit to try to force the city to stop getting its water from the Flint River after they experienced rashes, hair loss, and foul odors.

The ACLU of Michigan has also uncovered an internal EPA memo that shows the water from the Flint River is contaminated with lead, with one family’s home having recorded lead levels of 13,200 parts per billion (ppb). This is more than double the 5,000 ppb level that qualifies water to be classified as hazardous waste. The EPA memo placed the blame for the high levels on the cash-strapped city not being able to do a good enough job treating the water.

Like many cities across the country, Flint is suffering from crumbling infrastructure that is contributing to the issues with both the quality and cost of the city’s water. The city experiences hundreds of water main breaks a year along the 600 miles of pipe that desperately needs to be repaired but cannot be because of a lack of funding.

Flint joins a growing list of cities whose expensive water rates have led to shutoffs, with some shutoffs being so extensive that they drew the attention of the United Nations because of human rights violations. The list includes Detroit and Baltimore. New York City is also on the list with residents having liens placed on their homes for unpaid water bills. According to the New York Daily News, “The number of liens sold against owners of two and three family homes and mixed-use properties has risen 41 percent,” between 2008 and 2013.

While some may feel that the plight of residents in these cities is of little or no concern to them, the country’s aging infrastructure is cause for concern for all Americans. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country’s water structure a grade of ‘D+,’ citing that “much of our drinking water infrastructure is nearing the end of its useful life.” USA Today did a survey of 100 municipalities and found that more than one in four cities had water prices that had doubled since 2000, with rates tripling in some municipalities.

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