The human toll of Flint's water crisis

Updated

For 18 months, residents in the city of Flint, Michigan, had filthy water flowing through their taps. They knew something was wrong but officials denied there was a problem.

When Rhonda Kelso turned on her bathroom tap last August she nearly vomited.

"It smelt like sewage and it looked like phlegm," she says of the brown water that flowed into her sink.

She wasn't the only one.

For 18 months residents in the city of Flint, Michigan, had filthy dark water flowing through their taps.

They knew something was wrong but officials denied there was a problem.

"They kept saying the water was safe, they never broke script," Ms Kelso says.

She and her fellow "Flintstones", as the city's residents call themselves, now know why — there were toxically high levels of lead leaching into their water supply from corroding pipes.

"We have been paying for poison," the 52-year-old mother of four said.

The city had been buying water from nearby Detroit for years.

But in 2014, in an effort to save money, the cash-strapped Flint's unelected city manager decided to switch the supply to river water for three years while the city built its own pipe to the Great Lakes.

I feel devastated that I wasn't able to protect her Flint mother Rhonda Kelso

The water in the river was more corrosive than normal water and it began to strip the lead from the city's ageing pipes.

Residents became sick. Some say their hair started falling out.

Locals complained, but it wasn't until a local paediatrician revealed that an alarming number of the city's children had elevated blood-lead levels.

Lead poisoning can cause serious developmental problems in children — especially those under five — but the effects sometimes don't show for years.

Ms Kelso is terrified about what the future holds for her 12-year-old daughter, Kaylynn, who has tested positive for lead.

"I feel devastated that I wasn't able to protect her," she said.

'There were red flags here'

Late last year the city switched back to Detroit water, but the corrosion of the pipes means there still could be lead and toxins leaching into it.

Children are poisoned, it is a man-made disaster and the cover up is a crime scene Reverened Jesse Jackson

The debacle happened under the watch of Republican Governor Rick Snyder.

Leaked emails show there was knowledge there was a problem.

"There were red flags here," Mr Snyder told reporters late last month.

"We didn't connect all the dots we should have."

The city's residents are furious and some have launched a class action against city, state and federal authorities.

"They are claiming ignorance, I am claiming malice," said Melissa Mays, one of the lead plaintiffs in the class action and a mother of three boys who have all tested positive for lead.

Local Democratic senator Jim Ananich says while treating the water to make it less corrosive would have cost about $100 a day, addressing the infrastructure and health problems cause by the crisis could cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

"We know that lead levels doubled for children city-wide, tripled in some areas," he said.

"It is what the medical community is calling a population-wide exposure."

At a rally in Flint, protestors chanted "no pipes, no peace" as they marched towards the Flint Water Plant.

"Children are poisoned, it is a man-made disaster and the cover up is a crime scene," civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson told the told the ABC as he walked with the demonstrators.

Some continue to drink toxic water

Even before this disaster, the people of Flint were struggling.

About 40 per cent of them live on or below the poverty line.

"This county has a 33 per cent illiteracy rate," says Pastor Bobby Jackson, who for two years has reached out to people across America for donations of bottles of water to distribute to people who cannot afford to buy them.

When he gives out water, he also makes sure he hands out information sheets, telling people not to drink tap water and where to get tested for lead poisoning.

"We sometimes have to work extra hard so that it is comprehensible to everyone, not just for the few," he says.

Pastor Jackson says despite his efforts, there are still people drinking the tap water.

"There are some that are unaware and there are some that don't care because ... they don't trust that it is really happening," he said.

Flint isn't the only city in America with ageing infrastructure or financial problems.

The city's residents are worried what happened to them could happen anywhere.

"We want to make sure the story is told," Pastor Jackson says, sitting in the basement of his dimly lit day shelter surrounded by cases of bottled water stacked to the roof.

"Sometimes, someone has to take the bullet so that the rest can be saved," he said.

Topics: water-pollution, environment, health, united-states

First posted