Not Underground — The Flint, Michigan Tap Water Controversy

In case you haven’t been watching the news lately, you may not have heard about a huge story happening in Michigan. The city of Flint, Michigan — made famous by Michael Moore’s documentary Roger & Me — has been going through a water crisis that makes the movie Erin Brockovich look like a children’s film.

Let me give you a quick rundown of how this all began:

In 2014, the City of Flint switched its water supply from the City of Detroit to the Flint River. This was done in an effort to save money. The measure was viewed as a temporary fix, since the water in the Flint River is widely known to be awful for anything that needs water to live. What was meant to happen is that Flint would use the Flint River as water while a new pipeline was built to gather water from Lake Huron and stop the need to use Detroit’s city water.

The problem with the Flint River is that the water is corrosive. You add that to the aging water pipes in Flint, and that will cause the lead from the pipes to leach onto the water that flows through it. This led to nearly 12,000 residents of Flint of having high levels of lead contamination in their water. Remember that this “temporary” change happened in 2014. This means that lead water has been flowing into homes for 18 months. It has also been stated that the water change could be responsible for the outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the county that has killed 10 people and affected another 77.

Watch Rachel Maddow almost break down in tears as she explains the story. She also goes into how a Governor can basically throw out elections, but that’s another insane story altogether.

If you want to include Michael Moore into this a bit, you can go back to his documentary. Flint was a hub for the auto industry. The population of Flint was around 200,000, and because of all the auto plants in the area, Flint had been pumping 100 million gallons of water in the city a day through its own water treatment center. Since that all stopped, the population dropped and Flint has used Detroit water since 1967.

Why is this so controversial beyond it being unbelievably stupid? Governor Snyder and others knew about it for 18 months. They even tried to quash it by sending water filters to Flint last year.They were told numerous times of the huge danger to the population of Flint, but did nothing until recently. It wasn’t until January 5th that the Governor declared this situation an emergency. Soon after, President Obama declared the situation as a federal state of emergency.

After all of that information, the important thing to remember here is that the people of Flint have been exposed to lead poisoning water for almost 2 years. Food, bathing, drinking, washing and more has all been exposed to toxic levels of lead. You may not understand how bad lead is for you, but just remember that paint was dangerous if it had lead in it. Paint. You don’t drink paint. Your entire survival isn’t based around paint. Savvy?

So, just how bad was the lead problem in Flint? Well, let me science this up a bit to really make you understand just how bad the situation is: Detroit’s water has about 2.3 part per billion of lead. This is considered safe by the EPA.

If it hits 5 ppb, then it’s a cause for concern.

And then we go on to check Flint’s water. 90% of 271 homes in Flint tested with 27 ppb of lead.

Oh, but what about the other 10% of houses that were tested?

That’s insane. What does the EPA consider to be the worst of the worst? Well, they consider toxic waste to be about 5,000 ppb. What was the highest ppb found in Flint?

If this was a comic book, the residents of Flint would become superheroes with this level of toxicity. Instead, there will be decades of health problems to deal with because the Government in Michigan didn’t really care about what was happening. To save money in the short-term, the use of the water in Flint will cause families millions of dollars in medical treatment in the coming years.

The four families that filed a class action lawsuit against Governor Rick Snyder will surely not be the only ones to file against him and 13 other city and state officials. It will only get worse for them. To make things even worse, Flint has sent out 1,800 past-due water bills to citizens. They’re literally sending past-due notices to people they are poisoning.

I will leave you with this one lasting thought: The pipes of Flint are now corroded all to Hell. Even with the Detroit water being pumped back to residents, the lead will still leach onto the water regardless of where the water is from. Is it out of the realm of possibilities for an entire population of a city to just abandon it?

(Graphics via Washington Post)

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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post,UPROXX,BGR and by just looking up his name.

Contact: jeff@socialunderground.com