The Flint Water Crisis began in the city of Flint, Michigan on April 21, 2014. During this year, the drinking water source was switched from Lake Huron, Detroit to the Flint River. This switch was only supposed to be for two years while a new pipeline was being constructed. Previously, the Flint River had been the primary drinking water source until 1967 where high levels of contamination impeded its use. These lines had been built from 1901-1920 and were therefore made out lead, as this was the norm at the time. After the switch in 1967, city officials decide that the Flint River will be used as a drinking source as a backup plan in case of an emergency until 2013.
In 2011 Flint had a $25 million deficit, including a $9 million negative balance in its water supply fund. In order to try to eliminate costs, the City of Flint decided to construct a pipeline that would bring water to the city directly from Lake Huron instead of using the City of Detroit as an intermediary. During the two-year construction period, the water source was switched to the Flint River. Citizens were concerned about the quality of the water, yet the city sent out a statement confirming that the water was safe and that it had been tested instead of treating it right away. Soon after, residents began to complain about the new water’s color and smell, which lead to the detection of E. coli and coliform bacteria and the consequential advisory of boiling all water prior to its use.
According to a briefing paper released from Governor Rick Snyder, the City of Flint increased the amount of chlorine into water to try to clean up the pipes and prevent further contamination. The increase of chlorine use in the water caused economic problems for Flint, as General Motors ceased to use the Flint River water due to corrosion in its machines. Moreover, the use of chlorine to treat the water caused levels of total trihalomethane (TTHM) to increase. TTHM is the byproduct of chlorine interacting with organic matter in water and can cause many health effects such as liver cancer (Environmental Protection Agency). The increase of chlorine caused TTHM levels to skyrocket and violate the Safe Drinking Water Act, the standard being 80 ug/L and the water levels being 99 ug/L (City of Flint). This information was revealed until January 2, 2015, despite this spike occurring in 2014. After this incident, the Detroit water system proposed to supply Flint with water once again and waive the $4 million fee. Jerry Ambrose, the emergency manager and financial supervisor of Flint, refused the offer, stating that the water was already safe and that it could be continued to be used.
Despite the city’s efforts to ease its residents minds, on January 21, 2015 they show up to City Hall with samples of dirty water and countless stories of being sick. A specialist in municipal water quality from Virginia Tech, Dr. Marc Edwards, was contacted by one of these frustrated citizens, Lee-Anne Walters, whose family had fallen ill since the switch. He began studying the lead levels in the Flint River and found that drinking water samples from Walters’ home had “extremely high lead levels between 200 parts per billion to 13,200 ppb. For comparison, the Environmental Protection Agency states water with 15 ppb of lead is the action level and 5,000 ppb is considered hazardous waste (flintwaterstudy.org). Dr. Edwards stated,
“I called Dr. Jeff Parks, who is a senior research scientist who ran the samples, and asked him if this could be an error, because we had never seen such sustained high levels of lead in 25 years of work…It was the injustice of it all and that the very agencies that are paid to protect these residents from lead in water, knew or should’ve known… that federal law was not being followed in Flint, and that these children and residents were not being protected. And the extent to which they went to cover this up exposes a new level of arrogance and uncaring that I have never encountered” (Public Radio International).
The EPA wrote a memo that stated that the City of Flint was not in compliance with the Lead and Copper Rule, which states that “all large systems (serving greater than 50,000 persons) are required to install and maintain corrosion control treatment for lead and copper (flintwaterstudy.org).” After switching to the Flint River, the City of Flint stopped treating the water with orthophosphate, which helps control the level of lead and copper in drinking water. When this memo was leaked by the ACLU, Brad Wurfel, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), responded, “Let me start here — anyone who is concerned about lead in the drinking water in Flint can relax.”. This is only one of the many instances where officials try to dismiss the problem with the water system.
Another problem that was caused was an increase in Legionnaire’s disease, a water-borne disease that causes a type of pneumonia. During the time of June 2014 to November 2015, 87 cases were reported where 12 people died. The relationship between the outbreak and the contamination of the water was investigated and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services concluded that there was no direct correlation. Dr. Edwards from the Virginia Tech study believed that the terrible conditions were a factor in the spike of Legionella. Him and his colleagues sampled homes and small businesses and compared the amount of Legionella bacteria to samples of large business, discovering that there was a much higher amount present in the latter (ABC 12). Dr. Janet Stout of the University of Pittsburgh