Flint once boasted 80,000 General Motors employees, but now
only has a tenth of that. Unemployment is rampant. The racial composition of Flint is 56.6% African American. The US Census Bureau reported that Flint is the
second most impoverished city for its size. Just over 40 percent of the
municipality’s residents are living at or below the poverty line. Those in
power find it easy to ignore the cries of poor people—especially if those poor
people happen to be largely black. The people of Flint has consistently voted Democrat. In 2006,
the Bay Area Center for Voting Research ranked Flint as the 10th most liberal
city in the United States. Put bluntly, since the voters in Flint, Michigan,
are a lost cause and of no use to the Republican Governor Rick Snyder and his
Republican Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General who
all had little incentive to respond to the complaints. As the citizens of the city lost hair and developed rashes,
as children drank water that was tainted with lead and E. Coli those with the power to help did nothing. Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ)
officials urged those people concerned about lead in Flint’s drinking water to
“relax,” that there was no “broad problem” with contamination and described the
whistleblower EPA official, Miguel Del Toral, whose draft report initially
alerted lead-poisoned Flint residents to their great danger, as a “rogue
employee.” They also attacked the work of Virginia Tech safe drinking water
expert Marc Edwards. The analysis by Edwards and his team of graduate students
revealed that some Flint tap water measured nearly 2.5 times more lead
contamination than EPA’s hazardous waste designation level. They cast doubts
upon Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, director of the pediatric residency program at
Flint’s Hurley Hospital whose research showed that after the switch to
untreated Flint River drinking water, blood lead levels in children doubled, or
even tripled.
Two years ago, the people of Flint turned on their faucets
and a brown horror came flowing out. Many people complained to the state's
government but were roundly ignored and dismissed. The people of Flint and
other surrounding towns have been drinking, cooking with and bathing in
lead-contaminated water for two years. In order to "save money," Governor Snyder's hand-picked emergency
manager decided to change Flint's water source from Lake Huron to the Flint
River. General Motors used the river as its personal dumping ground for
decades; it is highly polluted, and more importantly is highly acidic. When
Flint River water began flowing through Michigan's ancient water supply system,
it absorbed the lead right off the pipes and delivered it to thousands of
homes.
What does lead do to the human body? Infants and small
children can suffer brain and nervous system damage, weakened immune systems
and general physical collapse that can lead to death. Pregnant women have a
higher risk of stillbirth or miscarriage. A raft of studies has pretty much
concluded that lead can cause cancer. It causes cardiovascular diseases and
kidney damage which, like cancer, can also kill. Five parts per billion of lead
are a concern. 5,000 parts per billion is considered "toxic waste."
From April 2014 until October 2015 the people of Flint were drinking water with
up to 13,000 parts per billion of lead in it.
Flint residents are still getting billed for water the
Virginia Tech study described as toxic waste.. In France long ago, it was
"Let them eat cake." Today, in Flint, it's "Let them drink
bottled water" ... except a whole lot of people in Flint can't afford
bottled water, and they sure can't bathe in it.
"Everybody knows," wrote Flint native, author and
film-maker, Michael Moore, "that this would not have happened in
predominantly white Michigan cities like West Bloomfield, or Grosse Pointe, or
Ann Arbor. Everybody knows that if there had been two years of taxpayer
complaints, and then a year of warnings from scientists and doctors, this would
have been fixed in those towns." Moore described what is happening in
Flint as a "racial crime." It was a crime against humanity done by a negligent
administration which shows utter contempt for the welfare of the people whose
welfare it is supposed to ensure. To them, certain people can just be ignored,
pushed around and bullied.
It often takes a disaster to draw attention to environmental
injustice. The crisis in Flint is terrifying - residents were left to drink
poisoned water for months despite warnings from researchers who found elevated
levels of lead in children - but presidential candidates and the dominant media
did little to acknowledge that the pattern of pollution in communities of color
extends far beyond Michigan. Nationally, people of color are nearly twice as
likely as white people to live within one mile of facilities that use and store
chemicals so dangerous that facility operators must submit risk management
plants to the government. Children of color make up nearly two-thirds of the
5.7 million children living near these high-risk facilities, and poor people of
color are significantly more likely to live near massive stockpiles of
dangerous chemicals than white people living above the poverty line. In the
event of a toxic release, spill or explosion, communities of color would face
the brunt of the impact, according to a recent report by the Center for
Effective Government.
Researchers at the University of Michigan published twin
studies in January showing that low-income people and people of color don't end
up living near hazardous waste sites and other polluters because housing is
cheap. Instead, their communities are disproportionately targeted by industries
that follow "the path of least resistance" when deciding where to
build facilities. Hillary Clinton alluded to these disparities at the close of
the January 17 Democratic debate, declaring that "if kids in a rich
Detroit suburb" were drinking contaminated water, authorities in Michigan
would have acted quickly to stop the problem. Bernie Sanders was not to be
outdone - he demanded Snyder resign, saying that thousands of children may now
suffer brain damage from lead because the governor knew about the problem and
did nothing for months to fix it. Seeking media attention around the mass
poisoning of children resulting from the ineptitude of government officials, if
not their outright racism, is easy. But would either of these candidates really
fight for environmental justice as president?
Flint’s catastrophe serves as a stark reminder that safe,
clean drinking water is the essence of life.
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