The Seemingly Forgotten City of Contamination

In April of 2014, in an effort to cut costs, a state appointed emergency consultant switched Flint, Michigan’s water supply from the Detroit supply, Lake Huron, to the Flint River. Upon a seemingly successful switch to a closer and more direct water supply, officials at all levels celebrated their prosperous change, the citizens of Flint were less than pleased.  Rhonda Kelso, a 52 year-old Flint native, explained, “I thought it was one of those Onion articles. We already knew the Flint River was toxic waste.”

Ms. Kelso was not far off the mark when she described their newly delivered drinking, cleaning and bathing water.  The water from the Flint River, not being treated with federally regulated corrosion control agents, is 16 times more corrosive than the water from Lake Huron and the water being bought by surrounding cities. This corrosive nature is causing the rushing water to strip the iron from the inner plumbing’s pipes, turning the water a “dirty, brown” color. Worse than iron, however, is the fact that half of Flint’s water pipes are made of lead, allowing the corrosive water to carry particles of lead along with the brown coloring caused by iron. The maximum concentration of lead in water allowed by law is 15 parts per billion (ppb). The Flint River water has been measured at nearly 400 ppb.

The simple solution to the seemingly temporary problem is to buy bottled water for the time being.  However, it is not until you no longer have access to clean running water that you realize how much you actually use.  Flint is one of America’s poorest cities with over 41% of its residents living below the poverty line, making it extremely difficult for some to buy the necessary bottles or be able to make the trip to the one grocery store for the population of 100,000. One Flint mother, who lives with her 12 year-old daughter spoke out and said, “Sometimes there’s no water. The people who can buy water, they buy it up.”

So how prevalent is this problem, exactly?  Prevalent enough that two years later, the lead concentration levels received from faucets has not yet reached the accepted federal level.  Granted, the lead levels have very much improved, latest tests measuring as low as 22.8 ppb. Experts will not give an expected “clean date” but recommend that people follow a “flushing program”, which asks households to use more running water than bottled water in order to increase the flow of the anti-corrosive chemicals.  Essentially, he residents will have to face the beast and wear it down in order to ultimately defeat it.