As college students, the majority of us tend to get our news from hashtags as opposed to newspapers so it’s easy for important stories to get lost in the sea of what’s trending. One of these stories happens to be the Flint Water Crisis of Michigan.
According to NBC News, the Flint Water system has been plaguing residents of Flint for nearly two years although the crisis has just now started making headlines. In April of 2013, government officials decided to stop buying water from the city of Detroit in order to cut millions of dollars from Flint’s expenditures. However, the pipes of the alternate water supply from Lake Huron were not fully ready so a temporary switch was made to the Flint River. In May of 2014, residents began to complain about the poor quality of the new water that they were being overcharged for and over time tests of the water came back positive for various bacteria such as e.coli and disinfectant byproducts. This past June, Flint was also accused of failing to control the corrosion of the water once the pipes were completed, thereby leading to an increase of lead in the supply.
Fast forward to the present-day and Flint has declared a state of emergency with 10 deaths linked to Legionnaire’s disease and an increasing population of people with lead poisoning. A town that is highly impoverished and majority African-American has been denied the basic necessity of clean water and rather than taking responsibility, their leaders are playing the blame game.
Although millions of dollars and many volunteers are working in Flint to restore clean, drinkable water, the damage has already been done. With 4 percent of the child population having elevated levels of lead, the city faces even greater problems because those children are likely to develop learning disabilities and other health issues. In addition, the adult population will have to continue to live with the effects of lead poisoning such as abdominal pain, irritability, fatigue, high blood pressure, and kidney dysfunction because it is hard to treat. So next time you see #FlintWaterCrisis floating around your timeline, you’ll have a clearer sense of the debacle that has left thousands of people with poisoned water and leaders unwilling to take responsibility.
Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/18/us/flint-michigan-water-crisis-five-things/