Michigan
state officials poisoned Flint's democracy along with its water.
You’ve probably heard that Flint, Michigan has lead in its water and it’s poisoning the locals. But did you know that this debacle is a symptom of our ailing democracy?
Governor Rick Snyder has appointed “emergency managers” to
govern many Michigan cities, including Detroit and Flint. The Republican leader
ostensibly took this step to deal with a string of budget crises.
Snyder gave these unelected managers the power to overrule
local elected officials, leaving them free to make unpopular decisions without
any checks or balances. There’s a racial element to this trend, too: Over half of black
Michiganders live in jurisdictions with emergency managers, compared to a mere
2 percent of whites.
Flint paid to get its water from Detroit’s municipal system
until 2014. At that point, Flint’s emergency manager changed the city’s water source to the Flint River —
where General Motors used to dump its waste.
Suddenly, the water that came out of residents’ taps was brown,
smelly, and bad tasting.
Within months, residents started experiencing severe health problems like hair falling out, rashes, memory
problems, and vision loss. The city found fecal coliform and toxic chemicals
called trihalomethanes in the water, but officials maintained the stuff was
safe to drink for everyone except the sick or elderly. And they didn’t stop its
flow.
In February 2015, the city tested resident LeeAnne Walters’ water and found lead at more than 25 times the legal limit. One of her children had lead poisoning. Yet the city and its “emergency manager” did nothing.
Even as the problem became clear, the city and state governments
kept insisting there was nothing wrong. As of last fall, the rate of lead
poisoning in children had doubled. And many Flint homes had so much lead in their water that it met the Environmental
Protection Agency’s criteria for “toxic waste.”
It took until October of last year before Flint reverted to its
old, safe water supply. After two years, however, the pipes in Flint had been
so badly corroded that the water still isn’t safe to drink.
This economic, health, and humanitarian disaster happened
because decision-makers wanted to save $2
million per year. It would have cost only $100 a day to add an anti-corrosive agent to the
water — a modest sum to protect an entire city’s water supply — but
penny-pinching officials couldn’t be bothered.
The harm to Flint’s children is irreversible. In early
childhood, lead poisoning permanently reduces IQ and harms impulse control.
Americans everywhere were exposed to increasing lead levels from
the 1940s until the early 1970s, chiefly because of leaded gasoline. Two
decades later, when kids who were born during this period reached young
adulthood, rates for teen pregnancy and violent crime peaked as well — a fact
many researchers believe is strongly linked to lead poisoning.
No wonder Mother Jones magazine once called
lead “America’s real criminal element.”
In the best case scenario, the state or federal government would
now bend over backwards to replace Flint’s toxic water system and put in place
the medical and social services needed to help poisoned children live as
healthfully and normally as possible.
Instead, the governor hired a public relations firm to help his
own image. His emailsreveal denial and mismanagement of the situation.
How many children will grow up with brain damage and other
lead-related ailments because Snyder denied Flint its democratically elected
government, poisoned the city’s water, and then tried to cover it up?
Michigan’s Republican governor should act now to help the
children whose lives he’s ruined instead of worrying about his own image and
political career.
OtherWords
columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why
Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. OtherWords.org.