When you’ve read any of the stories and reports of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, invariably there was a statement that “this wouldn’t be allowed to happen in an affluent city” or a comment that asks, “What would happen if this was a wealthy community?”
In reality, it would be impossible for this crisis to occur in any wealthy community. IMPOSSIBLE.
Flint, like Detroit, is an old city. Most of the homes were built in the 1930s and 40s when indoor plumbing was just a couple decades old. A new and novel addition to home design was a sink, toilet, and a cast-iron bathtub in the same room called a “Bath Room”..
Fresh water was delivered through cast iron pipes and connectors or later, galvanized steel. These were state-of-the-art materials that were expected to last for decades before corrosion necessitated their replacement.
These homes were built for merchants, laborers, industrial workers, those folks that were creating the new middle class. The salt of the Earth. Hardworking families that asked for no more than a fair shake. The well-heeled folks never lived here. They lived in the wealthy communities on the wide Avenues or just on the outskirts of town.
This is where the upwardly mobile working class lived and, after WWII, as the economy started rolling, union wages began increasing, these folks moved to better neighborhoods with newer homes. In the last third of the century, these people had left for the new subdivisions in the suburbs with all new construction materials — dry wall, lead-free latex paint, copper pipes with silver solder (not lead), PVC pipes.
The homes in town are now for those left behind in the economic expansion of the 20th century; the elderly, under-employed, unemployed, unskilled/minimum wage workers, and the disabled. Minorities, and the hopeless live here. The homes have decayed and fallen into disrepair simply because the residents don’t have the means to keep them up anymore.
Meanwhile, the wealthy had migrated to nice homes on large landscaped lots in places like Grand Blank, near the Warwick Hills golf course where the Buick Open was host to the best professional golfers in the world. There are no galvanized or lead pipes here to corrode and leach toxins into the water. They’ve got CPVC and Pex pipes now — the latest and greatest materials available. So, no, that crisis could never happen here. Ever. These cities have money. They can afford clean, fresh water. With wealth also comes political weight to throw around political strings to pull, if need be. It’s not a question of happening to them, because they would never allow this to happen to them.
But the residents of Flint, 40% of whom exist below the poverty line, never had a say. They have no money and therefore, no voice. Even the voices of their constitutionally elected city officials were muted by the over-reaching Emergency Manager appointed by Snyder. Flint never had a chance. In the end, it was their own state government and Governor Snyder that poisoned the most helpless — their children. The babies. Before they had begun to find their way in life, they’ve been condemned to physical disabilities, neurological deficits, learning disabilities, and emotional instabilities. 8,000 babies.
This would never happen in a wealthy community.