President Obama spent several hours in Flint yesterday, meeting with city officials, private citizens, and some politicians (including Snyder) during his visit. [For more on the visit itself, see the post by Mark Sumner from yesterday evening, President Obama draws applause in Flint, Governor Snyder collects boos.)
What, if anything, will that mean for the people of Flint?
It is difficult to believe any significant relief will be forthcoming from this obstructionist Congress, even if, as the New York Times reported yesterday,
Mr. Obama is likely to use his visit to Flint as an opportunity to pressure Republicans in Congress to support billions of dollars in improvements to infrastructure around the country. Aides said he would insist that crises like the one in Flint could be prevented with the right investments.
No doubt there are many cities and towns throughout the U.S. at serious risk of lead poisoning—we’ve heard about some of them already. And prevention of this fate from befalling others is a great goal. But what of those who have already been injured, perhaps permanently? Or killed, if the Flint water debacle caused the 12 fatal cases of Legionnaires’ disease that happened within Genesee County last year?
Is this what the president’s visit was meant to facilitate in the end—a real conversation between Mayor Weaver and Governor Snyder?
Maybe so. But what does that say about our politics in Michigan if that is what it takes?
Join me after the jump for other recent coverage of the ongoing, deepening, enraging #FlintWaterCrisis.
Please take a moment to read the latest commentary by Curt Guyette, the key reporter on the Flint Water Crisis, via commondreams and BillMoyers.com. Here is an excerpt:
Since the imposed switch to the Flint River was made in April 2014, the people of Flint have been exposed to E.coli scares, elevated levels of a cancer-causing chlorine byproduct, a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease and widespread lead contamination that’s caused unimaginable harm.
Along with this attack on their health, the people of Flint have had to endure the denigrating insult to their collective intelligence by officials who claimed with straight faces that the muck pouring from taps was completely safe.
Which is why President Obama will see that, in Flint, trust in government hasn’t just been shattered. Its shards have been ground to dust.
In case you are interested, here is more personal testimony from the people in Flint, from a recent set of interviews and photographs published in MLive: Still standing: 100 Flint residents dealing with a poisoned water system (Do not waste your time in the comments.)
A team of journalists with MLive-Flint has also just published this effective summary of the situation to date, quoting extensively from the Flint Water Advisory Task Force’s report: As Flint was slowly poisoned, Snyder’s inner circle failed to act. This overview is pretty complete and comprehensive, though the reporters do not challenge the incorrect premise that the move off of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department was done to save Flint money.
EDIT: Here is one source to debunk the rationale of the switch as a “cost-saving” measure. There are references within it to primary documents regarding the decision. Other sources have since emerged to discuss a compromise offer that the DWSD offered to Flint in the hopes of retaining the city as a customer. I will update the post with that information when I find it, unless someone supplies it in the comments first. ;)
But what is next? Eclectablog keeps posting a telling count, updated as of yesterday:
In a post on Counterpunch, Jesse Jackson quotes Melissa Mays, one of the mothers at the center of activism in Flint:
At a demonstration protesting the two-year anniversary of the crisis, [Mays] said, “Flint wasn’t a community that was ‘worth going out on a limb for.’
“So, our job is to prove them wrong. Our job is to show them we are not going sit down and take this anymore. And you know what, I have been peaceful. I have tried to fight this in the courts, in the labs doing all the things to prove that the water was poisoned. We got that proof. The water is poisoned. And two years later, it is getting worse.
“I watched my 13-year-old son damn near pass out today from blood tests looking for bacteria and immune disorders. He’s 13. So, I am reaching my breaking point. I’m tired of being peaceful. I’m tired of being nice. They’re not listening.”
The National Geographic published this story in February by Tracie McMillan, the noted journalist who writes about food and class in the U.S., and who grew up near Flint, “What It’s Like to Live with Only Bottled Water”:
Spend a couple days talking to people in Flint, and it becomes clear that one question lies in wait behind most every conversation here: Was it the water? A chemical worker whose girlfriend miscarried last year wondered: Was it the water? When a local magazine editor’s child, who has mild cerebral palsy, began to have stronger symptoms, she wondered: Was it the water? When several neighbors of Kaniya’s other grandmother, Tammy Waters, developed liver problems, Tammy wondered: Was it the water? After Kaniya’s two-year-old sister, Taylor, fell ill with pneumonia in December, Felecia and Gail wondered through tears at the hospital: Was it the water?
The only thing city water is good for, Gail says, making an observation I heard from several people I spoke to, “is flushing the toilet.”
That is less a bitter observation than a practical one, because the scientific facts around lead offer little evidence to the contrary. Lead exposure occurs when the toxin is ingested orally, and public health officials say there is no safe level of exposure, particularly for children. To avoid exposure without foregoing city water completely means parsing a jumble of directives, conditional directives, provisional warnings, and hard facts so vast that it quickly feels, at least to a visitor, overwhelming. For example, bathing in water that has particulate lead—which is the most common form of lead in Flint—should be safe if no water is swallowed. Washing dishes with it should be safe, if each dish, fork, cup and plate is wiped down to remove any lead that remains after water has evaporated. Filters can remove lead, but they must be properly certified for that purpose; eating and drinking without worry, therefore, means verifying not only that water is filtered, but filtered correctly.
Thanks to a recent post here by CVStoddard, Take the Children and Run: A Song about the Poisoning of Flint, Michigan, I am aware of this new version of a folksong created by a member of Mustard’s Retreat, an Ann Arbor-based folk duo, specially for these terrible circumstances in Flint. It seems a fitting close here.
Oh, and meanwhile: Detroit Public Schools are in total disarray, DPS teachers being told they won’t be paid for several weeks of work. This after the district has been subjected to Emergency Management for 14 of the last 17 years.
And water shutoffs to private customers are resuming in Detroit.
Please help us build this weekly Michigan thread so that it includes any information relevant to turning MI Blue again that you would like me to highlight. MI contributors are always welcome! You can reach me through kosmail at peregrine kate. Or say hi through email here: peregrinekate@gmail.com And please follow me on Twitter @peregrinekate