Flint, Michigan: 10 Years After Lead Water Crisis Began, A Lack of Urgency Stalls 'Proper Justice' [View all]

NBC News, April 24, 2024. - Everybody stood up for us and fought for Flint," one resident said. "We need that again." - Edited -

FLINT, Mich. — Ten years ago, smiling politicians posed for cameras while pushing a button, swapping the main tap water source for this majority-Black, impoverished city to the Flint River — the untreated water that started flowing from residents’ taps would become contaminated when it corroded the pipes. For years afterward, the city’s water was tainted with lead, a human-made crisis that became emblematic of how poorer communities of color in the US could fall victim to government mismanagement.

In that time, Michigan started and then stopped providing free bottled water to Flint residents; criminal charges were brought and then dismissed against several officials for deaths suspected of being linked to the scandal; and a lawsuit was settled with the state in 2021 for $626 million, but residents have yet to receive a dime. Now, Mayor Sheldon Neeley contends the city’s work to ensure a Flint free from contaminated drinking water is finally on the “last leg” of the process — a promise that comes as families continue to live with lingering adverse health effects and demand ongoing accountability.

A federal judge last month held Flint in contempt of court for missing deadlines related to replacing service lines, writing that “the city has failed to abide by the court’s orders in several respects” and adding that “it has no good reason for its failures.” Meanwhile groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, accuse the city of dragging its feet. Mays, the Flint social worker, has been an outspoken critic of the local and state governments’ handling of the water crisis. The realization that some of the children she works with have gone their entire lives being unable or unwilling to drink from the tap is “angering.”

“The fact that it’s been allowed to drag on for a decade while people suffer and pass away — we’ve lost a lot of amazing people,” she said. “It’s inhumane.”

Mays said she blames the lead in Flint water for medical and learning challenges her three sons, now 19, 21 and 25, have faced over the past decade, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, anxiety, damage to their kidneys and growth plates, as well as immune system issues. “We didn’t have discolored water,” she said, “so we just assumed it was safe.” Mays joined others in her community to protest, and in 2016 became a named plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing Flint of violating the federal Safe Drinking Water Act... - Full Article,
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/10-years-flints-lead-water-crisis-was-discovered-lack-urgency-stalls-p-rcna148972