Water crisis raises racial and economic questions

Associated Press

FLINT, Mich.

Ever since the full extent of the Flint water crisis emerged, one question has persisted: Would this have happened in a wealthier, whiter community?

Residents in the former auto-making hub – a poor, largely minority city – feel their complaints about lead-tainted water flowing through their taps have been slighted by the government or ignored altogether. For many, it echoes the lackluster federal response to New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“Our voices were not heard, and that’s part of the problem,” Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said this week at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington, D.C., where she also met with President Barack Obama to make her case for federal help for her city.

The frustration has mostly been directed at Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who appointed an emergency manager to run Flint. That manager approved a plan in 2013 to begin drawing drinking water from the Flint River, and the city began doing so the next year. But officials failed to treat the corrosive water properly to prevent metal leaching from old pipes.

Snyder, a Republican in his second term, was blasted by Hillary Clinton in her remarks after the recent Democratic presidential debate.

“We’ve had a city in the United States of America where the population, which is poor in many ways and majority African-American, has been drinking and bathing in lead-contaminated water. And the governor of that state acted as though he didn’t really care,” Clinton said.

Snyder “had requests for help that he had basically stonewalled. I’ll tell you what: If the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there would’ve been action.”

Flint residents complained loudly and often about the water quality immediately after the switch but were told repeatedly it was safe. They didn’t learn the water was tainted until the state issued warnings a year and a half later. Now families fear for their health and especially for the future of their children, who can develop learning disabilities and behavior problems from lead exposure.

The city is 57 percent black, and 42 percent of its people live in poverty.

Former Flint Mayor Dayne Walling, who lost his re-election bid in November amid the water crisis, said newly released emails by Snyder showed that the governor’s staffers disregarded Flint’s plight because of the city’s demographics.

“There are a number of indications that concerns of Flint’s elected leaders and faith and community leaders were being dismissed as political posturing instead of taken seriously as efforts to address very real problems,” said Walling, who is white and was first elected mayor in 2009.

Frustrations boiled over at a weekend protest outside city hall.

“They would never do this to Bloomfield. They would never do this to Ann Arbor. They would never do this to Farmington Hills,” filmmaker and Flint native Michael Moore said, referring to much wealthier Michigan communities. He called for Snyder’s ouster and arrest.