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Flint residents traumatized, distrustful a year after lead-in-the-water crisis began
By Ed Runyan
FLINT, mich.
More than a year after the Flint, Mich., lead crisis caused communities and states throughout the nation to examine their own water systems, Flint has come back into compliance with federal lead rules, but people are still angry and distrustful.
Flint, a city of just under 100,000 people, has been hard hit by deindustrialization, losing many of its jobs at General Motors in recent decades and half of its population.
As a cost-saving measure, Flint switched from getting its water from Detroit, which draws the water from Lake Huron, to taking it from the Flint River in 2014. But it failed to add a chemical needed to ensure the water wouldn’t be corrosive.
It caused lead in the system’s pipes to leach out of pipes and fixtures and into drinking water. Eventually, after problems with the water became apparent, the city switched back to Detroit water.
To reduce the lead contamination, Flint will spend millions of dollars in the next few years replacing about 16,000 lead and iron service lines, which are the pipes that travel from the water mains in the street into homes.
According to the mlive.com website in Michigan, the corrosivity of the Flint water apparently caused the extremely high lead levels in the home of Flint resident Lee-Ann Walters, a mother of four.
A peer-reviewed research paper by professor Marc Edwards and other colleagues at Virginia Tech University says an evaluation of Walters’ home showed that the layers of corrosion inside her iron pipes were destabilized by the corrosion. That is believed to have caused her high lead levels.
Nayyirah Shariff, a Flint community organizer, told journalists studying water-quality issues through the Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources last week that Flint residents still don’t feel comfortable using the water, especially for drinking.
“I don’t think anybody is drinking the water unfiltered,” Shariff said. “Last year we had Shigella. We don’t know what the hell we’re going to get this year.”
Shigella is an intestinal disease caused by a family of bacteria, according to The Mayo Clinic. The main sign of Shigella is diarrhea, which is often bloody.
Most people are either using bottled water or adding a filter to their water system that removes contaminants, Shariff said.
Even bathing with Flint water is still questionable, Shariff said.
“A lot of people have rashes that aren’t going away,” she said.
“This water crisis is just one crisis we’re dealing with,” said Jeff Grayer, a Flint native who was the leader of a crew replacing service lines in Flint last Tuesday.
Grayer said the water pipes “are just one thing. The poverty-stricken area and the lack of education is an entirely other discussion and conversation.”
The problems with Walters’ pipes were discovered in February 2015. A month later, Flint City Council voted to stop using Flint River water, but the state-appointed city manager, Jerry Ambrose, overruled council, according to CNN.
After testing showed high lead levels in three Flint schools that October, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed a bill authorizing $9.35 million to help Flint switch back to Detroit water.
Vicki Johnson Lawrence, director of a five-year, federal-grant-funded program called Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma, said one of the program’s goals is to help the community cope with the trauma caused by the crisis.
She said one type of trauma is experienced by parents feeling guilty because their children were exposed to lead, which can cause learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and lower IQs.
“And it’s quite traumatizing really to think you just exposed them to something that might impact them forever,” Johnson Lawrence said.
Through the program, Flint children will get positive messages, such as violence prevention and empowerment.
“The needs [in Flint] are growth, skills, communication, trust, violence prevention and academic performance,” she said.
Closer to Youngstown, Sebring had to distribute bottled water and provide free water and blood tests in January 2016 after it had high lead levels.
Warren also had high lead levels in 2008 that residents apparently never understood because of the ineffective notification process employed at the time.
Reporting for this article was made possible, in part, by a fellowship with the Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources.