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Flint’s tribulations continue to happen

3 min read
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At least as of Friday, a plague of locusts had not descended on Flint, Mich., but anyone living there might want to keep their eyes fixed on the horizon – given everything else the city 60 miles north of Detroit has endured, an infestation of the nasty critters would hardly raise an eyebrow.

It’s endured decades of decay, dislocation and snowballing poverty thanks to the once-thriving city’s deindustrialization. Then, in 2014, Flint’s woes were multiplied when it was discovered Flint residents were being poisoned by the city’s water system.

Emergency managers who had been appointed by the state to run the cash-strapped municipality opted to get Flint’s water from the polluted Flint River and not from Detroit’s water authority in order to save money. Proper corrosion controls were not put in place, and lead from the pipes leeched into the water residents used every day for drinking and bathing.

Lead levels in many of Flint’s children doubled, and 12 fatal cases of Legionnaires’ disease resulted because of the tainted water.

It’s no wonder that, as of last year, the median price for a home in Flint was a mere $14,000.

The state has pledged to spend $87 million to replace pipes, and the city is slowly rebounding, though many of its residents still must use bottled water.

In the midst of this continuing crisis, the city has committed a public-relations blunder that is positively astonishing – they have started sending notices to homeowners that they could lose their dwellings unless they pay overdue water bills.

It bears repeating: They have not been paying their bills because their water is contaminated and not potable. It’s that simple.

The city has responded that, basically, the law is the law. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver did concede that she understood why residents were up in arms, “and I am working to see if any changes or something can be done to help those affected by this, especially given the extraordinary circumstances we have endured due to the water crisis.”

Given the number of vacant, crumbling homes in Flint, the city should be doing all it can to keep residents in the dwellings that remain. Sending notices that they could end up being tossed out is, it goes without saying, hardly a way to accomplish this goal.

Appropriately enough, news of Flint’s ongoing tribulations coincided with the release last week of a report by the National Resources Defense Council that the tap water used by close to 77 million Americans did not meet safety standards set by the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. Pennsylvania ranked third on the organization’s list for the most water safety violations.

This doesn’t mean we all need to start boiling our water. It does mean, however, our water is threatened by outdated infrastructure and the Environmental Protection Agency not making safe drinking water a priority.

This situation stands to worsen if the EPA’s budget is cut by close to 30 percent, as the Trump administration recently proposed.

No, we’re not Flint. But communities near to and far from Michigan need to take steps to ensure that they don’t wander down the same path.

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