The Flint water crisis

Abstract

The Flint water crisis is one of the most significant environmental contamination events in recent American history. In April 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan, while under the control of an emergency manager appointed by the governor, switched its drinking water supply from Lake Huron water treated and distributed by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River. Failure to treat the water properly at the Flint Water Treatment Plant led to a variety of problems with water quality and public health. Low chlorine in parts of the water system fostered bacterial growth and contributed to an historic outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in 2014-2015. High levels of trihalomethanes brought the city into violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act in late 2014. Finally, systemic lead contamination-revealed through a collaborative sampling effort by local activists and engineers in the summer of 2015resulted from corrosive water eating into lead pipes and other lead-bearing components of Flint's water infrastructure. In October 2015, after considerable public pressure, the city switched back to Lake Huron water. Efforts by federal, state, and local officials to respond to the crisis have focused on restoring water quality, repairing and replacing dangerous and damaged pipes, and addressing public health needs. At the popular level, residents and activists have continued to fight for accountability, reparations, and restoration. A variety of causal explanations for the crisis have been put forward, some focusing on water treatment, regulation, and infrastructure, others on the political context created by state takeover of the city, and others on historical factors like structural racism, deindustrialization, and depopulation.

Exposing the myths of household water insecurity in the global north: A critical review

“…The Flint, Michigan water crisis deserves special mention here. Starting in 2014, lead leached from pipes in the Flint drinking water systems, exposing an estimated 98,000 residents to elevated levels of lead, Escherichia coli , and Legionella bacteria (Butler, Scammell, & Benson, 2016; Pauli, 2020). In brief, failure to treat the water properly, given the piping system and age of infrastructure, led to a variety of problems with water quality and public health (Pauli, 2020).…”

“…Starting in 2014, lead leached from pipes in the Flint drinking water systems, exposing an estimated 98,000 residents to elevated levels of lead, Escherichia coli , and Legionella bacteria (Butler, Scammell, & Benson, 2016; Pauli, 2020). In brief, failure to treat the water properly, given the piping system and age of infrastructure, led to a variety of problems with water quality and public health (Pauli, 2020). As Pulido, Kohl, and Cotton (2016) argues, the decisions leading to contaminated drinking water were set in motion by austerity measures cast by an underfinanced and debt‐leveraged municipal government, in which water provision to low‐income and racialized communities of Flint was explicitly devalued and subordinated to the goals of fiscal solvency.…”

Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Approaches: Anthropological Contributions and Future Directions for Engineering

“…Scholars have recently corrected several “myths” about water insecurity in the global North (Meehan et al , 2020 ), specifically the myth that the global North does not have water or sanitation inequities. In the United States, there are multiple examples of WASH inequities, often arguably driven by institutional racism (e.g., Pauli, 2020 ; 2019). Research also indicates that there is tension between First Nations and governmental organizations regarding water management (Eichelberger, 2010 ; Simms et al , 2016 ).…”

Monitoring the human right to water in California: development and implementation of a framework and data tool

“…However, audits of state and federal data indicate underreporting of such violations (US GAO, 2011) and broader concerns about accuracy, reliability and consistency in data management ( Josset et al, 2019;Beecher et al, 2020). Underreporting of regulatory violations underestimates water quality threats in the US (Fedinick et al, 2017;Allaire et al, 2018;Pauli, 2020…”