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While Americans take clean drinking water for granted, the residents of Flint, Michigan currently lack such a luxury. The failure of state and federal environmental officials has placed the city’s residents at risk for lead poisoning as a result of an attempt two years ago to save the city money by acquiring drinking water from the nearby Flint River instead of from Detroit. Since 40% of Flint’s residents are poor and more than half are African-Americans, community activists allege that Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder and other state officials turned a blind eye to resident concerns on racial and socioeconomic grounds. The scandal has caused the resignation of the director of Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 5 director and Michigan’s state attorney general and the Department of Justice are looking into the filing of criminal charges. The crisis creates a significant test of Snyder’s leadership as he must solve this problem while also facing a work stoppage by Detroit’s public school teachers over the condition of their schools.
This topic brief will provide some background on what caused the Flint water crisis, analyze the responses to the crisis, and then highlight why the Flint water crisis is a situation with national significance.
Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.
The Origins of the Crisis
First, it is important for extempers to have some background on Flint, Michigan. The city was once one of the nation’s major economic centers as General Motors formed there in 1908. The automobile industry was the city’s major lifeline, but foreign competition and the growth of free trade accords with other nations gradually weakened the American automobile industry and plants shut down across the city. Much like Detroit and other major cities in Michigan, Flint has fallen on hard times. It is still sizable, being the seventh-largest city in Michigan according to the 2010 census, but the city’s population is declining. The Los Angeles Times writes on January 22 that in 1990 Flint had 141,553 residents, but now it has less than 100,000. The loss of population, along with economic problems, has placed the city under significant financial stress. The Christian Science Monitor explains on January 13 that Flint has faced deficits in excess of $10 million and it has experienced two financial emergencies. The first took place in 2002 when Michigan sent an emergency financial manager to the city after it ran up $30 million in debt. That emergency ended in 2004 after service fees were raised and cuts were made to the city bureaucracy, but problems re-emerged in 2011, triggering the reimposition of an emergency financial manager by newly elected Republican Governor Rick Snyder. Snyder was elected in 2010 on a platform of fiscal responsibility and his administration has been more than willing to interfere in local governance in places such as Detroit and Flint. This has aroused the ire of public employees unions and local officials in those areas, but Snyder has defended his actions by claiming that they were necessary in order to eventually bring jobs back to Michigan, a state that began experiencing the Great Recession in 2000, eight years before it hit the rest of the country. Extempers should also be aware that some of Flint’s problems resemble Detroit in that wealthier whites left the city when economic prospects dried up, which left an urban core of largely impoverished, minority residents. As the preview of this topic brief noted, 40% of Flint’s population is impoverished and more than 50% of residents are African American. This “white flight” has left Flint with strained finances to maintain an infrastructure that was once built for a larger population, a poorer school system, and higher crime rates.
Flint’s economic problems were a significant contributing factor toward the ongoing water crisis because saving money led city officials, in conjunction with a state-appointed emergency management team, to decide to switch the city’s water supply from Detroit to the Flint River. Detroit draws its water from nearby Lake Huron, but city officials, in conjunction with state authorities, reasoned that Flint could save money in the long-term by constructing its own pipeline to Lake Huron rather than going through Detroit as a middleman. However, this process would take time, so on April 25, 2014 the city officially switched the source of its water supply to the nearby Flint River and cut off its contract with Detroit. The new pipeline is supposed to be ready by the end of this year and once completed the project should save the city an estimated $19 million over eight years.
There were some concerns that the Flint River may not be suitable for drinking water before the switch took place. The Los Angeles Times notes that the Flint River was once heavily polluted by the city’s old manufacturing sector, although tests have shown that the quality of its water had improved in recent decades. Concerns about the quality of Flint’s water continued after the switch as The New York Times on January 21 explains that residents immediately complained about the water’s color, taste, and odor. Some residents even reported rashes and concerns about bacteria in the water. Flint officials discovered coliform in the water in August and September 2014 and advised residents to boil their water, but alarmingly, state officials did not appear concerned. In fact, state officials blamed the weather, aging pipes, and population decline for the poor water quality. The Los Angeles Times points out that Flint has 550 miles of water mains, mostly made of cast-iron pipes, and these were built more than seventy-five years ago. It is true that cold weather and maintenance has caused some iron to leach into the water supply, so state officials apparently assumed that was why some of the water had a yellow and brownish hue. The New Yorker further explains on January 22 that E. coli was detected in the water supply in August 2014, which may be the result of the Flint River having warmer water than Lake Huron. Warm water, especially water that sits in pipes for longer periods of time due to disuse (remember that Flint has seen a population decline) can become an incubator for bacteria. In response, city officials pledged to use chlorine to disinfect it, but this presented two problems. First, the city used too much chlorine in its treatment and that led to the increase of chemical compounds called total trihalomethanes (TTHM). The Los Angeles Times explains that TTHMs are created when chlorine fuses with organic matter. Drinking a large amount of water with TTHM can produce damage to one’s liver, kidneys, and central nervous system, as well as increase one’s risk of cancer. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality was aware of the TTHM problem, but Flint’s residents were told that they had nothing to worry about last January. This occurred despite the fact that there were rising cases of bacterial infections in the city, notably Legionnaires’ disease, a respiratory infection that one acquires when they breathe mist that comes from a tainted water source. CNN notes on January 22 that a local hospital in Flint discovered Legionnaires’ disease bacteria in its water supply and The New Yorker explains that ten people have died of the disease in Flint. And second, evidence has yet to emerge that the city used a proper anti-corrosion agent on the water despite telling the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that one was in place. There were warning signs that something was amiss when a local General Motors plant refused to use Flint’s water supply at the end of 2014, noting that it was corroding car parts. Still, locals were not informed about the severity of the problem and over time, the corrosive water appears to have broken down lead from the city’s pipes, thereby carrying that lead into the water supply and into the homes of Flint residents. For example, Flint resident Lee Anne Walters had the EPA test her water in February 2015 and they found 104 parts per billion of lead in it. By comparison, fifteen parts per billion is the threshold for EPA action although it must be said that any consumption of lead is not good for one’s health.
Pressure kept building on Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality, especially after Virginia Tech Professor Marc Edwards, who is an expert on municipal water quality, reported that lead was becoming a public health hazard. The New York Times also noted that in late September a group of doctors urged Flint residents to stop using the river for water after they found high levels of lead in the blood of children. Things began to snowball from there as Governor Snyder ordered the distribution of filters, the testing of water in schools, and the expansion of water and blood testing on October 1. Flint’s water was reconnected with Detroit on October 16, although residents were still advised to not use unfiltered water for drinking, cooking, or bathing until the damage to Flint’s water system could be assessed. In other words, just because Detroit’s water supply was being used did not make the water safe because there might have been so much corrosion to the pipes that lead could still find its way into the city’s water supply. Last month, the city declared an emergency and President Obama declared a state of emergency for Flint two weeks ago, thereby allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide $5 million in aid. Michigan’s state legislature has also approved $28 million in aid as of the time of the release of this brief.
Responses to the Crisis
At the state level, Governor Rick Snyder has tried to present himself as a responsible steward of the public welfare. Snyder has staked his two-term governorship on making practical decisions and The Christian Science Monitor writes on January 20 that he styles himself as a “tough nerd” (Snyder comes from a venture capitalist background). Although Snyder’s moves in fiscally beleaguered cities such as Detroit and Flint have come under fire, he has enjoyed strong approval ratings, as The Washington Post reports on January 20 that polls last summer showed that 55% of Michigan residents approved of his leadership. These are strong numbers for a Republican governor in a state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. The Flint crisis puts Snyder’s reputation for competence under a microscope and thus far he appears to be making some strong moves to rectify the situation. The Christian Science Monitor writes that Snyder is pushing for a $28 million aid package that would pay for filters, bottled water, school nurses, intervention specialists, testing, and monitoring for Flint residents, and this will be on top of $5 million in federal aid and $10.6 million that the state has already allocated toward Flint. In his State of the State Speech last week, Snyder promised to release all of his e-mails related to the crisis and he has issued two public apologies that take responsibility for the situation, pledging to Flint residents that he will fix it. The Hill reports on January 22 that Snyder told residents “You deserve better, you deserve accountability, you deserve to know that the buck stops here with me” via his State of the State Address. However, it is unclear whether these moves will be enough to salvage Snyder’s reputation or his governorship. While activists such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson have come to Flint and demanded Snyder’s resignation, comparing the ill-treatment of Flint’s residents with the civil rights struggles of Selma and Montgomery decades before, others are merely pointing to how forceful President Obama’s actions have been when compared to Snyder’s. The Christian Science Monitor explains on January 17 that Michigan Democrats are praising President Obama’s use of FEMA relief funds and his criticism of this situation. These same Democrats note that Snyder’s e-mails demonstrate that he was aware of concerns about Flint’s water last summer and did not begin acting on the problem until recently. Culture critic Tony Norman charges in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on January 19 that Snyder ignored recommendations to place a $100-a-day “corrosive protector” to the water to prevent lead from leaching into Flint’s supply and that the crisis shows his austerity measures proved to be a threat to public health. Politico adds on January 20 that the e-mails illustrate that some of Snyder’s aides wanted to blame Flint officials for the problem, as well as the Flint water authority. Additionally, Snyder’s appointment of Darnell Earley as Flint’s emergency manager has come under fire since trying to fix the fiscal problems in Flint likely contributed to the disaster. Still, the issue is not solely cut and dry politically as Earley is a Democrat, but Snyder still appointed him and as Michigan’s top governing official he shoulders the blame. With the information released so far it will also be hard to point a finger at Snyder for “environmental racism,” the phenomenon whereby racial minorities are more likely to be exposed to hazardous waste and other environmental disasters since The Guardian writes on January 22 that race and class do not appear in any of the 274 pages of e-mails that Snyder’s office has released. Nevertheless, it will do the Republican Party few favors to have a sitting governor come under fire from minority groups for his handling of a crisis in a predominately African-American city.
Snyder did appoint an independent task force to review the Flint water situation in October and they released their findings on December 29. The task force noted that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality failed to protect Flint’s water supply and they demanded that its director Dan Wyant be held accountable. Its report alleges that the Department was to blame for the lead poisoning of Flint residents because of its use of a “minimalist approach to regulatory and oversight responsibility” that was “unacceptable and simply insufficient to the task of public protection.” As noted previously, there is some evidence that the Department of Environmental Quality lied to the EPA about whether it was using an anti-corrosion program and The Minneapolis Star Tribune writes on January 22 that state officials have been somewhat confrontational with federal authorities, arguing that the EPA’s mandates to make sure adequate corrosion controls exist, ensure that city personnel are qualified to operate the city’s water system, impose federal standards of water control, and create a website for the public to monitor progress are either unconstitutional, beyond the EPA’s authority, or will do little good since Michigan is doing more than the EPA is requesting. It should be noted, though, that Wyant did resign on December 29 and he will probably not be the last Michigan environmental official to do so by the time the crisis subsides.
While the federal government has castigated Michigan’s response to the Flint crisis, there is some blame that can be thrust upon its shoulders as well. The Chicago Tribune reports on January 22 that even though EPA Regional Director Susan Hedman was informed about the problems in Flint she chose to work behind the scenes rather than inform Flint’s population about the dangers with their water supply. When the EPA sent water expert Miguel Del Toral to Flint to investigate and he came back with a report last June that there were problematic levels of lead in the city’s water supply, Hedman did not publicly release the information. Fortune writes on January 22 that Hedman justified her actions on the grounds that federal law allows the EPA to establish standards for states but cannot force them to comply. Hedman claims to have sought a legal opinion from environmental lawyers, but this took months for a reply, so Del Toral’s clarion call went unheeded. Due to the outcry over the Flint crisis, Hedman announced her resignation last week and EPA chief Gina McCarthy announced that new mechanisms would be instituted to ensure that public health threats were given adequate attention in the EPA bureaucracy and reports like Del Toral’s are acted upon. Neverthless, what works in the EPA’s favor, as The Chicago Tribune notes, is that Snyder’s task force found state regulators more at fault for the ongoing crisis than the federal government.
In terms of criminal charges, the Department of Justice is reportedly working with the EPA and Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican, is also opening a probe. It is too early to comment on whether they will find any significant breaches of misconduct to warrant charges, but extempers should be wary of claims that Snyder should be charged with a crime. That simply will not happen, although charges of negligence might be brought to bear on state environmental officials, especially if it is found that they deliberately covered up the problem. And The New Yorker explains that such evidence might come from investigations into whether officials “gamed” the testing of water to overlook lead concentrations. For example, officials are supposed to test samples from a variety of locations and if 10% or more samples showed lead concentrations in excess of fifteen parts per billion then they should have acted more quickly. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) charges that when state officials looked at samples in June 2015 they only took evidence from a stretch of Flushing Road in Flint that had low lead concentration levels instead of gathering them from around the city. If true, several high-ranking Michigan environmental officials could end up behind bars.
The National Significance of Flint
It would be a mistake for extempers to frame their speeches on Flint as a purely local problem. The issue illustrates that there might be something to claims that Flint’s residents were not listened to because they were poor and black, highlighting the disparities in treatment seen in other racially charged issues of the country such as policing and education. Similarly, the problems in Flint represent a failure of bureaucratic mechanisms that are meant to protect citizens at the state and national level. With some political scientists positing that the 2016 presidential year could be the “year of insurgency,” the Flint water crisis gives more intellectual ammunition those that argue government has become detached from the concerns of everyday citizens.
Furthermore, the Flint crisis speaks to how the United States has never really understood what the proper role of environmental regulation should be. The Chicago Tribune highlights how one of Hedman’s precedessors, Mary Gade, was forced out of her job for the opposite reason as Hedman. Less than a decade ago Gade was accused of being too vigilant in her prosecution of Dow Chemical, a significant employer in Michigan, when it came to removing toxic waste near Saginaw. As a result, she was terminated due to special interest group pressure, and yet the EPA now stands accused of not being vigilant in a situation that called for it. As is the case with climate change, there are polar opposite positions on where the EPA’s jurisdiction lies and what it should do. One school of thought holds that the EPA is a bureaucratic organization that issues rules in an unaccountable manner and that those rules hinder job creation, American agriculture, and American manufacturing. The other side argues that the EPA is necessary to oversee corporations that have traditionally shown little interest in safeguarding the public welfare when those concerns clash with the demands of shareholders. Advocates for the EPA point to its successes in cleaning up America’s parks, waterways, and air since 1970 but despite those successes the EPA has become a popular target for politicians in the Midwest and Appalachia, especially with its recent energy regulations. The Flint crisis illustrates that environmental protection does matter, but the lack of prioritizing that issue may have played a part in exacerbating the problem.
And then there is the argument that can be made that what is happening in Flint could later occur elsewhere in the country. The Christian Science Monitor warns that many of America’s wastewater systems are quite old, with some dating back to the Civil War. As a result of “poor asset management, shrinking federal and state budgets, and a lack of political will” these systems are crumbling. The Christian Science Monitor goes on to say that there are more than one million water mains in the U.S. and that the cost of fixing them could be $1 trillion over the next twenty-five years (the EPA estimates that the cost of those fixes would be $330 billion over twenty years). Solving that problem will prove costly for states and politicians run the risk of antagonizing an electorate by proposing fee increases and other taxes to overhaul the infrastructure. After all, the idea of reforming American infrastructure has been a popular idea in both parties for decades yet it rarely gets done because the issue is not going to be something that drives voters to the polls. There are some cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago that are beginning to modernize their infrastructure, but again that comes with significant cost. Chicago is funding its project via higher water rates and reducing payroll at its Department of Water Management, yet other politicians find that it is easier to hand the problem off to a successor. Without fixes, America’s wastewater systems could one day be susceptible to the problems that affected Flint’s water supply and this is something that is likely to require a federal response due to the prohibitive high cost for low-income communities. Analysts are already speculating that once the state of Flint’s water infrastructure is assessed federal dollars will have to be used to fix the problem.
Finally, putting a human face on the disaster is important and this plays into national arguments about education and prison reform. Think Progress reports on January 22 that the lead poisoning that has affected children in Flint could one day produce more children with learning disabilities. Research shows that lead poisoning can produce mental retardation, shorter attention spans, and behavioral disorders that then create problems for those children in school. Think Progress highlights how a Chicago study recently found a correlation between aggravated assault rates and the offender’s exposure to lead. Flint’s schools have been critiqued for creating a “school to prison pipeline” as its K-12 school system had 11,718 disciplinary incidents last year, with 6,800 suspension incidents. If those numbers rise it will be a larger burden for the Flint community that is already struggling with a high homicide rate and drug problems. Additionally, there are concerns that Flint may not be able to handle the trauma that some kids may have from the crisis, so mental health assistance will be important for state and federal officials to provide for the area. Although there are some critics of the lead poisoning findings, such as USA Today editor David Mastio, who writes on January 22 that Flint’s children have less lead in their blood than their parents and grandparents, it is probably better for officials to veer on the safe side, especially because any lead concentrations in one’s bloodstream are too high.
The Flint water crisis is just beginning to attract significant national attention so extempers should keep following the issue. With more interest will come more sensational coverage, which is something that extempers will have to sort through. Scoring political points will probably be on the minds of many politicians, as extempers can find in a comment section for some of the sources linked to in this brief, but such squabbles will do little for the people of Flint who cannot use drinking water like hundreds of millions of their fellow Americans.