Flint South North Of Detroit

Flint town is a small town in Michigan. Flint was a prosperous town when it had many General Motor workers. The General Motor factories made most of the people who lived in Flint middle-class citizens (Canepari, et al). They made about making about $80,000 a year. After General Motors shut down all of their factories in Flint, most of the people lost their jobs. This put Flint into major poverty and increased their crime rate (Canepari, et al).

As Doidge et al. illustrate, the historical background of Flint City’s drinking water supply emanated from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. This was through a contractual basis for over three decades, and its main source of water was Lake Huron. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department is an extensive system encompassing almost 1,080 square-miles, and provides to more than two fifths of the Michigan State population. In the year 2000 alone, the system covered 11,000 miles of water channels with a storage volume of about 360 million gallons. It supplied water to nearly four million people in Detroit and its metropolitan locale.

In the article, “How Tap Water Became Toxic in Flint, Michigan”, by Sara Ganim and Linh Tran, they discuss how the water became toxic. Flint, Michigan is about 70 miles from the ocean, so they decided to they wanted to stop getting their water from Lake Huron. Many residents thought they would never change their water supply to the Flint River. The change soon went, when the city underwent a financial emergency.

The city of Flint is 70 miles away from the costs of the Great Lakes which hold the greatest sources of fresh water, yet there residents still can't get clean tap water. 15% of homes in Flint Michigan are boarded up ,40% of the people are in poverty , high unemployment rate, and consistently on a list for most dangerous places to live in the nation .In an attempt to cut budget cost in 2014 Flint stop getting pre treated water from the city of Detroit . Problems began when the city started using water from the Flint river .Flint River is 19 times more corrosive than Lake Huron (Detroit water source) . City and state officials denied for months that there was a serious problem by that time, supply pipes had sustained major corrosion and lead

The Flint water crisis has left no one from the damage, even the pets are getting sick of the poisoned water. That was what residents Lee and Ernie of Flint Michigan saw with their cat. Flint is a city in Michigan with a total population of approximately one hundred thousand residents. The issue with the water for Flints and its residents stated in 2014 when the city decided to switch from their water resource from the city of Detroit to a local river. Immediately after the switch residents filed complaints about the water’s smell and color. In Ryan Felton’s “Flint’s Water Crisis: What went wrong,” it is apparent that the crisis should not have happened, and that flint was neglected just because it was an impoverished city.

For Flint, it all began with debt. But you cannot blame a debt that has been developing over the years even though it led to major health concerns, hurt the already poor economy and left thousands with nothing but fear. Flint Michigan was an up incoming town back in the eighties. General Motors had its largest plant (at the time) in Flint and this plant brought much of the population while helping the economy grow. GM created many employment opportunities for Flint residents until they began to downsize in the late eighties. This is when the debt began to grow. GM held much of the economy at this time so the downsizing impacted everyone in Flint. As GM downsized the poverty rates increased, Flint’s government began looking for ways to make up the lost money. In 2011, Flint was 25 million dollars in debt and desperately looking for ways to reduce it (Dixon). The city of Flint was now under a state of emergency and people began asking questions. Governor Rick Snyder made the decision with his appointed members to switch Flint’s water supply from the Detroit Water System to Flint’s own river that ran through town. This switch was supposed to save the city of Flint nearly a hundred million dollars however, it did much more than that.

For 50 years, Flint bought water from Detroit, which legitimately treated the water with orthophosphate, a concoction that basically covered the funnels as water moved through them, keeping lead from filtering into the water supply. This is what the procedure looked like at that point. Flint changed from Detroit's water supply to the Flint River in 2014, to a limited extent to spare cash. Be that as it may, the city did not utilize erosion control to keep lead from entering the water. The waterway itself was additionally found to contain eight times more chloride than Detroit's water, a compound that is profoundly destructive to metals. Most inhabitants in Flint have decades-old lead benefit lines that associate their homes to the city's primary water funnels. At the point when water from the stream coursed through those channels, it destroyed their inner parts, enabling lead to enter the supply. When Flint exchanged its water supply, most Flint inhabitants knew it quickly. Inhabitants depicted the water originating from their taps frequently as an earthy yellow and said it both noticed and tasted odd. It was later found that the water was conveying huge measures of lead, which can demonstrate particularly harming to youngsters. In October 2015, the city changed back to the Detroit water supply, yet Flint's water is still regarded risky to drink.

Flint water crisis has been a low key story that did flush out into mainstream media until recently in early 2016 when President Baraka Obama declared this as a federal state of emergency. This crisis began in April 2014 when Flint’s water supply had been switch from Lake Huron, Detroit’s water system, to the Flint River which has high rates of contamination (Craven and Tynes 2016). After many complaints and petitions to switch the water supply back to Lake Huron’s water, the water source was still not switch over, because the river was claimed “safe” by the white people who held power. However, when the switch was made, the water pipes made of lead are already damaged and contaminated. Leading poisoning in children became a serious issue as many children began to show signs of poisoning and a chance for them to get Legionnaire’s disease. Surprisingly enough, when searching up “Flint Water Crisis”, there was no article that listed race as a potential factor into this decision of switching water supplies, until the addition of “racism” to the search bar to find many articles on this case. The reason to switch water supplies seems to be just saving 15 million dollars (Martinez 2016). However, Flint is a heavily populated black community, more than 57% are black, and Flint is about 40 % poor (United States Census 2016). Therefore, Flint water crisis is the intersection of race, poverty, money and power of a current society that believes in colorblindness and that residential

According to City Council meetings the switch would end up saving the region $200 million over a course of twenty-five years. While they were waiting on the Karegnondi Water Authority to hook up a pipeline they used the Flint River as a source of water. They had previously used the Flint River as its main water source until the 1960’s (Kennedy). Residents were concerned about the use of the Flint River, because of its unsafe history. Flint signed onto the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, which uses Lake Huron, in 1967. The Flint Rivers water quality deteriorated the 1970’s because of the fecal coliform bacteria, low dissolved oxygen, plant nutrients, oils, and toxic substances found. In 2001, the state organized a cleanup of 134 polluted spots near the Flint River area. Industrial complexes, landfills and farms laden with pesticides and fertilizer were among the sites ordered to be cleaned up (CNN Library). By May people begin to notice the awful smell and color of the water. The complaints were ignored. Three months later E. coli and total coliform bacteria are found in the River. A boil order is put in place to help prevent the residents from being exposed to the bacteria. (Kennedy). The

In April of 2014 Flint, Michigan started to get their water from the Flint River rather than the Detroit river that was formerly used as the main water source in hopes of saving money. The water being provided has been classified by Flint residents as smelly and murky and is avoided at all costs. It has also been discovered to cause damage to the lead pipes that transported it throughout the city. Children have been found to have high levels of lead in their blood and this may be the cause of an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease which has killed 10 people in the Flint area. People have also reported rashes from the dirty water. Video news interviews show residents holding water that is

The current water crisis in Flint, Michigan stems from government officials changing water sources. The government of Flint switched from using the water of Lake Huron, which they had used for over 50 years, to using the water of the Flint River, which had a high level of chloride. The high chloride level eventually led to the corrosion of water pipes allowing unhealthy levels of chlorine and lead contamination. Additionally, irresponsible and unreliable water treatment allowed even more contaminates to enter the city’s water source. All this pollution ultimately ended up in the homes of thousands of people, poisoning families throughout the city. Lead poisoning can have disastrous effects on the human body, with some symptoms including “memory loss, anemia (lack of healthy red blood cells), kidney dysfunction, and in severe

Flint in Michigan is located 70 Miles away from the shores of large fresh water bodies, the Great Lakes. Despite this close proximity to the fresh water bodies, the residents have not been able to get the clean water. The water supply of Flint in Michigan in the United States has undergone serious water contamination crisis. The water crisis started in April 2014 (Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, 2016). The contamination of drinking water began when the source of water was changed from the treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River. This later led to a serious contamination of the water due to lead contamination hence creating more danger in the public health. The Flint River had a corrosive nature and caused lead from the old pipes to leach into the water supply. This caused heavy metals in the water supply. This posed serious health problems. For example, six thousand to twelve thousand children were exposed to the contaminated water. The blood-lead level in children increased. The alteration in the water source was the main reason behind the water crisis in Flint.

The Flint Water Crisis began in April 2014 when the city switched its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River as a cost-saving measure. However, several environmental disasters (from automakers, chemical, coal and agriculture industries) over the course of century played a systemic role in contamination of the Flint River for a prolonged period of time, leading to this current tragedy [Wahowiak,2016]. In 2011 a study found that in order for the Flint River water to be considered potable, it would need to be treated with an anti-corrosion agent which would cost the state about hundred dollars per day and could have prevented ninty percent of Flint’s water problems [Silverman]. However, in 2014, the water source was switched to the Flint River without any pre-water treatment. The switch was meant to be a temporary solution until the state-run supply line to Lake Huron was ready for connection in about two years.

Before the water crisis, Flint was receiving water from Detroit’s water pipes which gave out very healthy water. Detroit had enough water to share with other cities. Doing this was not free though and it was not very cheap. Flint had to pay Detroit in order to use the water. After so long, Detroit’s water system had begun to cost too much for Flint. Flint then switched to another water system. The Flint city council voted to switch their supply of water from Detroit to the Karegnondi Water

According to documentary “poison water” by Nova “Since the late 1950s, G.M. closed seven major facilities in the region. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost. In 2011, with the city close to bankruptcy, Governor Rick Snyder stripped power from city officials and assigned a series of emergency managers to fix Flint's financial crisis. ” In order to save money, Michigan state took over Flint and started using it as their water source stating from April 2014.The switch from lake Huron to Flint river ended up being a awful to the residents. The flint water was not being treated inadequately. Even though the government of Michigan knew about this, they weren’t willing to do anything about it. Because of that, the residents were being affected in many ways. The residents started noticing that the water was starting to have an odor and changing colors. On top of that, they started noticing that the water was affecting their children's skins and that the water is thinning their hair.This is not the only way the residents are being affected. From the unmonitored excessive amount of led that is out in Flint's water, these people are exposed to possibly permanent lead poison and other health effects.These people can’t even move out because it's almost impossible to sell their houses in the arias that are affected by this water,and these residents are forced to stay and knowingly use the contaminated water.