Today, Explained - Don't drink the water

Episode Date: April 25, 2018

Four years ago today, Flint, Michigan switched water supplies to save a few million dollars. To date, that decision has cost over $400 million. Governor Rick Snyder says Flint’s water is finally safe again, but residents remain skeptical — they’re marching today in protest. Michigan Radio’s Lindsey Smith explains what exactly happened in Flint and whether the city will ever regain the trust of its residents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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But now it's real. Now it's real. I'm really excited about it because it turns out 80% of employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site in just one day. Amazing. Four years ago today, Flint, Michigan tried to save a few million dollars. The city stopped piggybacking off Detroit's water supply, the Great Lake Huron, and hit up the Flint River. So far,

that switch has cost hundreds of millions of dollars. There will now be an entire generation, an entire generation of children who suffer from brain damage, learning disabilities, and many other horrible effects of lead poisoning that were inflicted on them by Governor Snyder's administration. Earlier this month, the governor of Michigan said he was going to stop providing free bottled water to Flint. Governor Rick Snyder announced the plan Friday, citing data which said Flint's water is testing the same as, or better than, cities across the state. The state had been giving out free bottled water since it was revealed that the city's water supply was contaminated with lead and bacteria several years ago. The governor says the water's safe, but the people of Flint aren't buying it. They're hitting the streets to protest.

No justice? No peace! No justice? No peace! I just want you to know how bad that water is. Now because this man decides that he doesn't want us to have any water, I gotta beg somebody for water. So four years later, is the water in Flint okay to drink?

It's a complicated question. Lindsay Smith has been covering Flint for Michigan Radio. It meets all of the federal standards for lead in water. You may not drink it without a filter, but we are still totally allowed to have lead in water. No amount of lead in water. No amount of lead in water is safe as a health standard, but this is a treatment standard. The people that I've talked to in Flint, most of them still drink bottled water only. They just don't trust what

comes out of their tap. So yeah, there's still people that like even bathe in bottled water. Wow. A lot of it just comes down to trust and a lack of trust. That's why I come get water. No, I don't trust the water, period, point blank. I don't trust the water. It could be five years from now, and I still never drink this water, ever. Never, ever in life will I drink this water ever again because I don't believe them.

I guess to sort of understand why there is this lack of trust, you have to know a bit about Flint and a lot about what happened there. You know what? Flint's like a great working class town. It's a union town. It's got a ton of history. You know, birthplace of the sit-down strike, big former GM town.

GM's still there, but it's just a shadow of what it once was. Just over 50% of people are black, 40% of the people living there are white, and 40% of people living in Flint live at or below the poverty line. So, you know, it's definitely a city that's struggling, but it's got a hell of a heart. And a lot of these people in Flint are some of the best people that I know. And what exactly happened four years ago today? The city officials, state officials,

they gathered in the water plant, they pushed this little back button, and it meant they switched its water source to the Flint River to save money. But the corrosive river water wasn't properly treated and stripped lead from pipes. And other heavy metals too, copper, iron. And it's when it goes its way through the system of aging pipes that get to people's houses.

And in Flint, more than 20,000 of those homes were hooked up through lead service lines, pure lead pipes. So some scientists will say that's like drinking your water through a lead straw. Yikes. And because it wasn't treated right, it really corroded at those pipes. And that's where you had this lead showing up in people's tap water and exposing kids. Causing the number of children with high lead in their blood to double. It also bred bacteria because it wasn't treated properly. We had problems with boil water advisories and E. coli after that.

And later we would find out it helped cause an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease. State health officials say the number of deaths from Legionnaire's disease in the Flint area has now grown from 10 to 12, and it could be tied to the Flint water crisis. How did people discover it? Did the water taste bad? Did someone come in and test it? What exactly happened?

There were some people that brought in water right away and said, you know, what is up with this water? It clearly doesn't look right, doesn't smell right, it doesn't taste right. Something is off with this water. And the city officials and the state emergency manager who was running the city at the time said, you know, don't worry about it. It's no big deal. We're going to flush our hydrants. We're going to make things better. lead. And that comes in the form of a leaked EPA memo to a resident who was concerned, whose kids were exposed, who she knew through blood tests had gotten exposed to lead. And she knew from her water test that she had levels that were way above those federal treatment standards, the federal limits on lead in water. I have twins. One's 56 pounds. One's 35. He hasn't grown in a year. He's still having issues with the anemia. And then realizing at five years old why there's a difference between

them. Yes, it keeps me up at night. Yes, it makes me emotional. These are my kids. These are everybody's kids. And it was really her and a group of citizens that banded together, roped in a guy out of Virginia Tech, a guy named Mark Edwards. He's a scientist who decided that he was going to hop in his minivan with his grad research students and go test Flint's water. This could have been stopped much, much earlier. And unfortunately, the state and EPA misleading people for all this time, no one knew to even look for this problem. Did their own independent testing that showed that there truly was a problem with lead in Flint's water, and

that's what it took. Lead in drinking water should not exceed 15 parts per billion. In Flint, more than half of the homes sampled had over 1,000 ppb. The highest rating was 13,200, more than twice what the EPA considers toxic waste. So what did this Virginia Tech professor come and do? So they came and a group of citizens came together to test people's water. Anybody who wanted to, but mainly they focused on people that were having problems with their water. And the reason they had to do that is because the city that was supposed to be testing high-risk homes was not. And lied about it on documents to the state. And the state was not enforcing the law and telling the city like, hey, you really need to be testing where you should be testing. In fact, the state looked at the test that they submitted, the city submitted and said the water was

technically still good. And it was the Edwards team, the Virginia Tech team, the Citizens team that came in with their results and said, bullshit. And then not long after that, you had a group of local doctors who had blood lead levels with kids. Before the switch and after the switch. And we noticed a significant increase in the percentage of children with elevated blood lead levels. It's almost a doubling. And that's when it wasn't just, oh, there's lead in the water and maybe people can be exposed and let's fight about whether Virginia Tech is a valid scientist or a valid researcher or whatever, if this stuff is valid. No, then it was like, oh, we can prove that kids are getting exposed at a higher level post-water switch than they were before the water switch. And the state initially fought back against that even, but it took them a few days and they came around to it.

The problem persisted for a year and a half before officials admitted there was contamination and switched back to the original water source. I'm a little confused. I mean, isn't clean drinking water in everyone's interest? Why was the state trying to discredit tests and discredit this Virginia Tech scientist Mark Edwards? Why wouldn't they just consider the other data? Ah, you know, it's like turning around the Titanic or something. I just, I really feel like you have a confirmation bias at that point. I mean, why is a great question.

I think the emergency manager at the time said it best when people were really demanding to switch back to Detroit water and the Flint City Council, the powerless Flint City Council, voted to go back to Detroit water. The emergency manager said two things. One, there's nothing wrong with the water, and the state backed him up. The state regulators told me, relax, there's nothing wrong with Flint's water. And then the guy said, besides, we can't afford it even if we wanted to. There is no doubt in my mind that without the doctors and without Edwards and the team of residents that were so dogged and so persistent, oh my God, they were like the biggest thorn in the state's butt at one point. You know, if it wasn't for them really pushing it and the media really picking up on that and, you know, if it wasn't for them really pushing it and the media really picking up on that and, you know, yelling, we felt like we had to scream from the top of the rooftops,

like, this is not cool. Without that, I'm positive Flint would have continued to use the Flint River for another year or two. There's no doubt in my mind that more kids would have been exposed to lead through that. A generation of kids will suffer because they drank and bathed in the water in Flint. So how does the city rebuild trust now? That's after the break. This is Today Explained. All right, Zuprecruiter.com slash explained. Still my name.

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What happened in Flint was one of the most outrageous betrayals of the public trust that's really occurred in U.S. history in relation to environmental disasters, man-made disasters, or failure to follow federal law. This is Mark Edwards. He's the Virginia Tech professor who piled a bunch of his grad students into a minivan and drove to Flint to test the water. What really made it inexcusable, what made it a crime, was the extent to which a few individuals worked to hide this problem. I mean, it could have been solved with a phone call at any point.

And instead, some of these folks at the state, the environmental policemen, really did become environmental criminals and worked overtime to cover up this. And it was really something of a miracle that was exposed. Mark's basically the guy to talk to about safety when it comes to water. So I asked him how we got to using lead pipes for our water to begin with, why this basic necessity is delivered to us through poisonous pipes that affect literally the most vulnerable people.

Kids and developing fetuses, moms, pregnant moms, because that's when their nervous system is most vulnerable. It's when it's developing both in the womb or, you know, as a young child and lead is a neurotoxin. It destroys the nervous system.

It's official U.S. government policy to prevent lead exposure at every opportunity. And how lead got to be in our plumbing is really a great tragedy, which is based on the premise that lead is a great plumbing material. It lasts a long time. It doesn't leak. But with the downside that it kills people. And unfortunately, the water companies at the time made the tradeoff. They'd rather have the good plumbing material rather than the health benefits of other materials. And so it was the law in many cities that you had to have a lead pipe if you wanted to connect your house to the water main. So lead pipe is unique in that it's a government-owned lead source that directly affects a product intended for human consumption, drinking water. fundamental conflict of interest that makes water utilities and that makes the government sometimes behave and do the wrong thing to cover up this problem. And the whole history of lead pipes is

just that. It's 150 years of death, deceit, and denial. And Flint is just the latest example of that story. Criminal charges have been brought against 15 states and local officials in Flint. But how do you fix the water? Well, they switch back to Detroit water. That's the short answer. This is Lindsay Smith again, Michigan Radio. The state decided they would pick up the tab for that. In October of 2015, they switched back.

So they were on the Flint River for 18 months. Lead levels have come down substantially, in fact. But there are still places that have high results. And the thing about lead, it's like Russian roulette. When you have lead pipes, you never know when these little flakes of lead can come off of them. And if they've been severely damaged, like the case in Flint, where you had no, usually the corrosion control treatment kind of seals in that lead, and there's this scale coating that forms on the inside of the pipe and it sort of holds all that stuff together.

But if you expose it with no water treatment, you know, or improper water treatment, we'll put it that way, for 18 months, then you should see the inside of these pipes. They look like they're little sponges or little flakes. You can see it. So all those little flakes, I mean, one little flake has got a ton of lead packed into it. So that's really where the danger is. And that's why they're still saying, you know, they're saying on the one hand the water is safe and we're getting rid of bottled water. But they're also saying on the other hand, please make sure you continue to use your water filters. Because it's important that these lead flakes are caught before they go into your glass. Has anyone owned it? Has anyone said, hey, Flint, that whole thing, our bad, we're sorry?

Well, the governor has openly apologized to Flint on a number of occasions. Government failed you, federal, state and local leaders, by breaking the trust you placed in us. I'm sorry, most of all, that I let you down. You deserve better. And the bottom line is like, okay, sorry, great. But like the people that still have a lead pipe in front of their house are like, that's great.

Thanks for saying sorry. Hook me up with a new pipe. And that will happen. It's just going to take time. Do you think what happened in Flint would have happened if Flint weren't a poor Rust Belt town? Do you think if

Flint had money, this would have never happened? Yeah, of course it wouldn't have happened. No, it wouldn't have happened. Is water not like a basic human right in this country? Is that what Flint taught us? Oh, that's a great philosophical question. I mean, there's fewer things that you can think of that we depend on our government for, our local government, let's just say, than just clean water, you know?

Yeah, it's a big fight in Michigan right now. We're the Great Lakes state. We're surrounded by water. Biggest freshwater source in the world, really. And, you know, in Detroit, you've got mass water shutoffs because of financial situations. Flint's financial situation in part led to the Flint water crisis. It's a lot.

A lot of it is about money. Clean drinking water is not free. And we're struggling with how to deal with that in Michigan big time right now. It's not over. And obviously, if this can happen in Flint, it can happen anywhere, right? Lead pipes are many, many places along the eastern seaboard, Rust Belt cities. Chicago apparently required people to use only lead pipes until like the 80s. That is just mind-blowing to me. So yeah, I mean,

the thing is, all the water treatment people that I talk to will say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Lindsay, we are not Flint. We are not using the Flint River. We treat our water properly. And I say, fantastic. I'm glad you're doing that. But I think that the problem is that the risk is always there as long as those lead pipes are there. And not even lead pipes until 2014, you could have lead in brass fittings in your faucets. So you don't even, you can be a newer house and still have lead in your faucet fittings. So it's just something that to me, like if I lived in a house and first thing I did was check to see if I had a lead pipe. I got my water tested. And if I had a lead pipe, I'd be calling my city and saying, I want this thing out of the ground. And a lot of cities, they'll make you pay for half of it because apparently cities only own like half of the pipe that's out in front of the easement in

the front yard. And you own the part that's like in the front yard. And it's not cheap, but it's just to me, it's kind of about peace of mind. You know what, Lindsay? I recently moved to a house that's over like 100 years old in D.C. And one of the first things I tried to do was to test the water and see if there was lead in it. And I got in touch with the city. There's a website. It seemed pretty easy. They send you a kit.

Really, the kit was just these two tubes that you fill with water and then send back to the city. But they also wanted photos of my pipes. And it was really hard to figure out which were my water pipes, actually. That wasn't that obvious. So that was kind of tricky. And then I send it back and I didn't hear back for weeks. So I followed up and they send me these results. And the results are like incomprehensible.

It just says like, here's how much lead's in your water. And I feel like I have like a college degree and apparently enough time to like go through this process. And I just wondered like I'm asking these questions and it's this hard to get an answer. And you live in a city that actually has this resource available. So many cities will not even test your water or send you a kit or ask you to take pictures. D.C. is thorough because they've been under scrutiny before. And that's why they've been. You know what I'm saying? So like not only are you a smart guy and you had the time and you try to figure it out, you also live in a city that's already had a water crisis

and knows they've kind of gone out of their way in a lot of ways are in the forefront of having like a map and they know where their lead service lines are. Most cities don't even know where they are. They have no clue where they are. And Flint isn't the cautionary tale that's going to change that, huh? I sure hope in some ways it is. I really hope so. Lindsay Smith produced an award-winning documentary about the Flint water crisis. It's called Not Safe to Drink. I'm Sean Ramos-Firum. This is Today Explained. Thank you. But once we do, apparently, we'll get qualified candidates through ZipRecruiter's smart matching technology, which learns what you're looking for, identifies the most qualified candidates, and invites them to apply for your job. My name is ZipRecruiter.com slash explained, and I approve this message.