By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Lindsey Smith, a reporter at Michigan Public Radio, received the memo just before July 4.
The federal EPA document reported that lead levels in the water at Lee-Anne Walters’ home in Flint, Michigan, were at catastrophic levels, including some readings of 1,000 of parts per billion. The standard for bottled water is five parts per billion of the neurotoxin.
“I do remember that moment reading that memo and thinking if this is true, this is so messed up,” Smith said.
Smith, along with Michigan radio colleague Rebecca Williams, and environmental crisis researcher Matthew Seeger took part recently in a panel “Journalism Matters: The Flint Water Crisis” at Bowling Green State University.
For a year, the public radio station had been reporting on Flint residents showing up at city council meetings brandishing water jugs filled with discolored, foul tap water.
The city by order of a state appointed emergency manager had switched its water source from the Detroit system to the Flint River in 2014. The water ran through a water treatment plant that had been out of service, and which the operator said was not ready.
The water was not treated properly. The complaints were so constant, Smith said, that journalists in the radio’s news meetings began questioning where the story was going. Officials insisted the water was safe.
That memo, and then revelations by pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha of elevated levels of lead in her young patients’ blood, made this a story, a national story.
The Flint Water crisis was the rare environmental crisis story. “Science stories don’t break they ooze,” Williams, the station’s science reporter at the time, said. The evidence of harm can take decades to emerge, and the links are difficult to establish.
In Flint the damage was clear, and it was the city’s children who were being harmed. Seeger said more than 3,000 children under 6 were drinking the water. Lead can cause a range of health, behavioral and developmental problems.
Despite the numbers, though, the state continued to tell the residents to relax, that the water was fine. They attacked Hanna-Attisha’s figures. Then the Detroit Free Press looked at the state’s own figures, and showed they confirmed the contamination.
Smith titled her opening section of the discussion “Lying Liars who Lie,” calling out various state of officials who obfuscated and switched their stories.
After the memo Michigan Radio put together team to produce a documentary on the crisis.
Right before the documentary was to be broadcast, the station got an angry call from the governor’s office complaining they got the story wrong. It was the Flint City Council that had approved switching the water. That was a lie, Smith said.
The council had approved a resolution to switch to a new system that was still being constructed, but it was the state treasurer and the state appointed emergency manager who had made the fateful decision.
Michigan’s emergency manager law was one of several factors that played into the Flint Water Crisis.
As a reporter covering western Michigan, Smith had seen the unpopular law at work in Benton Harbor and the Muskegon Heights school district where the emergency manager pink slipped the entire staff and brought in a private charter school to run the system. The result was disaster.
When Michigan voters threw out the law, Gov. Rick Snyder, a CPA who ran for office as “One Tough Nerd,” and the Republican led legislature turned around passed a new version that could not be repealed by voters.
Those emergency managers were imposed in places where minorities were the majority of the population, Smith said.
Even though both Flint and Detroit had emergency managers, the state still could not work out a deal to keep Flint on Detroit water until the new water distribution system was operating.
One of the complicating factors in getting the Flint water story out, Seeger said, was that Detroit itself was facing bankruptcy, and even considering selling off the art in the Detroit museum.
Williams noted there was also a legislative sex scandal.
Seeger said that the Flint story is also one about the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. Lots of places, most older American cities, have ancient water pipes ready to fail. Until about 1930 those pipes were made of lead with a layer to keep water from coming in contact with it. Without proper treatment though, as in the case of Flint, that system can break down.
Lead contamination arises when the pipes are disturbed in some way, he said. That’s why readings of lead levels varied greatly.
Also in older cities with shrinking populations the systems have dead ends where water collects. That fetid water then flows back into the system when the water pressure drops.
Yet finding funds to improve what people can’t see is difficult, Seeger said.
The crisis also caused a host of other health problems including one of the worse ever outbreaks of Legionnaires Disease. Ninety-one cases were recorded, he said, but there were probably more.
While Flint’s water is now the most monitored, Smith said she wouldn’t drink it until the lead pipes are replaced. “You should be aware of your own system,” she said. “That’s the single most important thing you can do.”
These crises will be more frequent, Seeger said. Michigan is now testing water for PFAS, a chemical widely used in industry, including fast food wrappers. It’s out there. Once Ohio starts testing for it, PFAS will be found.
When a crisis arises, Seeger said, “most often communities are on their own. A community has to take responsibility for itself in terms of responding to a crisis.”
That was seen in Flint as citizens held meetings and started Facebook pages. With social media, he said, citizens can breakthrough the “command post mentality” where officials control the narrative.
As a reporter Smith said she’ll continue “to get as many people in a room to cross check things.”
That’s not enough for her. “I want it all. I want the data. I don’t believe state officials, especially spokespeople. I just don’t trust them.”
