Like water, money has been pumped into Flint – over half a billion dollars from the federal government, from the state, and from private donations. Fifteen current or former state and city officials and staff were indicted as a result of contaminants in Flint's water. A lead pipe - what water safety expert Marc Edwards calls "a ticking time bomb."įlint re-connected to Detroit's water system, and Michigan's Governor, Rick Snyder, apologized. It turns out vital chemicals required by law to control corrosion in old lead pipes were not added after the switch to Flint river water, causing lead to flake off. "The state conceded that, yes, we re-looked at our numbers, and yes, there is a lead problem." They forced the state finally to stop denying the undeniable. Mona's revelations were the game-changer. "And I grew up feeling so lucky and so fortunate that I was here."ĭr. "I was raised in this milieu of acutely knowing what injustice was," she said. She's the daughter of Iraqi immigrants, who were afraid ever to go home after Saddam Hussein took power. What was perceived in Flint as the hijacking of democracy resonated with Dr. They city council said, 'Hey, we don't want to be on Flint River water.
"So if they said, 'We shouldn't be on Flint River water. "They're still there, but they're puppets they have no role," Dr. Teichner asked, "And what becomes of the role of the city council and the mayor?" A distressed community, Flint was even without safe water.įlint's finances were in such bad shape that in 2011, the state seized control of its government. Flint's population is half what it was in 1960, the city's decimated neighborhoods often occupied by people too poor to leave. Today, GM's presence here is dramatically reduced. Once, Flint was among the most prosperous communities in the country, the birthplace of General Motors.
And it was these kids who got me out of bed and said, 'Fight back."įight back, in a city that for decades now seems to have been fighting losing battles. And I realized that every number in my research was actually a kid, a child I'd cared for. and there was this kind of new strength that I found inside me.
So, after hiding under the covers for a period, I woke up around 3 a.m. Teichner asked, "And how did that make you feel?" "The governor's office spokesperson said that I was splicing and dicing the numbers." Hanna-Attisha "an unfortunate researcher, that I was causing near-hysteria," she said. But still the state stonewalled.Ī spokesperson for the Department of Environmental Quality called Dr. This was the frightening proof that Flint water wasn't safe. "For high risk groups, especially those infants who are on the formula and pregnant moms, we would say no tap water," she recommended. Hanna-Attisha revealed that in the 17 months since the switch to Flint River water, the number of children with high levels of lead in their blood had doubled, and in some neighborhoods tripled. Suspicious, she was determined to find out some other way: "Our clinic here in Flint, the Hurley Children's Clinic, we see the most Flint kids, so we decided to look at our own data, and in record speed kind of ran the numbers." "I thought that was odd, because they had the data."