Flint water crisis monologue:

The Flint water crisis is the most recent and most shocking example of environmental injustice
in the US. It was a total disregard for human life. It’s almost unbelievable that it could happen in
modern times but it did and it highlighted many injustices that continue to plague our system. If
you haven’t heard what the crisis was here's a short RECAP:
in 2014, when the city switched its drinking water supply from Detroit’s system to the
Flint River in a cost-saving move. The city found itself in a deep economic depression
after the auto industry left the area: Flint’s ​population​ has plummeted to just 100,000
people, a majority of whom are African-American, and about 45 percent of its residents
live below the poverty line. Nearly ​one in six​ of the city’s homes has been abandoned
Governor Rick Snyder appointed an emergency manager to oversee and cut city costs.
Thats when the ​tragic decision​ to end the city’s practice of piping treated water for its
residents from Detroit in favor of a cheaper alternative: pumping water from the Flint
River to be the main water source . The Flint river is known to be highly polluted for
decades it’s even caught fire from all the contaminants...twice! Although the river water
was highly corrosive, Flint officials failed to treat it, and lead leached into the drinking
water. Then they found fecal coliform bacteria in city water—this happened because the
city's failure to maintain sufficient chlorine to disinfect the water. Ironically, the city then
—added mass amounts of chlorine without addressing the lead pipes issue—creating a
new problem​: elevated levels of a chemical known as (TTHM). This causes cancer!!!
It seems like nobody knew what they were doing even though I’m sure there were water

engineers consulting the city officials on the simple science of water and bacteria.

The Flint water crisis is extremely disheartening but fits a pattern in our country; where certain
communities are disproportionately burdened with environmental contamination and serious
health risks. The areas in Flint Michigan that were the most affected by contaminated water
were the poor neighborhoods.The lower income areas had the old pipes that hadn’t been
replaced by the city and this literally led to lead filled water. In some zip codes lead levels were
6 x’s higher than others. Flint’s crisis highlighted just how environmental injustice and racism go
hand in hand in our country. It not only exposed the racist system it highlighted many injustices
that our underserved communities face on a daily basis.

Social injustice:​ There was a total lack of concern for the possibility of harming a
certain community. The Civil Rights Commission asserts the “deeply embedded
institutional, systemic and historical racism'' played a fundamental role in the decision to
supply the majority-black city of Flint with contaminated river water as a cost saving
measure.
 Procedural injustice:​ Emergency city managers were not elected by the community.
They didn’t live in the community, or work for the community. Therefore they weren’t
accountable to the community. They treated residents' complaints with total disregard
and ignored the science. Even though you could see the water was brown, tasted awful
and smelled foul. The city managers insisted that the water was safe.

Distributive injustice​: Residents concerns were totally dismissed at first. There is a

federal law that states you have to ensure safe drinking water to the public. They didn’t
ensure this on any level city, state or federal level. Once they were finally acknowledged
that there was a problem the officials were slow to respond with any help.

Corrective injustice;​ First the city officials tried to cover up the levels of lead and
bacteria. Then when they were exposed they wouldn’t fix the problem. It was literally
killing people and the city managers didn’t fix the problem. There was no urgency on the
part of the government they chose to create a problem and had the opportunity to
correct it but did nothing. They watched as people were denied a basic human right in
our country = clean water.

Reading about the Flint water crisis is just unreal to me. We are the wealthiest country in the
world and this was a good idea to save some money???? You cannot live without water.It a
necessity for all life! It makes me sad and extremely angry to see how this crisis happened. I
hope that we learned from this tragedy. saving money is not above people's basic human right.
It’s a federal law that the city has to provide their communities with clean drinking water. How
this could happen and then go on for more than a year is disgusting. I think it just helps to
highlight how messed up and that there are truly social/racial inequalities in our system.
Government officials chose to target a certain population to save money. Why? Well because
they were poor and black. They didn’t matter, their lives didn’t matter. This is why there is so
much distrust in these communities with the government. They’ve been let down and taken
advantage of time and time again. It’s our responsibility to take care of those less fortunate.