Why is flint michigan so bad

She had survived cancer twice, forcing her into early retirement, and she lived on a limited income. He said his doctor says the rash is from the new drinking water, and I told him to have his doctor document this and he can bring it to the attention of the MDEQ, since lab analyses to date show that the drinking water is meeting all health-based standards. Asked to respond, the city said the water met all safety requirements and that it was continually monitoring for problems.

But in fact there was a problem. A serious one. But this was breaking federal law. In the years to come, the question of whether the authorities omitted this knowingly or through a terrible misunderstanding of the law would be a matter of intense dispute. Together, this was a dangerous combination. It extends the life of the pipes and, because it prevents metals from fouling the drinking water, it helps protect public health as well. In about half of all American water companies, including the Detroit system, orthophosphates are added to the water at the treatment plant.

These create a protective coating that helps keep metals from leaching into the water as it flows through the water mains and the service lines running to individual houses. The brown water that gushed from the Civic Park fire hydrants, dark as coffee: that was corroded iron.

Flint residents did not yet know all this. But they did know that the water stank. Meanwhile, public figures spent the summer counselling residents to have patience as they worked out the kinks. And yet, before the end of the summer, the city issued three separate boil-water advisories in 22 days.

These relatively common notices come when there is a system disturbance that could affect water quality, such as a drop in pressure caused by a broken main or maintenance work.

But in Flint, which was already uneasy about this expensive and strange-tasting water, the advisories did not seem ordinary at all. The first notice came on 16 August after faecal coliform bacteria, also known as E coli , had been detected. It was a surprising discovery. Across Michigan, the bacteria show up in drinking water about three times a year on average, and sometimes not at all. Its presence suggests that the water is contaminated by human or animal faeces, which can make people ill, especially older people, young children and those with weak immune systems.

Everybody with a tap was told to boil water for one minute before drinking, bathing, brushing teeth, washing dishes, cooking or making ice.

Each advisory reached farther into Flint. Both agreed that the advisories were a red flag but did not pose an inherent danger to residents.

As a fix, the city announced that it would increase the disinfecting chlorine treatment and flush the system in the advisory areas. It was all very confusing. Officials had conflicting explanations about what caused the E coli contamination in the first place. There was agreement on one thing, however: the water leaving the treatment plant met the standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act. People could drink it without worry.

A round the time of the boil-water advisories, workers at a General Motors plant in Flint noticed rust forming on engine crankshafts and blocks. Suspecting the new water supply was causing the problem, GM experimented with a costly reverse-osmosis technique to purify it. The company also tried diluting it with water trucked in from Detroit. But nothing worked. The day she heard the news, Jan Burgess, a legally blind homeowner in her early 60s, complained to the EPA through its website.

Some had private wells dug. We worry every time we shower. The city of Flint is still very economically depressed and most citizens cannot afford anything other than to use the river water. The anxiety reverberated all the way to the state capital, Lansing, where Governor Rick Snyder was weeks away from winning reelection.

My mom is a city resident. He had no expertise in water treatment, of course; he was relying on the district engineer for the MDEQ. Whatever the reason for the rust, GM workers were unsettled. They had used it to brew coffee and wash their hands, take showers and sip something cool when they were thirsty.

At school, their children sipped from the drinking fountains. On a January evening in that was cold enough to make your eyes water, hundreds of people packed into the fellowship hall of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, a large brown building less than a mile from the Flint River. It was standing-room only. Some people kept their winter jackets and hats on. Mayor Walling was there, as well as the public works director and members of the city council. They settled in to hear the stories of their constituents, some of whom shook with anger or wept.

Only hours before the meeting, there had been another protest downtown, one of several in the past week. Winter weather seemed to deter no one from outdoor demonstrations. People needed to be heard. There was more news about the water. The city had been informed that its water violated the federal limit for total trihalomethanes, or TTHMs — four colourless, odourless chemical compounds that are a byproduct of the chlorine disinfection process.

When ingested over many years, TTHMs can increase the risk of cancer and cause liver, kidney and nervous-system problems. It was a violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act, and so, as required by law, a notice was mailed to Flint residents on 2 January. They were told that steps were being taken to fix the problem, including the installation of a TTHM monitor and a charcoal filter at the treatment plant.

At the same time, though, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems were advised to talk to their doctor about drinking the water. This satisfied no one. People traded hair-raising stories. A week after the gathering at the church, there was another meeting about the water, this time in the domed auditorium of city hall. A panel of experts spoke to a crowd of about , some of whom had tucked bottles of discoloured water in their bags and coat pockets.

You can make a judgment after talking to your doctor. Puddles formed on the dry grass and splashed the skin of the delighted kids who ran through it. But the spray looked strange. The shock of it caught in his throat. Something had been wrong for months. That spring, Flint, under direction from state officials, turned off the drinking water that it had relied upon for nearly fifty years.

The city planned to join a new regional system called the Karegnondi Water Authority, and while it waited for the KWA to be built, it began bringing in its water from the Flint River. But after the switch, many of his neighbors grew alarmed at the water that flowed from their kitchen faucets and shower heads. They packed public meetings, wrote questioning letters, and protested at city hall.

They filled clear plastic bottles from their taps to show how the water looked brown, or orange, and sometimes had particulates floating in it. Showering seemed to be connected with skin rashes and hair loss.

The water smelled foul. A sip of it put the taste of a cold metal coin on your tongue. Residents were advised to run their faucets for a few minutes before using the water to get a clean flow. As the months went by, the city plant tinkered with treatment and issued a few boil-water advisories. State environmental officials said again and again that there was nothing to worry about.

The water was fine. By making it a commonplace for clean water to be delivered to homes, businesses, and schools, we have saved untold lives from what today sound like antiquated diseases in a Charles Dickens novel: cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever.

Here in Flint, it was instrumental in turning General Motors—founded in in Vehicle City, as the town was known—into a global economic giant. The advancing underground network of pipes defined the growing city and its metropolitan region, which boasted of being home to one of the strongest middle classes in the country. McCathern is a tall, bald man with a thin mustache and a scratchy rasp in his baritone voice. At the time of the water switch, he had led the nondenominational Joy Tabernacle Church for about fifteen years.

But in , it made a home in Civic Park, when a Presbyterian church closed after eighty-five years and gave its sanctuary over to the young and hopeful congregation. But over the years, the neighborhood was blighted by vacancy. When the sound of gunshots on the street outside interrupted services, McCathern gave a nod to the church musicians, urging them to play louder. The young men filling his pews built a proud society, if not by getting their names on the honor roll, then by tagging their names with spray paint.

In the end, people just want to be seen. The ghosts of the past went well beyond Civic Park. There were more than a hundred different manufacturing establishments in town—ten of them employed at least a thousand people—and they made not only automobiles, but paints, varnishes, tools, dies, cotton textiles, and a wealth of other products.

Flint had one of the highest per capita incomes in the nation and, despite being severely segregated, it was a magnet for African American migrants from the South. His influence is still felt through the C. Mott Foundation, a philanthropic power broker headquartered in the city. The Parks Department had a robust Forestry Division that cultivated a beautiful thicket of willow, oak, and elm trees along the avenues.

The Michigan School for the Deaf expanded into new buildings that served hundreds of students from around the state. And on a green campus just east of downtown, the city invested in its cultural life by developing the Flint Symphony Orchestra, as well as a state-of-the-art stage and auditorium, schools for both the performing arts and visual arts, a youth theater, a sunny public library, museums of local history and classic cars, the largest planetarium in the state, and the sweeping Flint Institute of Arts, which lined its galleries with everything from Matisse paintings to Lichtenstein silk screens to carved African masks.

But in the latter part of the twentieth century, GM closed most of its plants in the city and eliminated almost all the local auto jobs. Smaller companies followed suit or simply shut down for good. Between and alone, nearly of them exited the downtown area.

With the shuttered businesses came the shuttered houses and schools. More than half the population, which had reached a high point of nearly two hundred thousand in , disappeared. Some twenty-two thousand left between and , an 18 percent drop in just ten years, and the fourth-largest population loss in the country, behind only Detroit, New Orleans—which had suffered Hurricane Katrina—and Gary, Indiana. There are currently jobs available in Flint and Genesee County, business leaders say.

Those numbers are part of the more than 97, jobs posted at mitalent. As we see more of our businesses with openings that they have difficulty filling them, there is a huge opportunity. Chamber officials said it had success using its TeenQuest program to focus on preparing high school students for employment and strengthening their skills. That program provides many kids their first summer jobs and those experiences have often led to another job, Karcher said. Parents and families of students in TeenQuest showed interest in the program so the chamber created a spinoff called Career Edge for adults, according to Karcher.

The job postings in Flint and Genesee County shows that businesses have positions available. There are programs in place that try to help with transportation, child care and even health care for people who may have some issues that's keeping from working.

Below is a searchable databases with poverty rates and median household and family income estimates for all U. Only municipalities and counties with at least 65, residents are included in these databases. The reason: The Census data is based on its annual American Community Survey, and ACS one-year results are not statistically valid for smaller populations. This second database below has data for of the country's 3, counties.

While only a fourth of U. You can create rankings by searching for "all counties" and then clicking on a category label to create a bottom-to-top or top-to-bottom list. Click once to list the lowest numbers first; click twice to list the highest numbers first. The databases list medians for both household and family incomes. Households include people who live alone or with roommates who are not related. Families are households with at least two residents related by birth, marriage or adoption.