Trust, Corroded

By Madeline Bodin

Last August, Flint, Michigan, ordered a boil water advisory. It was just a precaution after water pressure in the city's water system fluctuated. In most places, this would be a mere inconvenience, but in Flint, it sparked anger, worry, and memories of the ugliest moments of the city's infamous water crisis.

Five years have passed since Flint's crisis began. The world's attention has moved on, and the state of Michigan — and even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency director — have repeatedly assured residents that the city's water is safe. But many residents don't consider the crisis to be over, says Victoria Morckel, PhD, AICP, associate professor of geography, planning, and environment at University of Michigan-Flint.

After all, residents have heard it before. For 18 months after state-appointed city leaders switched the city's drinking water source from the Detroit water system to the Flint River to save money, officials consistently dismissed residents' concerns about high lead levels in water that was discolored, smelly, and making them sick.

Finally, after multiple households and three Flint schools tested positive for dangerously high lead levels in the water, officials finally switched city water back to the Detroit system in October 2015, but that was more of a symbolic act than a cure. The crisis continued as water pipes that had been stripped of their protective coating continued to leach lead into the water. Water languished in the underused system, causing an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease that killed at least 12 people, making it one of the largest outbreaks in U.S. history.

In January 2017, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality said that, on average, the levels of lead in the water coming from Flint residents' taps was below the federal limit, and in April 2018 the state announced the end of its free bottled water program. But today, many residents still refuse to drink from their faucets. Class action lawsuits remain ongoing, and no city or state officials have faced serious legal ramifications. Seven of 15 defendants pleaded no contest to misdemeanors that can later be expunged from their records, while the remaining eight pending charges related to the water crisis, including an involuntary manslaughter case again Nick Lyon, the former director of the Department of Health and Human Services, were dismissed by the attorney general this past June. Criminal investigations were ordered to start over, meaning residents will have to wait even longer for any kind of justice.

"We did not do this to ourselves and yet we have to fix it ourselves. We still have a problem," community activist Nakiya Wakes told journalists at the 2018 Society of Environmental Journalists meeting held in Flint. "How can we trust? I don't know." With all the trauma Flint residents have experienced due to the threats to their health and the government's lies and coverups — which according to a Michigan Civil Rights Commission report were driven by systematic racism — how can the city move forward?

A Virginia Tech researcher who helped confirm Flint's lead contamination holds a sample pipe at their lab in January 2016. Though Flint residents understood the scope of the problem, the validation from this team of young scientists was crucial. Photo by Travis Dove/The New York Times.

Deeper causes

While the Flint water crisis is generally understood to have stemmed from polluted water, its origins can be traced much deeper, to a drastic population decline, the state imposing unelected emergency managers on the financially troubled city, and neglect of the city's majority minority population.

Flint reached its peak population — 196,940 — in 1960. By 2014, the year of the water switch, Flint's population had plummeted to 99,002, according to the Michigan Department of Technology, Management, and Budget, meaning half the number of residents were left to pay for maintaining the same amount of infrastructure. The result: the most expensive water rates in the nation. In 2015, Flint households — 40 percent of whom live under the poverty line — paid double the national average for their water, according to a study by advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

Lead service pipes, which carry water from mains into buildings, are common in older cities, and leach lead into the water that passes through them. Rather than replace the pipes at high cost, for decades water system managers nationwide have added a chemical to tap water that coats the inside of the lead pipes, separating the lead from water. But when not enough of the chemical is added, as happened in Flint, the pipe coating erodes and lead contaminates the drinking water. In Newark, New Jersey, which is having its own water crisis, city officials say the corrosion control chemicals simply stopped working, according to the Washington Post.

"Many cities are going to wait until they hit that EPA threshold of 15 parts per billion of lead before they take action" replacing lead service lines, says retired Brigadier General Michael C.H. McDaniel, who oversaw the Flint pipe replacement program until 2018. "I am urging cities not to wait," McDaniel says. "You spend so much more money on any health emergency than you would have spent on prevention."

Moving forward

Flint began replacing lead and galvanized steel (which can contain lead) service pipes in February 2016. School pipes were replaced first, along with the pipes in households with documented high levels of lead.

As of October 2019, former Mayor Karen Weaver announced that more than 9,000 of the 28,000 suspected lead or galvanized steel service pipes had been replaced through the city's state- and federally funded pipe replacement program. While cities like Madison, Wisconsin, and Lansing, Michigan, have replaced lead service lines over decades as a precaution, advocates say taking even a few years to replace thousands of pipes is too long.

Meanwhile, the city and community institutions are taking other steps to repair trust and support residents recovering from the trauma. Emily Feuerherm of the University of Michigan-Flint is partnering with the Genesee County Hispanic and Latino Collaborative to address those problems through a health literacy program with particular focus on the area's Hispanic and Latinx communities, who faced extra burdens during the crisis. Emergency announcements, health information, and appearances by elected officials were not translated into Spanish, and according to reports from the collaborative, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents staked out resource centers and community gatherings, preventing some residents from seeking emergency resources.

The program includes literacy training in Spanish and English alongside health training. "We start at their level," Feuerherm says. "If they are not literate in Spanish, we'll start with that." Because undocumented people will want to participate, the program will also protect the identities of all participants.

The city is using a federal Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma, or ReCAST, grant it received from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to make sure that city services, community leaders, and anyone dealing with city residents do not further traumatize people who are already struggling, says Pamela Pugh, DPH, Flint's chief public health advisor.

There are currently programs for educators and emergency service workers. For example, K–12 teachers learn how integrating mindfulness in the classroom and the principles of art therapy can help students cope after a water-caused illness or fear of illness. The principles apply to helping students handle other traumas as well, like abuse or a car accident.

Recently, Pugh says, ReCAST Flint began a two-part workshop for customer service representatives in the city's water department. The representatives are learning how to provide trauma-informed care, for themselves as city residents and for neighbors calling in with water problems and complaints.

The training is a recognition that the water department reps are on the front line of the city's water crisis, Pugh says.

The most important thing that city staff, including planners, can learn from Flint is that "they listen and talk to residents in a way that focuses on the residents' social and emotional needs so that the residents never lose trust," says Pugh. "Because once there is a crisis, it's so difficult to regain that trust."

Planning in Flint

For planners, a water crisis goes beyond the technical aspects of lead levels and water infrastructure, says University of Michigan-Flint's Morckel. Of prime importance: relationships. "You can't have a robust public participation process if the residents don't trust city government and see the planning department as part of that government," she says.

Flint went decades without having trained planners on staff before a 2012 Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development funded three positions. Kevin Schronce, one of the original Flint planning department hires who is now a planner for Detroit, says the terms of the grant focused the department's work on long-range planning, including creating a master plan for the city, without the other administrative tasks most planning departments must accomplish as well.

The department held more than 300 master planning events that were attended by more than 5,000 Flint residents. This built a foundation of trust and participation that held strong through the water crisis and into the neighborhood-level work following the 2013 adoption of the Imagine Flint master plan.

Today the department has helped local residents create 13 neighborhood plans and is working on two more, says Suzanne Wilcox, director of Flint's Planning and Zoning Department. It updated the city's zoning code to reflect the changes in the master plan. At press time, the city council was expected to approve the changes in November.

The master plan doesn't sugarcoat issues. "Imagine Flint recognizes population loss, vacancy, and blight. There are few plans that acknowledge those things," Morckel says.

"It was a tough conversation to have," says Schronce. When the planning process began, people were still anticipating a rebound of industrial jobs and a halt to the city's population loss. Planning for continued population loss was the difficult, and accurate, choice.

Facing the facts resulted in a master plan that has "social equity and sustainability" as one of its six guiding principles. It's a principle that is needed in Flint as much today as it was when the plan was adopted in 2013, before the water crisis.

"Social equity and sustainability inform all the work that we do," says Wilcox. "We're not just restoring the city's infrastructure, but also its trust in city government. That's not just the planning department, but across city government."

Madeline Bodin is a freelance journalist and a frequent contributor to Planning.

Eating Away at a Community's Trust

Flint's crisis began in 2014 when the city started using the Flint River for its water supply. For five years, Flint residents have experienced illness, fear, and distrust. Neighborhood-level planning is a step toward repairing relationships between the city and its residents.

April 25, 2014

After using Detroit as its water supply for nearly 50 years, Flint switches to the Flint River.

February 26, 2015

The EPA finds lead levels almost seven times the federal limit in Lee-Anne Walters's tap water and informs the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. A month later, the lead count had nearly quadrupled.

 

March 23, 2015

The city council votes 7–1 to switch back to Detroit water, but the state-appointed emergency manager refuses, citing cost.

July 9, 2015

Then-Mayor Dayne Walling drinks Flint water on TV to prove it's safe.

 

July 13, 2015

Despite a leaked EPA memo that says Flint's pipes are not receiving proper corrosion control treatment, an MDEQ spokesman goes on Michigan Public Radio to insist the water is safe.

September 11, 2015

A Virginia Tech study finds Flint's water has 19 times the lead count of Detroit's and is not safe for cooking or drinking.

October 2, 2015

Michigan's health department confirms another study's finding that the number of children in Flint with lead poisoning has doubled since the switch. The state begins testing school water and distributing free water filters.

October 8, 2015

After three schools test positive for dangerous lead levels, then-Gov. Rick Snyder says the city will discontinue using Flint River water.

November 13, 2015

Residents file a federal class action lawsuit claiming state and city officials knowingly exposed them to toxic water.

January 5, 2016

Gov. Snyder declares a state of emergency in Genessee County as a federal investigation launches.

April–December 2016

Thirteen state and local officials and employees are charged with felony and misdemeanor offenses.

January 24, 2017

The MDEQ reports lead levels in city water are below the federal limit.

June 14, 2017

Multiple state officials are charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with a Legionnaires' disease outbreak linked to the water switch.

April 6, 2018

Gov. Snyder announces the end of the free bottled water program in Flint.

June 4, 2019

Former Mayor Karen Weaver responds to EPA Director Andrew Wheeler's claim that Flint water is safe to drink, saying she will declare it safe only when the medical and scientific communities agree, after testing over time.

June 13, 2019

Prosecutors drop all pending criminal charges related to the crisis. The state's attorney general orders criminal probes relaunched from square one.

Images: Courtesy Goldman Environmental Prize; Office of the Mayor; Linda Parton/Shutterstock; Jonathan Lesage/iStock/Getty Images Plus.