Flint Water Crisis: Overview

Introduction

Beginning in 2014, a citywide crisis arose in Flint, Michigan, as residents and researchers discovered that the city's public water supply was contaminated first with disease-causing bacteria and, later, with lead and potential carcinogens. Although the city had previously gotten its water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, Flint's leadership opted to save money by switching to a new water provider and temporarily began drawing water from the Flint River in April 2014. The consequences of that decision proved extensive, as the chemicals used to treat the water for human consumption corroded the city's lead pipes and created dangerous by-products. During the years following the switch, Flint residents and activists came into conflict with city and state leadership, arguing that officials were not addressing the water crisis adequately or in a timely manner.

Amid the crisis, a debate arose surrounding Michigan's emergency management model, a system established in 1988 and broadened in 2012 that allows the state to appoint an emergency manager (EM) to oversee the operations of a financially struggling city. As Flint had been placed under emergency management in 2011 and remained under such management during the water crisis, the events taking place in the city proved, for many, to be a referendum on the effectiveness of the system itself. Although supporters of the emergency management model acknowledged the health and socioeconomic ramifications of the Flint water crisis, they argued that the crisis did not reflect the effectiveness of the emergency management model overall. Supporters have argued that emergency management was a key means of improving the financial outlooks of Michigan's struggling cities and asserted that emergency management has proven beneficial in cities such as Hamtramck, where a major budget shortfall was resolved late in 2014. Opponents of the emergency management model, however, have argued that the events in Flint demonstrated that the practice of appointing EMs disenfranchises a city's residents and prioritizes money over the needs of the people. Critics particularly have argued that Flint's EMs exacerbated or even caused the city's water crisis and that cities should be run by elected officials rather than appointed EMs.

Understanding the Discussion

Chlorine: A chemical used to disinfect water.

Emergency manager: An appointed government official tasked with overseeing the operation of a financially struggling city, town, county, or school district; often abbreviated EM.

Lead: A metal that, when ingested in high levels, can cause various health issues, such as developmental delays in children, reduced attention and learning deficits, kidney damage, and high blood pressure; a durable, malleable material formerly used to make plumbing pipes.

Public Act 101 of 1988: The law that first established Michigan's emergency management model.

Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA): A federal law, first enacted in 1974, that regulates public drinking water throughout the United States.

Trihalomethanes: Chemical by-products formed through the interactions of chlorine with organic matter such as algae in water.

History

To understand the water crisis that occurred in Flint, Michigan, during the second decade of the twenty-first century, one must understand several significant pieces of legislation. First among them is the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), a federal law originally enacted in 1974 that regulates public drinking-water supplies throughout the United States. The law does not regulate water from private residential wells but does regulate water originating in reservoirs, lakes, rivers, and public wells, and delivered to the general population. Revised and expanded multiple times thereafter, the SDWA stipulates that public water systems must adhere to health-related guidelines overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including guidelines stating the maximum concentrations of contaminants that may be present for water to be considered safe. Contaminants of particular concern include lead, a metal that can cause developmental delays in children and organ damage in adults, as well as trihalomethanes, chemical by-products created when the chemical chlorine, used to disinfect water supplies, interacts with organic materials found in water, such as algae. Trihalomethanes have been linked to ailments including kidney and liver damage, central nervous system impairment, and cancer. The EPA had continued to specify that the maximum allowable concentration of total trihalomethanes in water is 0.08 milligrams per liter. In the case of lead, a water system must act to mitigate it if more than 10 percent of water samples collected contain 0.015 milligrams of lead per liter or more.

Another factor in the Flint water crisis was the establishment of Michigan's emergency management model as an alternative to bankruptcy. Public Act 101 of 1988 specified that the state could appoint an emergency financial manager to oversee a city during a financial crisis, and the system was expanded to include school districts and towns as well as cities with 1990's Public Act 72. The option to appoint an emergency financial manager was used eleven times over the next two decades, but in 2011, Michigan governor Rick Snyder enacted Public Act 4, broadening the powers of emergency managers (EMs). Michigan voters, encouraged by unions and civil rights groups, eliminated that law through a referendum the following November. In December 2012, Snyder signed a new EM law, Public Act 436, that could not be challenged via a referendum. Under that law, EMs are tasked with overseeing the operations and finances of at-risk cities or school districts, and their authority supersedes that of elected city officials. EMs control staffing, can break or change existing contracts, and may sell city property.

One city placed under emergency management during Snyder's administration was Flint, which had previously been under emergency management between 2002 and 2004. In 2011, a state financial review team found that since 2007 the city had accumulated a total deficit estimated at $25 million and consequently recommended that an EM be appointed. Four EMs—Ed Kurtz, Mike Brown, Darnell Earley, and Gerald "Jerry" Ambrose—oversaw the city between 2011 and 2015. In April 2015, Snyder declared that the financial emergency in Flint had ended, although the city remained under the supervision of an appointed financial advisory board.

In 2012, while Flint was under emergency management, county leadership planned to end Flint's association with the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, which supplied water services to the city, and switch to the new Karegnondi Water Authority to reduce costs. However, the Karegnondi Water Authority was still constructing a pipeline to deliver water from Lake Huron, so EM Kurtz opted to use water from the Flint River in the interim. Within a month of the switch to Flint River water on April 25, 2014, the public began complaining of the water's odd color and foul odor. By August, the local government became aware of health risks posed by the water, including the presence of fecal coliform bacteria, which can cause gastrointestinal illness. In response, the local water treatment plant used more chlorine, which in turn made the water increasingly corrosive and created high levels of trihalomethanes. Residents experienced rashes and other symptoms by January 2015. In June 2015, researchers affiliated with Virginia Tech determined that the water provided to some Flint residents contained levels of lead that were nearly one thousand times the EPA's stated action level. Researchers later determined that lead was entering the water due to the corrosion of the city's many lead pipes and that the city failed to treat the water to prevent such corrosion. Flint also became the site of an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease, caused by waterborne bacteria, which killed at least a dozen residents between June 2014 and November 2015.

In light of the many health concerns surrounding the Flint River water, the Flint City Council voted in March 2015 to cease using water from that source. EM Ambrose overruled that vote, arguing that switching back to Detroit water would increase costs. The city switched back to Detroit water in October of that year after receiving funding from the state and provided filters and water tests to residents. A state of emergency was declared in Flint in December 2015 and throughout surrounding Genesee County the following month. In early 2016, the federal government also announced disaster aid for infrastructure repairs and two health clinics to help rectify the crisis.

Throughout the crisis, city residents and external advocacy groups objected to the state and municipal governments' handling of the events, arguing widely that government officials and bodies did not respond appropriately to the public-health crisis facing the population of Flint. Some parties likewise argued that the state had violated the SDWA and that various government employees had been negligent in their responses to the crisis, leading to the filing of numerous federal and class-action lawsuits throughout 2015 and 2016. Criminal charges were also filed against more than a dozen state and local employees, including former EMs Ambrose and Earley, who faced felony charges for allegedly lying to obtain funding for the Karegnondi Water Authority pipeline and requiring the city to switch to Flint River water.

Conditions in Flint began to improve by early 2017, during which time the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality reported that lead levels in Flint's drinking water had decreased below the federal action limit. The city likewise received infrastructure funding in March from the EPA and the state government, which, in a settlement, agreed to replace the city's lead water pipes within three years.

Legal efforts related to the crisis continued as well, with more than 1,700 city residents suing the EPA for negligence. The Michigan Civil Rights Commission reported in February that because Flint, along with several other Michigan cities under emergency management, is predominantly Black American, systemic racism contributed to the water crisis. In June 2017, Michigan attorney general Bill Schuette filed involuntary manslaughter charges against Earley and four other officials for the 2014 outbreak of Legionnaires' disease. That November, the city of Flint finalized a thirty-year contract with the Great Lakes Water Authority, which had taken over regional water services from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department in January 2016.

In early 2018, based on data gathered from tests conducted over eighteen months showing that lead levels were below the federal action level, representatives of what was then the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (rebranded as the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) in 2019) claimed that Flint's water quality had been restored. Though some residents and experts were concerned that not all of the city's lead pipes had been replaced by that point, it was announced in April that Flint's program of free bottled water, supported by state and federal aid, would be ending. As the method for finding the remaining lead pipes was adjusted in early 2019, by June EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler had declared that Flint's water was safe to drink; however, the city's mayor perceived this claim as premature. That same month, citing concerns over how the cases and evidence had previously been handled, the Michigan attorney general's office announced that prosecutors were dropping all charges against officials still in process while intimating that a new investigation was likely.

As citizens, lawmakers, and advocacy groups sought to determine the causes of the water crisis in Flint, a debate arose surrounding the role Flint's EMs—and the emergency management model as a whole—played in its development, particularly considering the charges filed against Ambrose and Earley. Although supporters of Michigan's emergency management model have generally acknowledged the system's failures in Flint, they have argued that emergency management must not be eliminated. Rather, they have stressed that the state's ability to appoint EMs is essential to preventing struggling cities and school systems from falling deeper into financial crisis. Opponents of emergency management, however, have argued that the events in Flint demonstrated that EMs exercise too much power at the expense of the people and can exacerbate or even cause events with extensive health and socioeconomic ramifications. As such, critics have argued that Michigan's emergency management law should be eliminated or dramatically revised, and control over Michigan's cities should be returned to the cities' residents and their elected representatives.

Flint Water Crisis Today

Amid continued calls for some kind of criminal accountability for the incident, in January 2021 Michigan's attorney general's office issued indictments against nine state officials who remained in office or had left office since the water crisis. Snyder, Ambrose, and seven others from public departments including health and human services faced charges of varying severity such as negligence, office misconduct, perjury, and manslaughter, among others. However, by 2023, all of the charges had been dismissed by courts on the grounds that the indictment process had been unconstitutional. Meanwhile, though efforts by prosecutors to secure documentation and other challenges meant that the cases, in which the defendants pleaded not guilty, moved forward slowly, in November 2021 a majority of Flint residents who had filed lawsuits over the crisis were granted a district-court-approved settlement amount of over $625 million.

Around the same time, it was announced that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under President Joe Biden was planning to adjust standards meant to prompt nationwide replacement of underground lead pipes still in use. In 2024, around the tenth anniversary of the beginning of Flint's water crisis, the agency issued a final rule mandating the identification and replacement of lead pipes across the country within ten years. Meanwhile, despite reports of some progress, recovery efforts like the investigation and replacement of water service lines in Flint continued to draw criticism, particularly as federal judges found the city in contempt for failure to meet deadlines.

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