The Poisoned City, page 19
From the county’s health department to the MDHHS to the MDEQ to the governor’s office, and back again, with an altogether disappointing response to a fatal outbreak of a rare disease, Jim Henry was led to conclude that state agencies “restricted our actions to the point of interference and inhibition.”36
That summer, his fears were confirmed: the outbreak indeed returned. But people in Flint still received no notice about it. There was no alert for those who were especially vulnerable to Legionnaires’ disease, such as elderly people, or those who had compromised immune systems. Even medical providers were in the dark.37 In comparison, in an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the Bronx that same summer—the largest in New York City history, in which twelve people died—health officials issued a public warning within weeks of the disease’s appearance.38 They provided frequent updates and, after collecting samples and conducting tests, they traced the cause to a hotel cooling tower.
For Flint, there was no news that the outbreak was even happening until twenty months after it began, at Governor Snyder’s press conference in January 2016. The information “was just recently presented to me,” he said, “and I thought it was important to share.” There was no need for people to take additional precautions to protect themselves, and, despite the admonishment sent to Henry, he said that the state had been working with the CDC and the EPA to manage the outbreak since June 2015.39 The numbers Snyder gave were a bit different from the final tally of cases, but it was clear that the disease “adds to the disaster we are all facing,” he said. Nobody could say for sure what had caused the problem.
Most of the sick were men in their sixties, though patients ranged between twenty-six and ninety-four years old.40 A common thread: McLaren hospital in Flint. Forty-six people who became ill had been patients at McLaren, including ten of the twelve who died.41 The hospital hadn’t been oblivious. After noticing the uptick, it had its water system tested and hired a national expert on Legionnaires’ disease as a consultant.
Was the outbreak connected to Flint’s water switch? It would take years to establish the link, and, even then, there was plenty for skeptics to wonder about. Medical providers had collected very few sputum cultures from patients, too few to show a pattern definitively tying the disease to the water.42 And the MDHHS had reported that while about 36 percent of people who had the disease were likely exposed to water sourced from the Flint River, another 30 percent had no known exposure to it in the two weeks before they fell ill.43
There was, however, some glaring circumstantial evidence, not least because the outbreak began shortly after the water switch and largely ceased after the city reverted to Detroit’s supply.44 The CDC, using the few sputum samples that were available, looked for a biological link between cases of the disease and Legionella bacteria detected at McLaren hospital, and in February 2016 it found two matches.45 Also, the Virginia Tech team hypothesized early on that the conditions in Flint could breed Legionnaires’ disease.46 Marc Edwards and four of his Virginia Tech colleagues published a study in Environmental Science & Technology that posited a probable connection to the corrosiveness of the city’s tap water.47 Miguel Del Toral and another water expert from the EPA made a similar case: as the protective lining in Flint’s pipes broke down, depleting the chlorine, Legionella would flourish. Del Toral also speculated that the corrosion might have released Legionella that had been contained in the lining, aggravated by the flushed fire hydrants.48
Almost four years after the disease broke out, big news about its cause finally came from a multi-university investigation led by Wayne State University. Shawn McElmurry, an environmental engineer at Wayne State, had begun looking into it at the request of the governor’s office. In two peer-reviewed studies, McElmurry and his team showed that the risk of the disease grew by more than sixfold across the city’s water distribution system after the switch to the Flint River, and that about 80 percent of cases could be connected to the water supply.49 (The MDHHS, which had initially funded the research, strongly disputed the results.50 So did Marc Edwards, actually, who challenged McElmurry’s credentials.51) Chlorine was a big factor: the less disinfectant in a resident’s tap water, the more likely they were to get sick. That tied back to the problem of iron corrosion in the pipes. Also, McElmurry said under oath that he believed there to have been “undiagnosed cases of Legionnaires’ disease” that might have just been “diagnosed as pneumonia.”52 That resonated with Melissa Mays, the Flint community organizer. Her youngest son had pneumonia back in the summer of 2014. Had it really been Legionnaires’ disease? Was the risk worse than she’d known? “Fear is not knowing,” she said.53
While McLaren hospital wasn’t the sole source of the disease, it had been an incubator of it. And it knew more than it had let on. When Snyder dropped his bombshell of an announcement about the outbreak, it caught the attention of Connie Taylor, a sixty-two-year-old woman from Flint. She had been treated at McLaren in 2014, so she thought that it would be a good idea to request her medical records. Taylor had been admitted for stomach problems, but she felt so much chest pain and exhaustion after being released she returned to the hospital. Doctors diagnosed her with pneumonia and moved her to the intensive care unit. They told her daughters that Taylor, a widow, might not survive. But she made it. Her kidneys, however, did not. Taylor was soon on dialysis treatment three days a week, which would continue for the rest of her life, unless she received a kidney transplant. Nobody at McLaren had breathed a word to her about Legionnaires’ disease. But more than a year later, in the roar of new revelations about Flint’s water, Taylor had her records in hand. She had tested positive for Legionella.54
IV.
Both Mayor Karen Weaver and Governor Snyder wanted a federal disaster declaration for Flint, to go along with the emergency support—that would open the door to aid money for infrastructure. But the state’s request was denied and would continue to be denied over its appeals. The reason: federal disaster designations are earmarked for natural emergencies, such as hurricanes, mudslides, and earthquakes. Flint’s disaster was man-made. An exception had been made for Love Canal almost forty years earlier, but there would not be one for Flint. This narrow definition of what counts as a disaster was something the Kerner Report had addressed in the urban crisis of the sixties, recommending an amendment to the Federal Disaster Act to permit federal “assistance to cities during major civil disorders, and provide long-term economic assistance afterwards.”55
Still, other kinds of assistance flooded the city. As the story broke around a scandalized world, it was almost impossible to keep up with the interventions, the rhetoric, the politics, the scores of volunteers and donations and reporters pouring into town. For the first time in a long time, everyone was paying attention to Flint. In the mad rush, it was not easy to sort out the city’s allies from its exploiters; people who came humbly to help versus those who came to use Flint, and its limelight, for their own profit—selling water gadgets to fearful residents, for example, or promoting themselves and their pet projects.
The city got a star turn when the Whiting auditorium in the Cultural Center hosted #JusticeForFlint, a benefit featuring African American filmmakers and performers—among them, Stevie Wonder, Ryan Coogler, Hannibal Burress, Janelle Monae—scheduled on the same night as the Academy Awards. Some two thousand people showed up, mostly locals who received free tickets. With help from the livestream, it raised more than $150,000. Superstar Beyoncé also opened a relief fund for Flint, a move that generated $82,234 for the United Way of Genesee County. Aretha Franklin offered hotel rooms and food vouchers to displaced residents. The owner of the Detroit Pistons, a Flint native, pledged $10 million. General Motors and the United Auto Workers gave $3 million for health and education services.
Flint even became fodder for presidential candidates. Shortly before Michigan held its 2016 Democratic primary, candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders held one of their national debates in Flint. The Republican presidential candidates faced questions about the water crisis when they debated in Detroit that same week. Several presidential prospects visited the city during their campaigns, including Donald Trump. Clinton also worked with Mayor Weaver to develop a summer jobs program that employed a hundred local teenagers.56
An abundance of federal agencies also stepped in to give Flint special assistance. There was a massive expansion of Medicaid coverage for people under twenty-one or pregnant or both (a total of fifteen thousand) who were exposed to the water, and they did not necessarily have to live in the city. Another thirty thousand received a greater range of services through Medicaid. A free Disaster Distress helpline connected callers with trained counselors. New programs were designed to make fresh food affordable and accessible, since good nutrition can mitigate some of the effects of lead exposure. The Detroit Free Press published recipes to combat lead’s toxic effects and tips on cutting water use in the kitchen. “Cook with frozen vegetables, which don’t need washing,” it advised. And, “Substitute milk in place of water when it makes sense. Think pancakes and oatmeal.”57
Under this bright spotlight, in a cascade of belated responsiveness, the state and federal governments ramped up their efforts to investigate the disaster. Michigan’s attorney general announced that he was opening a criminal investigation into what had happened in Flint. Because of his inherent conflict of interest—the attorney general’s office is constitutionally required to represent the state—a Detroit-area litigator was appointed as a special prosecutor. Also, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission said that it would carry out its own investigation to see if what transpired had violated residents’ civil rights. Over in Washington, D.C., Congress proclaimed that it too would hold hearings. And the inspector general of the EPA began to look into how the Region 5 office in Chicago had handled the crisis. Chicago director Susan Hedman resigned but later protested the accusations that she had downplayed Miguel Del Toral’s interim report. What’s more, she said, while “this tragedy happened on my watch, I did not make the catastrophic decision to provide drinking water without corrosion control treatment; I did not vote to cut funding for water infrastructure or for EPA. And I did not design the imperfect statutory framework that we rely on to keep our drinking water safe.”58
To help make sense of what had befallen their town, the University of Michigan–Flint created a free one-credit class on the water crisis, open to all. The class, held one block away from the river, featured a mix of experts, from community organizers such as Melissa Mays and Yvonne Lewis to doctors, sociologists, journalists, and public servants. Over a thousand people took part, and many more followed along through videos uploaded onto YouTube. “This will be a class with no assignments,” declared Suzanne Selig, the director of the college’s Public Health Department, on the first day. “Your attendance will be enough. We want to learn from you.”59
For all the incoming goodwill, business owners and boosters who had stuck by Flint now worried that the work they’d put into the city would crumble. There had been genuine progress in recent years.60 UM–Flint had built its first-ever dorm downtown, and it earmarked a former hotel on the riverfront as a second residence hall, designed to attract international students. The farmers’ market had doubled its space for indoor vendors: in its first year at a new location, foot traffic doubled. Flint’s first brewery opened in a repurposed fire station. More than $1 million in philanthropic grants came through to combat crime in north Flint. In a hard-fought transformation, a slice of land outside the Torch Bar called Buckham Alley, between Beach and Saginaw streets, had become a lively public space strung with bright yellow lights, hosting a popular annual music festival. Kathleen Gazall, an architect and Flint native who lived in a rehabbed loft on Saginaw, had helped bring Buckham Alley to life. She felt that people who had once avoided the city had begun to rediscover it, spending their evenings out on dinner, drinks, a show at one of the theaters or museums in the Cultural Center. Now Gazall and her fellow Flint champions worried that anyone thinking of the city would associate it only with fear, poison, and victimhood, erasing Flint’s spirit. To stanch the slide, businesses—restaurants especially—put up hopeful signage to assure passersby: “SAFE WATER HERE.” The university, of course, had spent a small fortune testing its own water, purchasing its own filtration systems, and repairing or replacing corroded water heaters and plumbing fixtures.
People also began reckoning with the effect on the value of their homes and their ability to move. Flint was already a tough market for sellers. In 2015, the median house sold for $28,000. That included both large historic homes, beautifully maintained mansions where auto executives had once lived lavishly, and places that needed a lot of rehab work.61 Of the homes that were occupied, about 50 percent rented for less than $700 a month. The team behind Imagine Flint—the new citywide master plan that included the “Beyond Blight” framework—continued its effort to revive neighborhoods, water crisis be damned.62 But there were losses as well, including an exodus of people for whom the water crisis was just too much.
That included the Walters family. LeeAnne’s husband returned to active duty in the navy, in large part so that the family could get out of Flint.63 He received a post about seven hundred miles away, in Virginia. They packed up the ground zero house on Browning Avenue, the one with the pretty maple trees out front and the new copper pipe that delivered water that still wasn’t trustworthy. Well before the new year, by the time that Flint became an undisputed national catastrophe, they were gone.
11
Truth and Reconciliation
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or Life in the Woods (1854)
I.
When Governor Rick Snyder gave his State of the State speech in the winter of 2016, it was an unusual event, and not only because of the protesters pressing against the locked doors of the House, their voices reverberating through the chamber during the moment of silence to remember “those who have fallen in protection of our communities.” Instead of focusing on his administration’s successes, the standard template of the congratulatory annual speech, the governor devoted nearly the entire hour to what would be remembered as its greatest failure.
“Tonight, I will address the crisis in Flint,” Snyder said from the podium, his hands clasped before him.1 “Your families face a crisis, a crisis which you did not create and could not have prevented.” He said he was sorry and went on: “Government failed you—federal, state, and local leaders—by breaking the trust you placed in us. I am sorry most of all that I let you down. You deserve better. You deserve accountability; you deserve to know the buck stops here with me. Most of all you deserve the truth and I have a responsibility to tell the truth, the truth about what we have done and what we will do to overcome this challenge.”
Promises were made: Snyder would ask the legislature to allot $28 million in aid to meet Flint’s immediate needs, with $22 million from Michigan’s general fund and the balance from federal sources. (This passed in a unanimous vote in both chambers.) He requested “an infrastructure integrity study for pipes and connections” and acknowledged that Flint was hardly the only place where the bones of the city were falling apart. The American Society for Civil Engineers had given the state’s overall infrastructure a D in its report from 2013 (compared to the nationwide average of D+).2
As Michigan’s leader, and given the role of state agencies and appointees in causing the crisis, Snyder inevitably had to absorb the bulk of people’s anger, not only in Flint but also across the state and nation. Protesters amassed outside his Ann Arbor condominium, circling the block in 12-degree weather and chalking fierce messages on the sidewalk. They put his picture on “Wanted!” signs that they pasted on lampposts, and they heckled him in restaurants. (“Make him drink the water!” went one chant.3) A rising drumbeat called for his resignation and even his arrest. Other opinionators suspected that there were people far closer to the crisis who bore the bulk of the responsibility, protected from the scrutiny Snyder faced only because they served in less prominent positions.
And yet not even the sympathizers seriously disputed that the executive branch had a lot to answer for—and it went way back. When was the last time the governor’s office had any bright ideas for substantive urban policy? After decades of disinvestment, it had wielded the sledgehammer of emergency management as if it were its only tool. Both Republicans and Democrats had failed the cities. A letter in the Detroit Free Press coolly observed that the people of Michigan had “voted for a business person” when they elected Snyder.4 And they got what they wanted: “someone who is from a culture of what’s best for the bottom line and what’s best for the investors. As governor, his bottom line has been the state budget and his investors are his donors and fellow Republican legislators.” He “missed his duty to the people. I don’t question his genuine remorse and anger … but he is certainly responsible for the decision his emergency managers made on … his behalf. Governing a state as well as governing a nation is not like running a business. He and the people of Flint have found out the hard way.”
The Flint water crisis was easily the most complex and debilitating of Snyder’s career, and when he spoke about it, especially in the presence of Flint residents, he seemed haunted and a little terrified. His apologies were late-coming but now repeated often. “These people I work for and care for got hurt,” Snyder told a Detroit columnist.5 “And the key catalysts were people who work for me and I’m responsible for them. You can’t feel good about that.” He struggled with the reality that he was on the hook for trusting the state’s health and environmental experts. “It’s very frustrating. The people did give wrong information. It wasn’t just one person. It just makes you mad.” He mused out loud about how maybe he should have called in the National Guard sooner.6
