The Poisoned City, page 28
CHAPTER 4: SATURATION
1. According to information posted online about Flint Engine Operations at the GM corporate newsroom (www.media.gm.com), the engine plant pays out more than $91,181,847 in state wages and $19,835,318 in income taxes. Production began in 2002. Of its 806 employees, 673 are hourly and 133 are salaried. Additional details about this plant and its experience of the water crisis are sourced from Mike Colias, “How GM Saved Itself from the Flint Water Crisis,” Automotive News, January 31, 2016; Ron Fonger, “GM’s Decision to Stop Using Flint River Water Will Cost Flint $400,000 a Year,” MLive—Flint Journal, October 14, 2014, updated January 17, 2015; and Lindsay Smith, “Not Safe to Drink,” Michigan Radio, December 15, 2015. The detail about the plant using about seventy-five thousand gallons of water a day is mentioned in numerous local news articles, including Ron Fonger, “GM Keeps Engine Plant off Flint Water While City Considers Its Options,” MLive—Flint Journal, April 25, 2017.
2. In 1978, about seventy-eight thousand people worked in GM plants in the Flint area, and the local payroll was about $2 billion. By 2016, about seventy-two hundred worked at the company. Colias, “How GM Saved Itself”; and Lawrence R. Gustin, “GM and Flint Grew Together,” Automotive News, September 14, 2008.
3. Ron Fonger, “General Motors Shutting Off Flint River Water at Engine Plant Over Corrosion Worries,” MLive—Flint Journal, October 13, 2014, updated January 17, 2015.
4. In the EPA’s district office in Chicago, Jennifer Crooks responded to Burgess’s message by saying that the MDEQ was aware of the problems and working closely with the city to provide better water until the KWA came online. Burgess later became the lead plaintiff of a group of more than seventeen hundred people who filed a $772 million lawsuit charging that the EPA was negligent in the face of Flint’s water problems, causing injury to people who were exposed to it. Her message to the EPA is quoted in the court filing: Burgess v. United States of America (2:17-cv-10291), Michigan Eastern District Court, filed January 30, 2017. See also Jennifer Chambers, “Flint’s Residents Are Building Their Legal Case,” Detroit News, March 18, 2016; and Jim Lynch, “Flint Residents Seek $722M over Water Crisis,” Detroit News, January 30, 2017.
5. Gadola was replying to an email by Valerie Brader, the governor’s environmental policy adviser. Brader wrote, in part, “Specifically, there has been a boil water order due to bacterial contamination. What is not yet broadly known is that attempts to fix that have led to some levels of chlorine-related chemicals that can cause long-term damage if not remedied (though we believe they will remedy them before any damage would occur in the population).” Brader also suggested that Flint’s emergency manager should restore the connection to the Detroit water system “as an interim solution” to both the quality and financial problems “that the current solution is causing.” These emails were exchanged on October 14, 2014. Later, when Brader and another senior aide talked it over with Flint’s emergency manager, they were told that it would be too expensive to switch back and that any treatment problems were fixable. The EM didn’t have expertise in water treatment, of course; he was relying on the information he got from people such as Mike Prysby, the district engineer for the MDEQ. Matthew Dolan and Paul Egan, “Top Snyder Aids Urged Going Back to Detroit Water,” Detroit Free Press, February 26, 2016; Chad Livengood, “Emails: Flint Water Warnings Reached Gov’s Inner Circle,” Detroit News, February 26, 2016; and Lindsey Smith, “New Emails Show Officials in Gov. Snyder’s Circle Discussed Concerns about Flint’s Water, Did Nothing,” Michigan Radio, February 26, 2016.
6. Fonger, “General Motors Shutting Off Flint River Water.”
7. Laura Sullivan, interview with author, Flint, Mich., May 13, 2016.
8. Colias, “How GM Saved Itself.”
9. “Important Information About Your Drinking Water,” City of Flint, January 2, 2015, https://www.cityofflint.com/wp-content/uploads/TTHM-Notification-Final.pdf.
10. Smith, “Not Safe to Drink.”
11. For this, and the rest of the paragraph, Robin, Erb, “Who Wants to Drink Flint’s Water?,” Detroit Free Press, January 22, 2015, updated January 23, 2015.
12. AP Wire Report, “Flint City Councilman, ‘We Got Bad Water,’” Detroit Free Press, January 14, 2015.
13. Christine Ferretti, “Detroit Offers to Reconnect Water Service to Flint,” Detroit News, January 20, 2015.
14. “Flint City Councilman, ‘We Got Bad Water.’”
15. “About Us: Who We Are,” Veolia North America, www.veolianorthamerica.com, last accessed March 2, 2018.
16. Ron Fonger, “Flint Mayor Tells Governor: Lower Water Connection Fees, Offer Amnesty Program for Turn-ons,” MLive—Flint Journal, January 20, 2015, updated January 21, 2015.
17. Erb, “Who Wants to Drink Flint’s Water?”
18. Ron Fonger, “Officials Say Flint Water Is Getting Better, but Many Residents Unsatisfied,” MLive—Flint Journal, January 21, 2015.
19. Per a January 2018 conversation with a resident and community organizer who was present at the meeting. The author did not get this person’s explicit permission to use their name on the record.
20. Ron Fonger, “Erin Brockovich: Flint Water System ‘Failing,’ Stop Making Excuses,” MLive—Flint Journal, January 21, 2015.
21. Detroit Public Schools had been under emergency management since 2009. Their experience with state intervention would last about six years, with four different EMs. It also experienced a different form of oversight in 1999, when the governor at the time signed a law that replaced the elected school board with a seven-member reform board, six of whom were appointed by the Detroit mayor with one spot reserved for the state superintendent of public instruction. Their tenure lasted several years.
22. Ron Fonger, “Flint Emergency Manager Says There Are Two Big Reasons Not to Reconnect Detroit Water,” MLive—Flint Journal, January 29, 2015.
23. To be clear: Genesee County, like Flint, also had a DWSD contract that expired, and it had also decided to join the KWA. But unlike the city, Genesee County didn’t scramble to find a temporary water source. It simply paid its monthly bills under the terms of the old contract, and the DWSD kept the properly treated water flowing to places such as Flint Township, which now served the GM engine plant.
24. This scene is captured in Hard to Swallow: Toxic Water in a Toxic System in Flint, released June 25, 2015, and available to watch at www.aclumich.org/article/hard-swallow-toxic-water-toxic-system-flint.
25. “Flint Water Advisory,” Department of Technology, Management, and Budget Customer Service Center, Facility Notification, January 7, 2015.
26. “Gov. Rick Snyder awards Flint $2 million in distressed municipalities’ grant for water system infrastructure improvements.” Office of Governor Rick Snyder, Michigan.gov., February 3, 2015; and Ron Fonger, “Governor Awards Flint $2 Million for Troubled Water System; Mayor Says More Is Needed,” MLive—Flint Journal, February 3, 2015, updated February 4, 2015.
27. Fonger, “Governor Awards Flint $2 Million.”
28. Dominic Adams, “Faces of Flint: Bryant Nolden,” MLive—Flint Journal, May 3, 2016.
29. William Elgar Brown, testimony in 67th District Court, Flint, Michigan, January 8, 2018. This was during the preliminary examinations in the state’s criminal case against four MDEQ employees. Brown was a retired engineer and deputy division chief for the department with some forty years’ experience in water issues. Brown signed the KWA’s original permit and later consulted for a construction company that worked with the new water utility.
30. “Water Quality Update,” City of Flint, March 25, 2015; and “TTHM Contaminant Notices, Water Quality Updates, Ready for Mailing to Flint Customers,” MLive—Flint Journal, March 31, 2015.
31. Ibid. Because of its high TTHM levels in 2014, Flint was held in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act for three months. That required the city to send residents a follow-up notice about how the water fared in the first quarter of 2015, which is where this update comes from. The two-page memo from the city emphasized that the MDEQ “acknowledged our progress” in treating the water.
32. Dayne Walling, “Responses from Dayne Walling, Former Flint Mayor,” Michigan Joint Select Committee on the Flint Water Public Health Emergency, Flint Public Hearing, March 29, 2016.
33. Natalie Pruett, “Beyond Blight: City of Flint Comprehensive Blight Elimination Framework,” Imagine Flint, adopted February 10, 2015; and Steve Carmody, “Flint’s Blight Problem (and Solution) Detailed,” Michigan Radio, March 13, 2015. The author also reported about this at the time in an article for Next City (“Flint, Michigan, Has an Ambitious New Plan to Fight Blight,” March 16, 2015).
34. Aaron McMann, “‘Flint Firebirds’ Unveiled as Name for Flint’s New OHL Team,” MLive—Flint Journal, March 16, 2015.
35. Crooks sent the email on February 9, 2015. Joel Kurth, Jonathan Oosting, Christine MacDonald, and Jim Lynch, “DEQ Official: Staffers Earn Raises for Flint Work,” Detroit News, February 12, 2016; and Bridge Staff, “Flint Crisis Timeline: Part 3,” Bridge Magazine, March 1, 2016.
36. The vote was on March 23, 2014. Ron Fonger, “Flint Council Votes to Do ‘All Things Necessary’ to End Use of Flint River,” MLive—Flint Journal, March 23, 2015; Ron Fonger, “Emergency Manager Calls City Flint River Vote ‘Incomprehensible,’” MLive—Flint Journal, March 24, 2015; and Mitch Smith, “A Water Dilemma in Michigan: Costly or Cloudy?,” New York Times, March 24, 2015.
37. This was captured in a video that was included in Hard to Swallow. After Ambrose said this, the crowd responded. “That is a lie!” someone shouted. “Now, we looked at that, and we said—,” Ambrose continued. “That’s not true,” a second resident said. “I’m not sure that’s true,” the first person repeated. The second echoed: “It’s not.” “Well, we have the Flint River,” Ambrose went on, eliding the point.
38. “Flint Water Advisory Task Force,” March 2016.
39. For some accounts of these water giveaways, see Jim Lynch, “Flint Taps Options After Complaints About Water,” Detroit News, February 2, 2015; and Steve Carmody, “Flint Residents Line Up Again for Free Water as State and Local Officials Talk,” Michigan Radio, February 3, 2015.
40. Blake Thorne, “Semi-truck Full of Clean Water Attracts Crowd in Flint,” MLive—Flint Journal, January 28, 2015.
41. Sarah Schuch, “Flint Colleges Independently Testing Water After City Sends Out Violation Notice,” MLive—Flint Journal, January 14, 2015.
42. Ibid.
CHAPTER 5: ALCHEMY
1. The recounting of LeeAnne Walters’s story relies, most especially, on her testimony in the 67th District Court on January 8, 2018, during the preliminary examinations in the criminal case against four MDEQ employees (Flint, Michigan, January 8, 2018); her testimony before the Michigan Joint Select Committee on the Flint Water Public Health Emergency (Lansing, Michigan, March 29, 2016); and her testimony before the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee (Washington, D.C., February 3, 2016). There are a number of magazines, radio broadcasts, documentaries, and newspapers that have covered all or part of her story as well. The Michigan Radio documentary “Not Safe to Drink,” and the ACLU documentaries Here’s to Flint and Corrosive Impact are important resources.
2. Lindsey Smith, “Not Safe to Drink,” Michigan Radio, December 15, 2015.
3. Besides LeeAnne Walters’s own testimony, numerous media accounts detail the symptoms of the Walters children. Among them: Sarah Hulett, “High Lead Levels in Michigan Kids After City Switches Water Source,” All Things Considered, NPR, September 29, 2015; Nancy Kaffer, “Lead Levels in Mich. City Have Moms Avoiding Tap Water,” Detroit Free Press/USA Today, October 6, 2015; Stephen Rodrick, “Who Poisoned Flint, Michigan?,” Rolling Stone, January 22, 2016; and Smith, “Not Safe to Drink.”
4. Testimony of LeeAnne Walters in 67th District Court, Flint, Michigan, January 8, 2018.
5. Rodrick, “Who Poisoned Flint, Michigan?”
6. On Isaac Newton and alchemy, “Newton the Alchemist,” PBS NOVA. Interview with Bill Newman conducted September 6, 2005, posted online November 15, 2005; and Michael Greshko, “Isaac Newton’s Lost Alchemy Recipe Rediscovered,” National Geographic, April 4, 2016.
7. Among the sources for the properties of lead, Lydia Denworth, Toxic Truth: A Scientist, a Doctor, and the Battle Over Lead (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008); Richard Rabin, “The Lead Industry and Lead Water Pipes ‘A MODEST CAMPAIGN,’” American Journal of Public Health 98, no. 9 (September 2008); and Elissa Nuñez and Amy Molloy, “Schools Fail Lead Tests While Many States Don’t Require Testing at All,” Center for Public Integrity, August 15, 2017.
8. Elizabeth Klibanoff, “Lead Ammunition Poisons Wildlife but Too Expensive to Change, Hunters Say,” Morning Edition, NPR, February 20, 2017; and Jon M. Arnemo et al., “Health and Environmental Risks from Lead-Based Ammunition: Science Versus Sociology,” Ecohealth 13, no. 4 (2016).
9. “Lead in Lipstick,” Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, n.d. http://www.safecosmetics.org/get-the-facts/regulations/us-laws/lead-in-lipstick/.
10. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 26.
11. Ibid., pp. 61–62, 111; and “Poisoned Water,” NOVA, PBS, May 31, 2017.
12. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 26.
13. As cited by the World Health Organization, “Lead Poisoning and Health,” updated August 2017, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs379/en/.
14. “Lead: Learn About Lead,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, n.d., https://www.epa.gov/lead/learn-about-lead#exposure.
15. As quoted in: Herbert L. Needleman, “The Neurobehavioral Effects of Low-Level Exposure to Lead in Childhood,” International Journal of Mental Health 14, no. 3 (Fall 2015).
16. Paracelsus, who was apprenticed to a smelter as a child, wrote On the Miners’ Sickness and Other Miners’ Diseases in 1533 or 1534, though it wasn’t published until 1567, well after his death. The book is considered to be the first full-length treatment on occupational health. He describes a lung sickness for those working aboveground, processing the ores, and miners’ disease for those working belowground. While many of his conclusions were wrong, he described metal fumes as a cause of sickness. He’s not just talking about lead, but also mercury poisoning, respiratory diseases, and lung cancer. Paracelsus popularized the use of lead compounds as a therapeutic agent, based on the like-cures-like principle. As quoted by Jerome O. Nriagu: “Lead hath in it remedies for those diseases which be caused and bread in the miners leade.” Dan Fagin, Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation (New York: Bantam, 2013), pp. 26–30; Hugh D. Crone, Paracelsus: The Man Who Defied Medicine (Melbourne: Albarello Press, 2004), pp. 97–101; and Jerome O. Nriagu, “Saturnine Drugs and Medicinal Exposure to Lead: An Historical Outline,” in Herbert L. Needleman, ed., Human Lead Exposure (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1991), pp. 3–22.
17. As quoted in James Richard Farr, Artisans in Europe, 1300–1914 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 134–35.
18. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 29.
19. Olga Khazan, “How Important Is Lead Poisoning to Becoming a Legendary Artist?,” Atlantic, November 25, 2013.
20. William Finnegan, “Flint and the Long Struggle Against Lead Poisoning,” New Yorker, February 4, 2016.
21. Benjamin Franklin, “To B. Vaughn, Esq.,” letter, Philadelphia, July 31, 1786. Reprinted in Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, LL.D. (London: British and Foreign Public Library, 1881). The particular quote here comes from p. 552.
22. Sven Hernberg, “Lead Poisoning in a Historical Perspective” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 38 (2000), http://rachel.org/files/document/Lead_Poisoning_in_Historical_Perspective.pdf2000.
23. Ibid.; and Marc Edwards, “Fetal Death and Reduced Birth Rates Associated with Exposure to Lead Contaminated Water,” Environmental Science & Technology 48, no. 1 (2014), https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es4034952.
24. “All Change!,” Time, January 9, 1933, pp. 55, 85; and David Gartman, “Tough Guys and Pretty Boys: The Cultural Antagonisms of Engineering and Aesthetics in Automobile History,” Automobile in American Life and Society (University of Michigan–Dearborn and the Henry Ford, n.d.).
25. According to U.S. Census data, in 1920, Flint’s population was 91,559, and it was 2 percent African American. In 1930, the population was 156,492, and it was 4 percent African American.
