Six years on, Flint works toward justice in water crisis

Water coming from faucets in this city is no longer discolored or malodorous. Truckloads of bottled water from other communities have slowed to a trickle. These improvements do not mean that Flint’s water crisis is over. Instead, a new and uneasy normal has settled in.

“One of the lingering effects is the pall that has been cast over this city,” says the Rev. Deborah Conrad, pastor of Woodside Church, a multidenominational congregation in the heart of downtown Flint. “It’s a kind of a depression, an unwillingness to trust. There are lingering mental and physical effects we cannot measure and won’t know for a long time.”

The persistent mistrust from citizens is directed squarely at government officials who were the key players in what a federal appellate court opinion called “the infamous, government-created disaster commonly known as the Flint Water Crisis.” Those officials – at all levels – are at the center of an ongoing question that transcends partisan politics in this city of just under 100,000: What would constitute justice in the Flint water crisis?

“There’s no easy resolution to this,” says Barry Rabe, a professor of public and environmental policy at the University of Michigan. “Court cases take time. Cleaning up the water system takes time. There’s certainly a real loss of public confidence among the citizens of Flint toward any governmental authority. So it’s not just a question of a short-term engineering fix. It’s a rebuilding of public trust and confidence.”

In April 2014, a state-appointed emergency financial manager with power to supersede local authorities switched Flint’s water supply from the city of Detroit to the Flint River, a move that was expected to save the cash-strapped city money. This water was processed without adding anti-corrosive chemicals and then pumped through the city’s aging pipes. The result was a water supply linked to skin rashes, hair loss, lead poisoning, and an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease blamed for 12 deaths.

Nearly 80 lawsuits have been filed against the state of Michigan, the city of Flint, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. A few citizens have hired their own attorneys, but the vast majority have joined in a class-action suit. Attorneys for the state and city were attempting to have the civil cases dismissed and had appealed a decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to allow some of the cases to continue. In late January, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the lower court’s decision, meaning that the civil cases can now proceed.