The Flint, Michigan Crises a Decade Later
By Norman Franklin
Norman Franklin
Like a rock tossed into the placid waters of a lake, an ill-advised decision by a person of authority, creates ripples that radiate outward through generations.
A decade after the financial biased decision to switch the water supply of Flint, Michigan from Lake Huron to the Flint River, the city’s residents are suffering physical and mental health challenges. Elevated lead contaminant in the drinking water is causing cognitive deficiencies in the children.
The decision to switch was processed with knowledge of the history of the toxic river. Critical thinking would have avoided this tragic decision. Rather dismissive insensitivity guided the officials deliberative process to switch from a safe source of water supply to a known toxic supply.
Critical thinking would have considered the $5 mil lion in savings but also the impact on the community and their quality of life. Greed, politics, and insensitivity led officials to discount the value of human life and give greater value to financial savings.
The majority African American city of 100,000, within weeks of the switch, began to experience foul tasting, discolored water flowing from the faucets, and skin rashes. The river water was also releasing lead as the corrosive water flowed through outdated pipes and into their homes.
Tests results showed that the water contained extraordinary levels of lead. The findings were not shared with residents until months later. Cover up by politicians and utility company executives allowed Flint residents, children, and infants to consume the water. They were aware that lifelong learning disabilities were likely to develop.
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines, detectable levels of lead in the blood causes learning difficulties, hinders development, and leads to behavioral challenges. Health officials found lead levels as high as 5 percent in Flint’s children.
The insensitive and financially biased decision triggered learning disabilities evinced in decreased math skills, and a significant drop in literacy rates.
There’s another theory that runs through the vein of the Flint, Michigan crises. The majority Black population, the high concentration of poverty, and the under resourced schools in poorer neighborhoods provides synergy between the dismissive insensitivity of the decision to risk the switch and the makeup of the population affected.
Critical Race Theory purports that there is a race fac tor that permeates every fiber of America’s social, education, economic, and political systems, and institutions. In the abstract, it is refuted. But when race -ism influences critical decisions for something so basic as clean drinking water, it leave no room to conclude otherwise. Leading up to the decision to switch the water supply from Huron to the Flint River, officials would have mulled over data that the river is polluted from natural biologi cal waste, treated industrial human waste, untreated waste intentionally and accidentally dumped into the river, and contaminants washed into the river by rain or snow.
It was known to be an exceptionally polluted river and repeatedly ruled out as a primary source of drinking water. The switch was to be temporary, but the undertrained, and understaffed water treatment department of government fell short of making the river water safe drinking water.
They erred in choosing to preserve scarce resources rather than invest in treating the temporary source they rolled the dice, took the shortcut, weighed the out come on the scales of balance of social and environ mental justice.
A temporary, but polluted water supply, imperils a generation of African American children with health and learning difficulties from exposure to elevated levels of lead in their drinking water and in their blood.
The Flint, Michigan water crises could have been avoided. Critical thinking would have led to sound and compassionate decisions. The hidden biases of the offi cials gave way to the proponents of Critical Race Theory.