Mechanisms, smoke and fun-house mirrors: when naming racism is not enough

The Flint water crisis has garnered a great deal of political attention, as the impacts of political decisions to alter Flint's water supply have left many residents with mistrust of government and unusable water. This article reviews water issues in Michigan over the past 15 years to uncover whether the water crisis in Flint is an aberration or a continuation of water policies. In consideration of Michigan's state constitution, the federal Clean Water Act, and lawsuits that have already been filed in Michigan related to water issues, this article posits that what happened in Flint that led to systemic failure to protect public health was not a result of racial disparity. Water has consistently been devalued by the Michigan government, causing unmitigated pollution in rural areas before it was known in Flint. Michigan's government officials have a profound history in the devaluation of water and natural resources and have systematically undermined environmental protection for years. This article covers the incidents related to mismanagement and disregard for water as a public resource within Michigan to highlight Flint's water crisis as an environmental, rather than a racial, injustice.

Moving Beyond the First Rough Draft:The Emerging History of the Flint Water Crisis Andrew R. Highsmith (bio) Anna Clark, The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2018. 320 pp. Figures, maps, notes, select bibliography, and index. $30.00. If contemporary news reports about the Flint water crisis constituted the "first rough draft" of that calamity's distressing history, then the 2018 publication of Anna Clark's powerful book The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy marked the completion of a second, and significantly revised, version of that story. By now, the outlines of the first draft of the history of Flint's water disaster are familiar to millions. According to most news accounts, the trouble began in April 2014, when the city government—then under the tight grip of an unelected "emergency manager" appointed by Michigan's Republican governor Rick Snyder—canceled its longstanding water service agreement with Detroit in order to affiliate with a new regional water authority that was constructing a pipeline to Lake Huron. The city's emergency managers, with support from Mayor Dayne Walling and numerous other local elected officials, opted to use the Flint River as a temporary water source while the pipeline was under construction. The switch was part of a larger, sharply contested plan to balance the budget and impose severe austerity in this impoverished, majority-black city of one hundred thousand people. Soon after the switch, however, residents began to complain about the odor, taste, and color of the water. Late in the summer of 2014, city officials issued three separate boil water advisories after discovering coliform bacteria in the water on Flint's west side. At around the same time, numerous water users across the city reported suffering from hair loss, skin rashes, and other mysterious illnesses. There was also a significant spike in local cases of Legionnaires' disease in 2014 and 2015. Researchers later connected the outbreak to the city's drinking water. The problem, as investigators ultimately determined, was that water from the highly acidic Flint River was corroding the city's aging, lead-laden pipes. Because state and local officials had neglected to implement a corrosion control program, the pipes had leached lead, copper, bacteria [End Page 642] and other toxins into the drinking water. Government officials brushed off a chorus of complaints from local residents and allowed the contamination to continue for over a year and a half. By the time Governor Snyder announced the switch back to the Detroit system in October 2015, Flint's tainted water had caused incalculable harm to the city and its people. In addition to the spate of Legionnaires' disease cases, which killed at least twelve people locally, researchers reported that the number of young children with elevated blood lead levels had doubled. Moreover, the consumption of Flint's poisoned water left thousands of residents citywide suffering from myriad health problems including pulmonary disorders, psychological distress, and child developmental delays, to name but a few. Journalists who covered the Flint story as it unfolded were quick to point out that the city's water trouble stemmed from a tragic case of government mismanagement and political malfeasance. As part of that effort, they documented the puzzling failure to provide federally mandated corrosion control; the water's deleterious health effects on local residents; the disdain with which state officials responded to citizen activists; and, perhaps most seriously, the months-long coverup of evidence that pointed to the severity of Flint's infrastructure and public health disasters. Journalists and photographers covering the developments in Flint won well-deserved acclaim for their work, including the Michigan Press Association's Journalist of the Year Award, a Michigan Associated Press Media Editors award for investigative reporting, and even a Pulitzer Prize nomination for feature photography. By and large, however, these first drafts of the story of Flint's water emergency were insufficiently historical in the sense that they failed to address the longer-term structural forces underpinning the catastrophe—everything from deindustrialization and racial segregation to suburbanization and metropolitan fragmentation. Clark's compelling new book—part of a wave of scholarship and investigative reporting...

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Explore perceptions of Flint stakeholders on the water crisis regarding trust and the capacity of faith and community-based organizations providing public health services to address community needs. Analyze the community’s voice shared at (1) 17 key community communications (community/congressional meetings and events), and (2) during 9 focus group sessions, in which residents, faith-based leadership and other stakeholders discuss issues and concerns on the Flint Water Crisis, and recommend ways to address them. Develop a framework that defines core theories, concepts and strategies recommended by the community to help rebuild trust and the quality of life in Flint, Michigan, and support other communities experiencing environmental stress. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Study population: faith-based leaders, seniors, youth, Hispanic/Latino and African American stakeholders, and others experiencing inequities in the city of Flint. Convene 9 focus group sessions (recorded and transcribed) to learn community perceptions on trust and ways to address it. Validate accuracy of the transcriptions with community consultants to reconcile any inaccurate information. Through a community engaged research (CEnR) process, review and analyze qualitative data from the 9 focus group sessions, and quantitative data from 2 surveys documenting (1) demographic backgrounds of focus group participants, and (2) their perceptions on trust and mistrust. Prepare a codebook to qualitatively analyze the focus group data summarizing community input on trust, mistrust, changes in service delivery among community and faith-based organizations, and ways to re-build trust in the city of Flint. Transcribe the community’s voice shared during 17 key events, identified by a team of community-academic stakeholders (i.e., UM Flint water course, congressional and community events, etc.), in which residents and other stakeholders discuss issues and concerns on the Flint Water Crisis, and recommend ways to address it. Qualitatively analyze the transcriptions, using a CEnR process to prepare a codebook on key themes from the community’s voice shared at these events, and recommendations on ways to address it. Compare and contrast findings between the two codebooks developed from (1) the focus group data and (2) qualitative analysis of community voice during public meetings and events. Synthesize this information into a framework of core theories, concepts and rebuilding strategies for Flint, Michigan. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: It is important to note many undocumented immigrant populations in Flint fear deportation and other consequences, hampering their ability to obtain service and provide community voice. Through our purposive sampling approach, we will hear from community voices not often included in narratives (i.e., seniors, youth, Hispanic/Latino residents). The presentation will present findings documenting levels of trust and mistrust in the city of Flint; and a framework of recommendations, core theories and concepts on ways to reduce, rebuild and eliminate stress that will be helpful to other communities experiencing distress. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: To our knowledge, levels of trust and mistrust in Flint have not been documented thus far. We will compare and contrast common themes presented by the community at public meetings and events with themes presented in our focus group effort on trust. Faith and community-based providers were among the first responders to the Flint Water Crisis. The effort will also share perceptions on changes in public health service delivery, and observations on preparedness for these roles that occurred among community and faith-based providers. Finally, the effort will (1) support the design of a research agenda, (2) define a framework of core theories, concepts and recommendations developed by the community to help rebuild trust in Flint, Michigan; and (3) support other communities addressing environmental distress.

Policy Points A major factor explaining government actors' failure to mitigate or avert the Flint, Michigan, water crisis is the sheer complexity of the laws regulating how governmental agencies maintain and monitor safe drinking water. Coordination across agencies is essential in dealing with multiple legal arrangements. Public health legal authority and intervention mechanisms are not self-executing. Legal preparedness is essential to efficiently navigating complex legal frameworks to address public health threats. The Flint water crisis demonstrates the importance of democracy for protecting the public's health. Laws responding to municipal fiscal distress must be consistent with expected norms of democracy and require consideration of public health in decision making. Context The Flint, Michigan, water crisis resulted from a state-appointed emergency financial manager's cost-driven decision to switch Flint's water source to the Flint River. Ostensibly designed to address Flint's long-standing financial crisis, the switch instead created a public health emergency. A major factor explaining why the crisis unfolded as it did is the complex array of laws regulating how governmental agencies maintain and monitor safe drinking water. Methods We analyzed these legal arrangements to identify what legal authority state, local, and federal public health and environmental agencies could have used to avert or mitigate the crisis and recommend changes to relevant laws and their implementation. First, we mapped the legal authority and roles of federal, state, and local agencies responsible for safe drinking water and the public's health-that is, the existing legal environment. Then we examined how Michigan's emergency manager law altered the existing legal arrangements, leading to decisions that ignored the community's long-term health. Juxtaposed on those factors, we considered how federalism and the relationship between state and local governments influenced public officials during the crisis. Findings The complex legal arrangements governing public health and safe drinking water, combined with a lack of legal preparedness (the capacity to use law effectively) among governmental officials, impeded timely and effective actions to mitigate or avert the crisis. The emergency manager's virtually unfettered legal authority in Flint exacerbated the existing complexity and deprived residents of a democratically accountable local government. Conclusions Our analysis reveals flaws in both the legal structure and how the laws were implemented that simultaneously failed to stop and substantially exacerbated the crisis. Policymakers need to examine the legal framework in their jurisdictions and take appropriate steps to avoid similar disasters. Addressing the implementation failures, including legal preparedness, should likewise be a priority for preventing future similar crises.

We sought to understand how women in Michigan communities outside of Flint experienced the Flint water crisis, an avoidable public health disaster widely attributed to structural racism. Using survey data from 950 Michigan women aged 18–45 from communities outside of Flint, we examined racial and ethnic differences in personal connections to Flint, perceived knowledge about the water crisis, and beliefs about the role of anti-Black racism in the water crisis factors that could contribute to poor health via increased psychological stress. We found that White (OR = 0.32; 95% CI: 0.22, 0.46) and Hispanic (OR = 0.21; 95% CI: 0.09, 0.49) women had lower odds than Black women of having family or friends who lived in Flint during the water crisis. Compared to Black women, White women were less likely to be moderately or very knowledgeable about the water crisis (OR = 0.58; 95% CI: 0.41, 0.80). White women (OR = 0.26; 95% CI: 0.18, 0.37), Hispanic women (OR = 0.38; 95% CI: 0.21, 0.68), and women of other races (OR = 0.28; 95% CI: 0.15, 0.54) were less likely than Black women to agree that the water crisis happened because government officials wanted to hurt Flint residents. Among those who agreed, White women (OR = 0.47; 95% CI: 0.30, 0.74) and women of other races (OR = 0.33; 95% CI: 0.12, 0.90) were less likely than Black women to agree that government officials wanted to hurt people in Flint because most residents are Black. We conclude that the Flint water crisis was a racialized stressor, with potential implications for the health of reproductive-age Black women.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40615-022-01287-6.

The Flint Water Crisis (FWC) was an avoidable public health disaster that has profoundly affected the city's residents, a majority of whom are Black. Although many scholars and journalists have called attention to the role of racism in the water crisis, little is known about the extent to which the public attributed the FWC to racism as it was unfolding. In this study, we used natural language processing to analyze nearly six million Flint-related tweets posted between April 1, 2014, and June 1, 2016. We found that key developments in the FWC corresponded to increases in the number and percentage of tweets that mentioned terms related to race and racism. Similar patterns were found for other topics hypothesized to be related to the water crisis, including water and politics. Using sentiment analysis, we found that tweets with a negative polarity score were more common in the subset of tweets that mentioned terms related to race and racism when compared to the full set of tweets. Next, we found that word pairs that included terms related to race and racism first appeared after the January 2016 state and federal emergency declarations and a corresponding increase in media coverage of the FWC. We conclude that many Twitter users connected the events of the water crisis to race and racism in real-time. Given growing evidence of negative health effects of second-hand exposure to racism, this may have implications for understanding minority health and health disparities in the US.

Accountability and Transparency Diluted in the Flint Water Crisis: A Case of Institutional Implosion

Under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, City of Flint residents were disconnected from the Detroit Water and Sewage Department (DWSD) and began drawing water from the Flint River for almost 18 months. This switch was met with opposition from residents who claimed that the water from the Flint River was unsafe. After concerns were confirmed by independent researchers and the Flint water crisis became a topic of national debate, City of Flint and state-level officials chose to switch back to the DWSD and vowed to repair the damage caused by regulatory neglect. In this article, I explore additional factors that might have contributed to the water crisis in Flint, namely the conditions of the plumbing within Flint Community Schools and the corrosive nature of the water before the water source switch in 2014. Based on evidence from City of Flint Water Department audits and recent Lead and Copper Rule compliance data from Flint Community Schools inspection reports, I found that the ch...

This study examines local news reporting about the Flint water crisis. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with local reporters to explore journalistic practices and perceptions of the crisis. The study utilised a framework grounded in concepts from community journalism and crisis reporting, as well as environmental justice and racism scholarship. The qualitative thematic analysis centres around four themes: coverage practices and professionalism, resources and challenges, connections to place, and environmental justice and racism. The results reveal that the crisis served as a catalyst for some news organisations to make substantial investments in their newsrooms; but this was not the case for small organisations that depend mostly on grant-funding. Local reporters generally claimed that despite their attachment to the Flint community, they maintained their normal journalistic standards. However, some reporters struggled to separate their personal experiences from their professional practices, evidence consistent with prior studies on crisis reporting. Reporters demonstrated empathy towards victims impacted by the water crisis, and this heightened their distrust towards official sources and motivated their outreach efforts. Finally, for those reporters, their ideologies were largely consistent with both historical and emerging claims on environmental justice and environmental racism, that persons of colour, minority populations, and poor neighbourhoods in cities are more likely to suffer from environmental hazards compared to white and more affluent communities. Suggestions for crisis reporting in environmental justice contexts are discussed.

In 2014, as a cost-saving measure, Flint, Michigan, switched its water supply to the Flint River — the unofficial toxic waste disposal site for meatpacking plants, car factories, and lumber and paper mills, as well as the city's depository of agricultural and urban runoff and untreated raw sewage. In what may be viewed as the Gothic trope of the “poisoned well,” the Flint water crisis has directly affected a mostly African American population where 45 percent of Flint's residents are living below the poverty line. This essay positions the Flint water crisis in conversation with artist Pope.L, who in 2017 created an installation/performance/marketplace in which he bottled the noxious water shuttled to Flint residents and sold it to willing buyers. I consider the aesthetics and performativity of Pope.L's Flint Water Project alongside the nautical world-building of Drexciya and the aquatic hybrid figures in Wangechi Mutu's work. This assembly offers a speculative approach to an Afro-Gothic liquidity through an understanding of black geophysics as an embodiment of alluvial monstrosities and aquatic refusals.

To summarize existing literature on the mental health impact of the Flint Water Crisis. In March 2020, we searched 5 databases for literature exploring the psychological consequences of the crisis. Main findings were extracted. 132 citations were screened and 11 included in the review. Results suggest a negative psychological effect caused by the water crisis, including anxiety and health worries, exacerbated by lowered trust in public health officials, uncertainty about the long-term impacts of the crisis, financial hardships, stigma, and difficulties seeking help. There was evidence that concerns about tap water continued even after the state of emergency was lifted. With a possible compound effect to residents of Flint with the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the results highlight the need for more resources for psychological health interventions in Flint as well as a need for local governments and health authorities to regain the trust of those affected by the Flint Water Crisis.

Physicians form a vital front in recognizing unusual clinical presentations that could herald a health threat. In the Flint water crisis, physicians can be credited with playing critical roles in both uncovering the crisis and providing leadership when government failed to respond effectively. Yet most physicians in Flint were not formally trained in advocacy or leadership and might have recognized the health implications of the crisis more quickly had they received formal environmental health training. Furthermore, connections to other professional disciplines-and to the community-are vital for effective responses to environmental health threats. We explore some lessons learned in Flint that might help expedite resolution of future environmental health crises, particularly those involving aging infrastructure and diminished or dysfunctional regulation or oversight.

Water used for some industrial manufacturing processes often can be recycled. In 1956 the City of Flint, Mich., evaluated its water resources and arrived at the unenviable conclusion that, during drought years, it would be in need of more water than it had available. It was obvious to the city's administrators that, if the area were to continue to grow, water would have to be piped in from Lake Huron.The first two articles of this triad (presented at the Annual Conference on Jun. 23, 1970) dwell on the details of the successive measures taken by groups involved in Flint's water crisis that eventually led to its resolution. The third paper relates, for the most part, the measures taken by industry in the area.

Neglect, poor planning, and bad decisions led to Flint's water crisis. It could easily happen again.

In 2014, government officials in the City of Flint, Michigan switched the municipal water source from the Detroit Water System (water source: Lake Huron) to the Flint River. During this time, an estimated 102,000 Flint residents were potentially exposed to multiple chemical (e.g., lead) and biological threats (e.g., Legionella). After the switch to water sourced from the Flint River, Flint residents consistently reported concerns over water quality while also experiencing rashes, hair loss, and other health problems, including anxiety and depression. This study 1) reports on the Flint Water Crisis and its subsequent impact on residents’ stress, coping, resilience and trust and 2) describes a process methodology that trained, hired and deployed Flint residents as members of a multidisciplinary research team. A random sample of 320 Flint residents underwent household-based interviews to assess their health and mental health needs. Concomitantly, household water samples were obtained and residents were connected to known resources based on interview responses relative to need. This study found that declines in health and mental health status were correlated with increased stressors (i.e., fatigue, financial concern, anxiety), coping and less resilience or the capacity to recover. Perceived trust in government officials was significantly lower after the water crisis. While the water crisis generated numerous stressors, the event also galvanized community competence to engage in solution-focused coping and other adaptive capacities. By assessing and building upon Flint residents’ resilience, community resource specialists, identified and subsequently strengthened city residents’ ability to survive devastating challenges.