This makes me MAD
A tiny town with a smaller population than some high schools has contaminated water, so Michigan declares a state of emergency, supplies residents with bottled water, and is dumping all the contaminated water in preparation of hooking the town up with a clean water supply.
MEANWHILE nobody gives two shits about Flint, a MAJOR CITY with OVER A HUNDRED THOUSAND RESIDENTS.
Spot the difference!
https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/Michigan-declares-state-emergency-town/96/i32
This is interesting from an environmental science perspective, because this is an example of where racism is less relevant than one might think.
So, the article and the fact sheets don’t explicitly detail what happened, but what likely happened (because this is not particularly uncommon) is that the town’s drinking water supply (a small reservoir or ground water) was contaminated, and now they’re switching to another municipal supply; this is a technical challenge and there’ll need to be clean up at the first water source, but ultimately it’s a pretty simply resolved problem.
Flint is a much worse example. In Flint, the source of the contamination IS the infrastructure, because of mismanagement when the city switched to a water supply that was more corrosive than what they had been using, which has caused permanent damage to the lead pipes that were previously being used without major problems; this is a long and difficult fix that will cost billions of dollars, especially when you consider health effects decades out.
(if you’re wondering why they used lead pipes at all, it’s a combination of lead lobbies downplaying the risk of lead poisoning and also an old infrastructure that was implemented before pvc was invented; most common metals corrode when exposed to water, but lead is fairly cheap and unreactive IF YOU TREAT IT RIGHT)
but how it intersects with race is very important, because flint’s drinking water crisis absolutely stems from the systemic underfunding and devaluing of the community, the kind of ignorance and cost cutting everything that capitalism forces on public systems, thereby generally making them worse, and also the kind of “fuck the regulations” attitude all too common amongst conservatives who’ve forgotten that every line of environmental law has been written directly because of negative effects on communities, often death, but just as often long term health problems that the community suffers with for decades
environmental racism is a filter often overlain and contradicting scientific consensus, but it’s important to point out that in some circumstances problems are not strictly comparable. The state’s disproportionate responses however is absolutely an example of environmental racism; Flint should be considered one of the top issues in Michigan but instead the community feels like it’s screaming to be heard.
memeotional 