Flint City Water Crisis Case Study

The Flint water crisis has left no one from the damage, even the pets are getting sick of the poisoned water. That was what residents Lee and Ernie of Flint Michigan saw with their cat. Flint is a city in Michigan with a total population of approximately one hundred thousand residents. The issue with the water for Flints and its residents stated in 2014 when the city decided to switch from their water resource from the city of Detroit to a local river. Immediately after the switch residents filed complaints about the water’s smell and color. In Ryan Felton’s “Flint’s Water Crisis: What went wrong,” it is apparent that the crisis should not have happened, and that flint was neglected just because it was an impoverished city.

The lead effects in the drinking water have caused a massive public health crisis (“Scientific Opinion on the risks”, 2015). The whole crisis was as a result of poor management practices employed in the Flint water plant. The city decided to switch the

“Water is a human right”-  Michigan Nurses. Due to a lack of financial resources and government funding, the city of  Flint, Michigan began to make budget cuts. One major budget cut was the waterway from Lake Huron to Flint. Government officials decided on connecting Flint to the Flint river, which has previously raised infestation problems. After the major switch city occupants commenced to complain about the smell and taste of at home tap water.

In her article, Flint Water Crisis, Dr. Mona Hann-Attisha, discusses the occurrence about highly elevated, possibly but not yet actually harmful levels of lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, received national attention. She describes Flint, Michigan, was once a postindustrial home to flourishing automotive plants; the water crisis has been described as an example of government wrongdoing and disrepair by some and of a lack of omission by federal environmental regulators by others. She points to the tendency prior to a series of tests by independent researchers at Virginia Tech in October 2015, many residents found that their unease about the water’s taste, odor, and smell were being disregard intentionally by city and state officials,

“In September, Virginia Tech researchers released a report saying Flint's water was creating a health threat in old homes that have lead pipes or pipes fused with lead solder. And doctors last week reported high levels of lead in local children's blood samples, also blaming water pipes” (CBSNEWS). Lead is a serious problem as it may cause a serious damage in different organs of the body especially the brain and it is the most known neurotoxin. However, knowing that lead is the source of the problem is an important piece of information which can facilitate reaching the source of lead leaching. In fact, many cities have lead pipes, not only Flint city, and when water sits in those pipes, the lead can leech into the water. So cities usually add corrosion-control chemicals, such as phosphates (PO4), to keep the lead out of the water. However, Flint did not take into account these precautions, and this was a major contributor to the high lead levels and, consequently, health problems, “the public health protection was gone,” Edwards says. (ALANA SEMUELS, 29 Jul. 2015). If we talked about the reason why the water in Flint’s River is difficult to treat, it turns out that it contains high levels of coliform and fecal coliform bacteria. But what makes it more difficult than Lake Huron water is that the Flint River is subject to temperature changes, rain events and high carbon content. An additional indication, is the increased level of trihalomethanes (TTHM), a byproduct of the large amount of chlorine needed to kill bacteria in the river water. For the most part, specific amounts of chlorine are used to treat river water, but the problem is that low levels of chlorine can produce coliform bacteria and, on the other hand, high levels of chlorine may result in Disinfectant Byproducts (DBP), which, in turn, may lead to elevated levels of

Flint Water Crisis, independent professionals reported testing the drinking water and what was found that there is lead and it was leaching into the main water supply. Contaminated water with lead and iron may be the most intense image of environmental and social injustice. Flint, Michigan, is amongst the poorest in the U.S. and majority African American, since 2014(npr.org 2016). The citizens of Flint had been complaining that their tap water was foul and discolored and had an odd taste. Nonetheless city, state, and federal officials ignored the issue. It has been stated that by changing the Flint water pipeline back to Lake Huron will not rectify the damage, investigators and many researchers believe that it may not be possible to ever undo

Back in April 2014, Flint Michigan, switched its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. The government believed that this would be a great idea, because by them making this big switch they begin to start saving a lot of money. The new water that they now use is very polluted. This is the water that each and every person in Flint depends on to drink, cook with and to also bathe in. A lot of people have been affected by this change in water supply. As things begin to worsen the people in Flint, started to hear and become very familiar to lead poisoning. A significant amount of their victims have fallen victim to to being affected by the contaminated water, that everyone has been using. Doctors have noticed that the amount of lead found

The problem in Flint, Michigan was the residents came to the conclusion that iron found its way into their water supply and people began to panic at the sight of brownish water. In fear they went to city officials and to city police to figure out the problem. They receive all their tap water from the Flint River which is highly corrosive and the Department of Environmental quality was not treating the water with an anti-corrosion agent.

All the controversy about the lead problems in Flint, Michigan has stirred up questions across the country. Every day there are several news stories about cities across the country discussing the lead issue and how they meet the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act. While the average person may feel comforted by these news stories, it doesn’t mean that every home served by the water supply has lead below the EPA’s recommended action level. It’s the job of water treatment professionals to educate those served by municipal water about the regulations surrounding lead and copper and what those consumers can do to protect themselves further.

The major sources of lead here were gasoline, paint chips and water from old plumbing. After lead was removed from gasoline and paint, blood lead levels (BLL) in children decreased on average from 16 mcg/dL to less than 3 mcg/dL. Residual lead persists in the environment, however. A toxic level is currently defined as 5 mcg/dL. In U.S. children age 1-5, the prevalence of BLLs >10 mcg/dL decreased from 88% to 4.4% between 1976 and 1994 and further dropped to 0.8% by 2010. Yet there are still almost half a million children in the U.S. with levels >5

Water treatment plants typically add and remove chemicals, and change the composition of a water source in order to supply clean and safe water to its residents. Lead pipes that contain soluble forms of lead can allow lead ions to react with hydrogen ions within water, causing a dissolution reaction with allows for those lead ions to leach into the water and contaminate it as seen here with the dissolution of galena: PbS(solid) + 2H+ Pb2+(aq) + H2S(aq) The first problem that occurred with the Flint Water Supply was the fact that they did not have a plan to maintain the protective layer that builds up along the walls of lead pipes. This layer is made up of lead phosphate and lead carbonate. The previous water treatment facility that the city used added orthophosphate PO43- which is a negative ion that will bond with the positive lead ions (Pb2+) in order to form a solid chemical known as lead(II) phosphate

The more polluted a water source is, the more processing required to make the water safe to drink. Most of the contaminants now in Flint’s drinking water were introduced during or after processing. For all drinking water, the first concern is bacteria, which can cause diseases like hepatitis, Legionnaire’s disease, and other illnesses. Because Flint’s river water had high levels of bacteria, it was treated with additional chlorine. Chlorine reacts with organic material in the water to produce carcinogenic byproducts such as trihalomethanes; it also makes water more acidic, which corrodes pipes. Federal law mandates adding anti-corrosive agents to drinking water in large cities; this standard water treatment practice was not followed (Carmody, 2016). The water created issues with lead due to its high acidity. Water service connections have been made for years using lead piping primarily in the 1920s and 1930s. The acidic water corroded the old lead pipes and lead seeped into the water. Lead poisoning is the most widespread and serious health problem associated with Flint’s drinking water; children with prolonged exposure to lead experience a range of developmental problems that are incurable. Flint’s water-treatment staff were not able to successfully make Flint River water safe to drink. Whether this is because they were undertrained, understaffed, or simply made a decision not to invest scarce

Two years ago the water supply for the city of Flint was changed from Lake Huron to the Flint River to cut costs. The problem was that the Flint river is highly contaminated. The people of Flint have been ingesting contaminated water that is high in lead content for two years. For children, this is especially damaging as lead impacts the developing brain.

The federal government realizes that lead and other contaminants pose a real threat too drinking water so they began to pass acts and amendments that restricts or prevents lead and other contaminants from affecting the drinking water. The clean water act and the safe drinking water act are major examples of what the federal government implemented. Lead still continued to be a problem due to the aging pipelines leading to the Flint, Michigan water crisis caused by improper care of corrosion control thus concluding the history of public water

Lead poisoning has also been linked to other diseases such as the previously mentioned Legionnaires disease. In light of this information, the department should assess the risk that the residents were exposed to and conduct thorough research into the effects of these other ailments. The Department should partner with the Flint Area Health Community department to receive expert advice on the opportunistic diseases that come with such outbreaks. The switch back to Lake Huron as the town’s principal supplier of water is not adequate since most of it remain unsafe for human consumption. The samples collected should be tested and the results posted on publicly accessible websites for individual homeowners. These tests should be quality assured and safety protocols ought to be made available to the residents in case of such