Environmental Disaster: Flint Water Crisis

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Environmental Disaster: Flint Water Crisis

The Flint water crisis was an environmental and health issue that took about years after commencing in 2014 and ended in 2019. The issue started after Flint city in Michigan, the United States of America's residents consumed lead and legionella bacteria in water. The city is mainly inhabited by black people accounting for about 40 percent of Flint’s population. Initially, the city residents sourced their drinking water from treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Company (Masten et al., 2016). However, the drinking water from Detroit was too expensive for the residents since most of them lived before the poverty line. The government decided to resolve the drinking water problem in Flint by shifting the source of drinking water from Detroit Water and Sewerage Department in 2014, which is cheaper and affordable to the residents. The Flint water crisis resulted in children's physical and psychological development, and families suffered kidney and heart disease due to exposure to lead. 

In 2014, the state government changed the source of Flint drinking water from Great Lakes' Lake Huon, which was provided by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, to Flint River. However, the government altered without essential rust regulator treatment to inhibit lead release from pipe and plumbing. Since the pipeline was not tested for Toxin before it became operational, it began leaking contaminants into the city's drinking water. Roughly about 140,000 were exposed to lead and other toxins, including trihalomethane. Lead accounted for the most significant percentage of position in the water with more than 15ppb level detected in the Flint City's drinking water from Flint River (Pieper et al., 2016). General Motors (G.M.) automobile business establishment was founded in Flint in 1908. The report released by the U.S. Department of the interior on the Great Lakes region indicated that G.M.'s eight Flint factories were dumping not less than ten million gallons worth of waste into the river daily. Another substantial source of Flint River pollution was associated with the early logging industry, road salt pollution and intensive agricultural fertilizer use. In the 1970s, the government tried to resolve industrial pollution by enacting The Water Act, though River Flint retained high bacteria levels even after environmental improvement. When the city officials planned to obtain the city’s drinking water from Flint River in 2014, they applied choline into the water to hinder pollution. In response, it was a chemical reaction with organic material in the water to release more acidic. Also, Flint city officials never used an anti-corrosive agent to inhibit the reaction between lead metals and drinking water. Hence, the acidic water corroded the city’s aged lead pipes, leaking heavy lead metals into the public drinking water.

In less than one year, residents learned about the change that occurred in the drinking water from Flint. They never conserved the information and notified...