A hard-fought milestone for Flint’s water, but uncertainty ahead
Flint is close to finishing its task of digging up and replacing lead water pipes in the city, five years later than originally planned. Left: Photo credit: Michael Indriolo for Bridge Michigan. Right: AP Photo/Paul Sancya.
FLINT — Eleven years after the disastrous water supply switch that contaminated Flint’s water with lead, activists, residents and lawyers gathered in a church gym to celebrate a big step in the city’s recovery.
After years of delays and legal battles, the city has replaced the lead service lines of every resident who allowed them to do so.
A day earlier, the US Environmental Protection Agency had announced that, after nine straight years of passing water-test results, it was lifting an emergency order that required the city to treat its drinking water to control pipe corrosion.
“The pipe replacement program is finally nearly done,” said Addie Rolnick, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “And that’s a huge milestone.”
But not everyone in the 60-person crowd last week was in the mood to celebrate.
“I won’t drink the water,” said Flint resident Carroll Kinkade, 75. “I use it to flush my toilet and wash my dishes but never drink or bathe in it.”
Others wanted to know whether they should keep filtering their water. And local water activist Melissa Mays criticized the EPA’s announcement as premature, an attempt to abdicate responsibility to ensure the water’s quality.
“Our water’s still messed up and there’s still lead in the ground,” Mays said.
In spite of the lead-free pipes and the water test results showing compliance with lead limits, the underlying sentiment was clear: Trust doesn’t come easy in a community where government officials made decisions that caused the water crisis, spent months dismissing residents’ complaints about putrid water that gave them rashes, and where a lengthy criminal investigation ended with no trials for top state officials.
The financial woes that sparked the cost-cutting decisions at the heart of the water crisis also haven’t dissipated: Still reeling from industrial abandonment that broke the local economy, Flint’s population has declined by another 19,000 since 2014, to 79,735 today, and the water system still has financial struggles.
But city officials say they remain hopeful, a sentiment buoyed by a slight uptick in residents last year and new efforts to recruit manufacturers back to the city.
“We have all the ingredients right here in the city of Flint to be nothing less than excellent,” said Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley.
‘This is huge for Flint’
Tuesday’s celebration of lead-free pipes was a long time coming.
By now, the circumstances that led to the city’s water crisis are ingrained in the memory of many Michiganders: Acting on a law that allows state control of financially struggling cities, the administration of then-Gov. Rick Snyder appointed a series of emergency managers to run Flint beginning in 2011. Looking to cut costs, they switched the city drinking water supply from Detroit’s system to the corrosive Flint River, without requiring treatment to keep lead from leaching out of pipes.
Designed to save $5 million over two years, the switch ultimately caused a dangerous and expensive public health crisis that so far has cost state taxpayers hundreds of millions in legal bills.
It also prompted a 2017 settlement between the city, state and Flint residents and advocacy groups, in which the city agreed to excavate service lines in about 31,500 homes and replace those made of lead or galvanized steel by January 2020.
Delays plagued the effort, leading to repeated deadline extensions until, finally, officials announced last week that the work is nearly done.
Eleven-thousand lead-containing pipes have been replaced, with another 28,000 inspected and confirmed to be lead free, said Rolnick of Natural Resources Defense Council.
“This is huge for Flint, and it’s huge for other cities and communities,” Mays said, adding that the replacements show that “it can happen, you can force this.”
Residents in another 2,500 homes either declined to have their pipes excavated or didn’t respond to outreach from the city, leaving city officials with more door-knocking ahead as they strive to comply with a state law that requires removal of all lead service lines.
The city is required to continue providing free filters and water test kits to residents until March 2026.
While that work proceeds, residents harmed by the water crisis are still waiting on payouts from more than $600 million in legal settlements with various parties involved in the water crisis, including the state of Michigan.
About 26,000 people are expected to receive payments, although exactly how much they’ll receive is unclear.
Given the harm residents suffered, Mays said, “that money is never gonna be enough.”
What it will do, she continued, is “tell us that we were done wrong.”
The crisis has left its mark on Flint’s children but not because of lead exposure. Research has shown that the children of the crisis have significantly lower test scores on average due to a constellation of problems in the city, including ill-equipped schools, poverty and as Bridge Michigan’s Ron French reported: “a decade of parents, doctors, community members and teachers sending the message to students that lead stole their capacity to learn.”
Financial woes and hopes
With the lead pipes now gone, the emergency order lifted, and tens of millions of dollars invested in upgrading the water system, city officials still struggle with the question of how to fund that system moving forward.
Flint’s population has dropped nearly 20% since the water crisis began. That leaves fewer people to share in the cost of maintaining the water system, and many are behind on bills.
In inspection reports, state environmental regulators have repeatedly expressed concerns about the system’s long-term financial health.
Meanwhile, the city’s cost to deliver water keeps going up. The Great Lakes Water Authority, which sells water wholesale to Flint, has repeatedly raised its rates in recent years.
City officials so far have declined to pass those costs onto ratepayers, instead using federal stimulus dollars to backfill the budget.
“Affordable, clean water is a basic right, and this fund gives us time to build a system that protects residents now and into the future,” city spokesperson Shana Rowser said in a statement to Bridge.
But the temporary funding source will eventually run out. Rowser said Flint is developing a long-term plan that includes securing new funding streams, but declined to elaborate on potential funding sources.
The city is also ramping up its utility bill collections, improving billing practices and expanding support for low-income households to address rising costs, she said.
Some see hope in efforts to recruit new industry to the area, which could bolster the tax and ratepayer base while luring new residents to Flint.
Last month, the city reached a milestone in its effort to return manufacturing to the 350-acre vacant industrial site that General Motors left behind when it closed the sprawling Buick City factory complex in 1999.
Developer Ashley Capital, which plans to revive the site with several buildings housing manufacturing companies, has fully leased the first building.
“What we’re attracting is more growth, more business opportunities, more education opportunities for our young people,” Neeley said.
Another small victory: The latest census figures show Flint’s population growing for the first time in 25 years, with 76 residents added in 2024.
And economic development officials hope to leverage state and federal subsidies to land a semiconductor manufacturing plant on 1,300 acres near the Flint Bishop Airport, with a goal of creating thousands of jobs.
It’s far from a sure bet, and President Donald Trump has urged Congress to repeal the CHIPS and Science Act, the 2022 subsidy program at the heart of Michigan’s pitch for the site.
But in a speech in Flint on Wednesday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer expressed optimism that such an investment is still possible — and so is a brighter future for Flint.
“I want the world to hear the name Flint and think about the things that are made here,” she said, “and not the things that happened here.”
This article is being republished through a syndication agreement with Bridge Michigan. Bridge Michigan is Michigan’s largest nonprofit news service and one of the nation’s leading and largest nonprofit civic news providers. Their coverage is nonpartisan, fact-based, and data-driven. Find them online at https://www.bridgemi.com/.
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