The Flint lead-poisoning disaster is simpler than it seems. Flint’s water didn’t turn toxic because of long-term neglect or because of some complicated mix of local, state and federal decisions. Flint isn’t just a symptom of some larger infrastructure problem in America (although we’ve got one).
What happened to Flint is one simple story: a city got poisoned because the state government screwed up. The state took over the city’s affairs, and then made an ignorant decision about water treatment that ruined the city’s pipes and poisoned the town.
Today residents still can’t drink straight from the tap. Still, no one delivers clean water to Flint’s residents. And the state is apparently in no rush to dig up and replace the pipes it corrupted.
Residents knew something was wrong right away, but to get anyone to listen, it took civil-engineering professor Marc Edwards blowing the whistle on lead in the water and then Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a local pediatrician, testing Flint’s kids, proving they’d been poisoned.
Up against official ignorance and indifference, Edwards and Hanna-Attisha were right, they were brave, and they were insistent.
Flint is still a crime scene, but these two caring, tough researchers are the detectives who cracked the case.
Maddow hosts The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC
- Workers Are Furious. Their Unions Are Scrambling to Catch Up
- What the Facebook Whistleblower Did to the Company's Stock in 6 Weeks
- Photos from Migrants' Desperate Journeys to the U.S. Border
- Emily Ratajkowski: How I Learned to Let Go
- Afghanistan's Female Students Were Banned from Studying. Now Some Are Finding New Ways to Learn
- The 'Safe Supply' Movement Aims to Curb Drug Deaths Linked to the Opioid Crisis
- The 19 Most Underrated Movies on Netflix
- By Ending Legacy Admissions, Amherst Hopes to Change the Makeup of Its Student Body
