Who Poisoned Flint, Michigan?
The reason Walling didn’t get all the information is simple: He was only sort of mayor. Elected in 2009, Walling took over a city that had hemorrhaged half its population over the past 50 years, and once contemplated taking a part of the city off the grid to save on infrastructure costs. There was a $20 million budget deficit, as Flint was having difficulties meeting the pension requirements of union retirees who had worked in a more prosperous time and with a much larger tax base.
In 2011, Gov. Rick Snyder, a white-haired accountant who ran on the slogan “one tough nerd,” took office. He quickly ordered the state to take over the management of cities like Detroit, which had become economically insolvent. Part of the state’s reasoning for the takeovers was that it needed to step in to provide for the safety and welfare of citizens. Walling and the city council were stripped of their power, and their salaries were cut. Not surprisingly, the powerless city council attracted less than stellar talent. In 2013, Flint elected two convicted felons and two others who had declared bankruptcy.
But who benefited? It seemed austerity and budget balancing meant more than citizen welfare as state-appointed managers slashed union benefits. The city cut 36 police officers from a force already stretched so thin that if a handful of officers were processing criminals, there were literally no cops on patrol.
“It’s like what’s going on in Greece,” says state Sen. Jim Ananich, who represents Flint and has a newborn he takes to his in-laws’ house in nearby Grand Blanc for baths. “How did we get to a place where we’ve cut everything? There’s nothing left but the books balancing. What the city looks like after that doesn’t matter. As long as there’s less red and more black, we’re in good shape.”
The transfer from Detroit to Flint water was just another bottom-line move. Flint was switching over in 2017 to a new pipeline that would serve the middle of the state with water from Lake Huron. (The city council cast a symbolic 7-1 vote in favor of the new pipeline. The state would later try to use this as a protective fig leaf to claim the city had approved drinking river water.) Detroit’s emergency manager asked the state to intervene in the switch, and when that failed, the utility told the city of Flint that its contract would be terminated in one year. The problem then was what to do between 2014 and 2017. Snyder’s Flint emergency managers – four cycled in and out like scrubs in an AAU hoops game – chose the Flint River rather than renegotiating with the petulant Detroit water utility. The initial results were not promising. One resident described her water to me as “the color of morning pee.” When an aide to Ananich complained to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, she says she was told, “It’s called the Clean Drinking Water Act, not the Tasty Drinking Water Act. We’re doing our job.” Acceptable water standards had become a fungible term in Flint.
Who Poisoned Flint, Michigan?, Page 3 of 12