Under Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law, the state can take over financially struggling cities by handing complete authority to an appointed “Emergency Manager.” This happened to Flint in 2011. These emergency managers assume charge of all aspects of local government. In 2014 they changed Flint’s water source to save an estimated $5 million per year. In switching the city from a safe source of water to the problematic Flint River the state government proceeded to create one of the largest and most blatant acts of environmental racism in recent memory. Back in the early 1980’s as I began to study and write about lead poisoning, friend and fellow sociologist Robert Bullard was acquainting us with the more generalized environmental racism phenomenon. The Flint situation is an example.
Within days of the switchover to the Flint River, residents began to complain about the strange smells and colors of the water, doctors reported a rise in reports of rashes, hair loss, and other ailments, and city officials issued a boil water advisory after they discovered e. coli bacteria in the water. It was so bad churches stopped baptizing within the city.
Why the racism charge? We start with the fact that the emergency powers the state exercised occurred in a majority black city. Further, these emergency powers as exercised trumped democracy. For example, after discovering problems with the water, the Flint City Council voted to return the city to their earlier source of water; however, the unelected emergency manager had the power to overrule the council. And to add insult to injury, in mid-2015 the emergency manager ordered the Flint city officials not to revise any of the previous orders of emergency managers for at least a year.
Switching the city from safe water to the problematic Flint river as a source was a precipitating act of racism. While the impact of the action is what matters here, it surprised some longtime city residents that the officials used the Flint River, as many presumed it to be dirty and hazardous.
The officials, state and city, ignored the complaints of citizens who came forward with evidence of problems with the water–rashes, patchy scaling, and hair loss; and the state hid evidence in 2014 that Flint’s water contained dangerously high levels of cancer causing chemicals. They did not tell the citizens of these findings until 2015. In October 2014 a General Motors plant stopped used the Flint River water because it was damaging auto parts. Yet, five months later Flint officials insisted that the water met state and federal standards.
Not trusting authorities, who kept calling the water safe, residents consulted water experts and found more problems with their water. One expert, associated with the environmental activist Erin Brockovich, found chemicals used to treat the polluted Flint River were corroding the city water pipes and loosening lead and other metals into the water supply. The research team led by Virginia Tech civil engineering professor Marc Edwards started testing the water in April of 2015 and found lead levels in some households many times the level at which the EPA rules mandate intervention. Apparently, the EPA worked with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to cover up the extent of the problem with the water in Flint. The EPA Regional director resigned recently, as email evidence revealed the regional office knew of some of the water test results and kept denying the existence of a problem.
The Michigan Governor’s office may still be practicing racism. Although the Governor switched Flint back to the previous safe water supply and apologized to the citizens of Flint, his funding requests are not commensurate with the task ahead. It is apparent that the water pipes need to be replaced, a task the New York Times estimates at a billion dollars. Yet, the Governor is only assembling about $40 million to do some patching of the problem. I agree with The New York Times editorial position that the Army Corps of Engineers should be tasked with starting this pipe replacement work right away and they should bill the State of Michigan.
But is it racism? you may ask. Yes! “Even though a lot of the residents of Flint are white?” Yes. These actions affected a city that is majority black and heavily poor. As Tim Wise would probably argue, whites in Flint are victims of collateral damage. Because poverty and welfare issues have been racialized, poor whites get caught up in the ongoing oppression of black and brown peoples.
“But is it racism, even though the officials may not have known about the deleterious effects of the switch in water supply ahead of time?” Yes! Intent is irrelevant. If racist consequences result from an institution’s practices, that institution is racist whether or not the individuals maintaining those practices have openly racist intentions. “Why is it important to label the action of the Michigan state authorities as racist?” This is offered with the assumption that the first step in solving a problem is to define it–correctly. That is the scientific method.