An avoidable crisis: Flint, MI

LeeAnne Walters, “the 37-year-old mother of four began to notice that her hair was thinning, she had erratic blood pressure and her children started to get rashes over their body soon after she gave them baths,” Caitlin Keating of People Magazine reported. “One of her kids got so sick that he missed a month of school, and ‘at one point, they told us he had cancer because they didn’t know what was going on.’”

This is just one example of a growing crisis. In a city with an estimated population of 99,000 about 60 miles northwest of Detroit, many Americans have this similar story.

The Flint water crisis began in April 2014 when the city switched from using water from the Detroit municipal system and instead began using water from the Flint River in order to save the city money. Families started complaining to the city immediately. Brown, smelly water was coming out of their taps, not the clean water they once knew. In “Face of water crisis: Flint residents describe health, fears” by Katrease Stafford of the Detroit Free Press, residents share photos of their bodies covered in marks from bathing in contaminated water. Residents have lost hair, are becoming sick from the water they drink and are fearful of their own taps. Yet, this all could have been avoided.

Simple chemistry tests could have been performed -- chemistry tests that we as students even could have administered. Water from the Flint River was different than the previous source because it has high levels of chloride in it. According to “The Guardian” Marc Edwards, an expert on water treatment and corrosion at Virginia Tech, found the high levels of chloride and explained that chloride reacts with the “plumbing structure, causing lead particles to separate from the pipe and leach into the water.”

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) accepted blame at the annual State of the State address on Tuesday. While he undeniably did play a role in the situation, Snyder is not the only one to blame. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) failed to make sure the city complies with environmental regulations, and now a city is suffering. Children are being exposed to dangerous levels of lead, and their detrimental effects will not be known for years. People can’t bathe, can’t drink and can’t live their lives to the fullest in this town.

Instead of living in a world in which we only react when we get caught in a bad situation, living a life of being proactive would avoid these detrimental costs. Many of us will be stepping off of campus for the last time in May, degrees in our hands, and this will exactly be our challenge -- create a world of proactiveness, and a way we can start is by being aware of the interconnectedness between all of our degrees. While we may be separated into different fields and colleges, each and every one of our degrees relate to one another. Whether you are communication studies, business, environmental studies or English, it comes down to we need to have a knowledge of everyone else’s degrees and not just our own.

For if Gov. Snyder looked beyond his business background and remembered his Bachelor of General Studies, he may have remembered basic chemistry facts, basic environmental facts, basic facts of being one man for another, and maybe this all could have been avoided.

Sarah Litz