Question

Create a timeline of the fiscally-driven decision-making that ultimately lead to the Flint Water Crisis

Answer 1

The first water distribution system in Flint was privately owned and incorporated as the Flint Water Works Company in 1883 (Dunbar & May 1995). On July 8, 1897, the City of Flint passed an ordinance requiring lead pipes: “all connections with any water mains shall be made with lead pipe” (Anon. 1897).

The City of Flint purchased the Flint Water Company in 1912. By 1930, Flint River water was being treated using alum coagulation before sand filtration, with the plant rated at 28 mgd (Hardin 1932). Construction on a new treatment plant for the City of Flint began in 1952 and was completed in 1954. At that point, treatment of the Flint River included prechlorination, coagulation with alum, lime-soda ash softening, recarbonation, filtration, the addition of polyphosphate for corrosion control, and postchlorination. Taste-and-odor-causing compounds were removed using activated carbon, along with the addition of ammonia and sodium chlorite. The plant was rated at a capacity of 59 mgd, with a maximum overload capacity of 86 mgd. The 50th percentile pH, color, and turbidity of the finished (tap) water were 10.3, 2, and 0.1 ppm (silica scale; approximately equivalent to 0.02 Jtu), respectively. The total and noncarbonate hardness were 86 and 49 mg/Las CaC03 (calcium carbonate), respectively (Wiitala 1963).

In 1967, Flint began purchasing wholesale treated water from the Detroit Water and Sewage Department (DWSD). While the water quality of the Flint River was poor as a result of unregulated discharges by industries and municipalities (Leonardi & Gruhn 2001), the principal reason for the switch was to ensure a sufficient quantity of water for the growing population (Carmody 2016). After 1967, the Flint Water Service Center (FWSC) was maintained as a backup water treatment facility, treating Flint River water two to four times a year for periods of only a few days. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit allows the treated water to be discharged back into the Flint River. In 2012, the Board of Water Commissioners for the City of Detroit approved a resolution that would allow the DWSD director to enter into contractual arrangement to allow blending of treated Flint River water with that purchased from DWSD as a cost-saving measure (City of Detroit 2012). While DWSD and the City of Flint never entered into a contractual agreement, it is unclear whether blending of these two different waters actually occurred.

With the goal of reducing the costs for treated water (Felton 2016), Flint officials decided in 2013 to join the newly formed Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), which was constructing its own pipeline to transmit raw water from Lake Huron. In the interim, the City of Flint had the option to continue to purchase treated water from DWSD (whose source was Lake Huron) or treat Flint River water at its own facility. After failing to come to an agreement on a short-term contract with DWSD, Flint decided to use water from the Flint River and treat it at the FWSC.

Many warnings and concerns were voiced regarding the use of the Flint River as a community water source. For example, Brian Larkin, then associate director of the (Michigan) Governor’s Office of Urban and Metropolitan Initiatives, foretold the crisis in a Mar. 14, 2014, e-mail message to several others in the governor’s office: “The expedited time-frame is less than ideal and could lead to some big potential disasters down the road.” Mike Glasgow, laboratory and water quality supervisor at the plant, warned in an Apr. 25, 2014, e-mail to the State of Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), “I do not anticipate giving the OK to begin sending water out anytime soon. If water is distributed from this plant in the next couple weeks, it will be against my direction.” Despite concerns, the FWSC switched from purchasing and distributing water from DWSD to treating water at its facility in Flint. In doing this, the source water changed from Lake Huron to the Flint River.

Within a few weeks of the switch, residents started complaining about the color, taste, and odor of their drinking water. In May 2014, they informed officials that the water was causing rashes, especially in children (MDEQ e-mail records). During this time, red water and discoloration were observed throughout the distribution system (Veolia North America 2015, Felton 2014), and there was an unusually large number of water main breaks (Fonger 2015). General Motors Corporation complained about the corrosiveness of the water on its engine parts and in October 2014 switched to using water from Flint Township instead of from Flint.

Starting in summer 2014, a number of violations occurred. Escherichia coli (E. coli) and total coliform violations resulted in the issuance of three boil-water alerts within a 22-day period during summer 2014 (Emery 2016; Fonger 2014a, 2014b). total trihalomethane (TTHM) concentrations at several sampling locations exceeded the 80 μg/L regulatory limit during May and August 2014 (Lockwood, Andrews, & Newman 2015). As a result, the MDEQ requested a preemptive operational evaluation in September 2014 and notified Flint of an initial quarterly violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Disinfection/Disinfection Byproducts (D/DBP) Rule in December 2014

In February 2015, the City of Flint sampled Flint resident Lee Ann Walters’ home and found lead in her water at a concentration of 104 μg/L (e-mail correspondence between US Environmental Protection Agency [USEPA] Region 5 and MDEQ dated Feb. 26, 2015; Flint Water Advisory Task Force 2016). By Aug. 31, 2015, Marc Edwards, a professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, had analyzed 120 samples from Flint homes. He found that 20% of the samples had lead levels that exceeded the 15 μg/L action level and that the 90th percentile was 30 μg/L (Roy 2015a). In September, a team led by a local pediatrician, Mona Hanna-Attisha, published data showing that blood lead levels (BLLs) in children increased significantly after the switch to the Flint River as a water source (Hanna-Attisha et al. 2016; Kennedy et al. 2016). In the area of Flint that had the highest lead levels in the watei; the BLLs in children who were tested increased by a factor of about 2.5.

The city was required by the SDWA Lead and Copper Rule to conduct sampling for lead and copper in Tier 1 premise plumbing over six-month periods. Although not all of the homes sampled were Tier 1 sites (City of Flint 2016), the first round of sampling revealed that the 90th percentile lead concentration was greater than that observed during the previous five rounds of testing (Figure 1); by the end of the second six-month sampling period, the 90th percentile lead level was almost three times greater than that observed in the previous 15 years

After much publicity regarding the lead problem, on Oct. 16, 2015, the source water for the City of Flint was switched back to treated Lake Huron water supplied by DWSD, with approximately 1 mg/L phosphorus to inhibit corrosion. Because the lead levels measured in the water remained high in some houses, on Dec. 9, 2015, the concentration of the phosphate corrosion inhibitor was increased by adding an additional ~2.5 mg/L phosphoric acid (P) at the FWSC.

Finally, in February 2016, information on the increase in the number of cases of Legionellosis that occurred in Flint in the summers of 2014 and 2015 was released. Ninety-one cases and 12 deaths have been confirmed in the Flint area, up from six to 13 cases a year before the switch to Flint River water (Anderson 2016). The source of the outbreak has not been definitively determined or directly connected to the Flint water system, but as noted by Anderson (2016), the illnesses began after Flint changed its water supply. Given the low residual disinfectant levels (chlorine in this case) and the presence of iron in the water in the distribution system (Veolia North America 2015, Felton 2014), along with high concentrations of assimiliable organic carbon that would have likely formed during the ozonation of the high total organic carbon (TOC) Flint River water, conditions could have been conducive to biological growth and the propagation of Legionella in the distribution network.