Flint water crisis becomes crystal clear in powerful new book, 'The Poisoned City'

The health and safety problems caused by the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, haven’t gone away. Much of the nation’s attention, however, has.

So it’s hard to overstate how important Anna Clark’s new book "The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy" (Metropolitan Books, 320 pp., ★★★★ out of four) is for reminding us of the alarming revelations about lead and other contaminants in the city’s water supply; the shortsightedness and arrogance of public officials; and, above all, how greed and prejudice were as culpable in this environmental calamity as bad judgment.

Clark begins her taut, riveting and comprehensive account in the spring of 2014 when Flint, a city with roughly 99,000 residents, most of them African-American, severed its nearly half-century connection with the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and reconnected its water supply with the Flint River itself.

Local officials, along with many residents, believed that the DWSD charged too much money for the water drawn from Lake Huron. The idea was that Flint would, for a time, get its water from a source whose name it shared before the city joined a new regional system, the Karegnondi Water Authority, with the promise of greater savings. Seemed like a good idea, especially to state and local leaders who insisted that the water that came from the Flint River was safe.

By that same summer, city residents believed otherwise. The water that came out their showerheads, faucets and hydrants did so in varied shades of brown and orange with “particulates” floating around. Complaints of foul smells and metallic tastes in the water were soon superseded by reports of skin rashes and hair loss.

City officials insisted the water was safe, neglecting to mention that the new water treatment program didn’t include corrosion control, which in addition to violating federal law, made the river water more difficult to treat than lake water.

The situation got worse  – and quickly. As that fateful summer wore on, residents started buying bottled water for daily use as city officials kept telling them to boil their tap water.

In August, strains of E. coli bacteria were detected in the water. It’s still safe, keep boiling, officials kept saying, on television, in interviews, in public meetings as complaints mounted and pressure built thanks to increased media coverage and legal challenges.

Clark is meticulous in untangling the welter of misstatements, cover-ups and dismissals of the problem’s severity by officials convinced that staunching the red ink hemorrhaging the crippled economies of Flint and Michigan somehow was more important than children afflicted by lead poisoning.

Clark is also unsparing in pointing out how the disproportionate number of poor black families harmed by the crisis were emblematic of Flint’s deeply embedded racial segregation. “The poorest,” Clark says of these black residents, “generally had the worst water.”

If there is good news to be found in "The Poisoned City," it’s delivered through the tales of those who stepped forward to make officials accountable and force action. People like LeeAnne Walters, a local mother whose family’s illnesses compelled her to seek answers from an EPA manager named Miguel Del Toral.

Together with an idealistic biochemist, Marc Edwards, and veteran journalist Curt Guyette, Walters and Del Toral helped inspire, inform and galvanize a movement to convince government that drastic action was needed.

And yet, as Clark points out, “while the lifelong effects of lead poisoning can be mitigated, they can’t be cured.”

The neglect of communities, infrastructure and adequate planning that helped create the Flint crisis threatens other American cities. Lawsuits over the crisis continue and Flint residents still must use bottled water until pipes are replaced.

WPXI