{"id":2553,"date":"2016-01-22T09:02:55","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T17:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/flint-crisis-would-it-happen-in-wealthier-whiter-community\/"},"modified":"2016-01-22T09:02:55","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T17:02:55","slug":"flint-crisis-would-it-happen-in-wealthier-whiter-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/flint-crisis-would-it-happen-in-wealthier-whiter-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Flint crisis: Would it happen in wealthier, whiter community?"},"content":{"rendered":"

FLINT, Mich.<\/strong> \u2014 Ever since the full extent of the Flint water crisis emerged, one question has persisted: Would this have happened in a wealthier, whiter community?<\/p>\n

Residents in the former auto-making hub \u2014 a poor, largely minority city \u2014 feel their complaints about lead-tainted water flowing through their taps have been slighted by the government or ignored altogether. For many, it echoes the lackluster federal response to New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur voices were not heard, and that\u2019s part of the problem,\u201d Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said this week at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington, D.C., where she also met with President Barack Obama to make her case for federal help for her city.<\/p>\n

The frustration has mostly been directed at Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who appointed an emergency manager to run Flint. That manager approved a plan in 2013 to begin drawing drinking water from the Flint River, and the city began doing so the next year. But officials failed to treat the corrosive water properly to prevent metal leaching from old pipes.<\/p>\n

Snyder, a Republican in his second term, was blasted by Hillary Clinton in her remarks after the recent Democratic presidential debate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a city in the United States of America where the population, which is poor in many ways and majority African-American, has been drinking and bathing in lead-contaminated water. And the governor of that state acted as though he didn\u2019t really care,\u201d Clinton said.<\/p>\n

Snyder \u201chad requests for help that he had basically stone-walled. I\u2019ll tell you what: If the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there would\u2019ve been action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flint residents complained loudly and often about the water quality immediately after the switch but were repeatedly told it was safe. They didn\u2019t learn the water was tainted until the state issued warnings a year and a half later. Now families fear for their health and especially for the future of their children, who can develop learning disabilities and behavior problems from lead exposure.<\/p>\n

Snyder, who has apologized for the mishandling of the situation, did not respond Thursday to a request by The Associated Press for an interview. But in response to Clinton\u2019s remarks, he said the former secretary of state should not make Flint a political issue.<\/p>\n

His staff issued a statement to AP that cited his efforts in urban areas such as Detroit, which also has a large black population. An emergency manager appointed by Snyder led that city through bankruptcy in 2013-14.<\/p>\n

\u201cBringing Detroit back to a solid fiscal foundation has allowed the city to restore services, and we\u2019ve watched its economy grow, creating jobs and better opportunities,\u201d the statement said. Snyder has also \u201cfocused on improving education in all our cities, knowing that students need to not just graduate, but graduate with in-demand skills as they compete in a global economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

They also noted Snyder\u2019s signing of Medicaid expansion, which provided health care coverage to 600,000 low-income adults.<\/p>\n

Flint, a city about 75 miles north of Detroit, is the birthplace of General Motors and once had 200,000 residents. In the early 1970s, the automaker employed 80,000 blue- and white-collar workers in the area. Fewer than 8,000 GM jobs remain, and the city\u2019s population has dropped to just below 100,000, with a corresponding rise in property abandonment and poverty.<\/p>\n

The city is 57 percent black, and 42 percent of its people live in poverty.<\/p>\n

The decline of GM jobs \u201cleft a lot of people destitute and desperate, and they feel like their voices aren\u2019t being heard. It just adds to the frustration,\u201d said Phil Rashead, 66, of Flint, who is white.<\/p>\n

Former Flint Mayor Dayne Walling, who lost his re-election bid in November amid the water crisis, said newly released emails by Snyder showed that the governor\u2019s staffers disregarded Flint\u2019s plight because of the city\u2019s demographics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a number of indications that concerns of Flint\u2019s elected leaders and faith and community leaders were being dismissed as political posturing instead of taken seriously as efforts to address very real problems,\u201d said Walling, who is white and was first elected mayor in 2009.<\/p>\n

Frustrations boiled over at a weekend protest outside City Hall.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey would never do this to Bloomfield. They would never do this to Ann Arbor. They would never do this to Farmington Hills,\u201d filmmaker and Flint native Michael Moore said, referring to much wealthier Michigan communities. He called for Snyder\u2019s ouster and arrest.<\/p>\n

Moore also cited deaths from Legionnaires\u2019 disease recorded in the Flint area over the past two years and only announced publicly last week by Snyder. The state has not linked them to Flint\u2019s waters, but others disagree.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s call this what it is,\u201d Moore said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just a water crisis. It\u2019s a racial crisis. It\u2019s a poverty crisis. That\u2019s what this is, and that\u2019s what created this.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Roger Schneider reported from Detroit. Associated Press writers Jesse Holland in Washington and David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan, also contributed.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow Roger Schneider on Twitter at https:\/\/twitter.com\/rogschneider .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FLINT, Mich. \u2014 Ever since the full extent of the Flint water crisis emerged, one question has persisted: Would this have happened in a wealthier, whiter community? Residents in the former auto-making hub \u2014 a poor, largely minority city \u2014 feel their complaints about lead-tainted water flowing through their taps have been slighted by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2553"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}