Anna Clark | The Flint Water Crisis, Engineered Inequality, & America’s Big Lead Problem

00:00 Embrace yourself, because you're about to dive into another free first hour episode of the Higher Side Chats. And we just want to let you know that whether your looking for a companion through your paranoid insomnia, entertaining yourself through one of life's mundane activities or trying to ward off the internal screams from all those sad smothered souls around the office THC is here and you should know that every episode of the higher side chats has an entire second hour for plus members Sign up at thehiresitechatsplus.com and you'll get years of Plus Show archives, lifetime forum access, a special invite to Greg Carlwood's monthly joint sessions MP3s of THC music bonus episodes tour videos and 10% off t-shirts grinders and whatever else ends up in The HireSite Store It's $8 a month that you won't miss so become a plus member and treat yourself in these troubled times always action packed and commercial free

00:51 Which means you'll unfortunately never hear my voice again. 1930s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the fireside chats His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times From 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire For a new era of worldly frustration we offer a- I'm Greg Carlwood These are The Hireside Chats

01:30 Hallelujah and hello, Hireside Chatters! From sunny San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood. And although it's a nice idea that while we work our way towards the American Dream and raise our flag-waving families... ...the nation's institutions and regulatory agencies are the all knowing and altruistic advocates for the health wellness and safety of the common man that we conveniently like to think they are But we can find many instances where these institutions fail us, either by ignorance, incompetence, pay-for-play scandals, regulatory capture or even dark experimentation. chemical spray testing in the inner city projects of St. Louis, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments carried out by the U.S Public Health Service or under-the-table radiation exposure testing done on the poor and imprisoned And even when something is discovered to be a hazard to public health like asbestos various FDA approved pharmaceuticals or lead paint

02:25 The game plan of government is typically to ignore rising concerns as long as it can, shuck off responsibility and quietly keep society ignorant with a well-funded PR campaign of damage control. And the power and influence of today's mega corporations only make these problems worse. So when experts and activists raise concerns over things like GMO agriculture or cell phone frequencies it's hard not to wonder if they might have a point Well, one recent example that illustrates some of these issues quite well is the Flint water crisis. And when I wanted to learn more about the nuances of the situation, I found Detroit journalist Anna Clark's heavily praised book The Poisoned City – Flint's Water and American Urban Tragedy. A terrific expose on a perfect storm of neglect, suppression, deception and systematic injustice that goes back much further than the switching of water sources in 2014.

03:20 Luckily, she was willing to talk to us today and I couldn't be more psyched about it. A true champion of the people, the Flint Water writer and journalist for justice Anna Clark welcome to The Higher Side Thank you so much for having me! I'm looking forward to this Yeah this is a real pleasure thanks for being here you wrote a great book that not only details the flint water crisis but also goes into the deep history of unjust policies economic conditions neglect and segregation that i really wasn't aware of or expecting as well just how vulnerable our national infrastructure is to there be many more plants in the future it's actually quite scary what

04:02 To kick this off, you've lived in Detroit for over a decade. You've written about Michigan history and its cities more than once Let's give the people some context for Flint What can you tell us about that deeper history of the city that you found interesting while putting this book together? Sure, well Flint is a fascinating city and I'm glad you're starting with that question because a lot of times when people talk about Flint Michigan they talk about what it's lost right? They talk about how it's lost jobs, especially auto jobs. Flint is the birthplace of General Motors so they talk about how it's lost people it's lost like more than half of its population in the last 50 years and how it's lost public services and human rights in many ways as the Flint water crisis showed but what people miss a lot is what is there you know? It's not just a place that is defined by its absences it's defined by what's present. Flint today is a city of about 100,000 people

05:00 It's I think still the seventh largest city in the state. It is as i mentioned, the birthplace of General Motors which in its heyday was like really one of the most powerful corporations and entire world And that is absolutely what catalyzed its growth in the twentieth century. This very entrepreneurial river town became a destination for people from all over the world who are looking for these really solid working class jobs at GM and all the other companies that rose up alongside it. Flint also has today four college campuses,

05:37 The University of Michigan has a Flint campus there. There's also Kettering University, which used to be known as General Motors Institute, a cooperative engineering school as well as community college and baker college extension school. It's a beautiful city in many ways, it's got this gorgeous art museum the second largest art museum in the state, the largest planetarium in the state you can see that it is a city that had really invested in its cultural life for a long time, philanthropy I guess rose up along with these auto jobs and all of that but you can also see a lot of dysfunction of the past

06:14 still playing out today. So Flint was one of the most segregated cities in the entire country, not just in the North At one point, it was the third most segregated city behind two cities in the South. So it was ferociously administered so African Americans were only allowed to live in two neighborhoods and Flint and as its population with just quadrupling quintupling growing so fast especially with African American migrants from the south who are looking for these jobs It got absolutely untenable Just on a justice way and also just functionally, like it was just crowding and predatory landlords. And it's just terrible. Through an unlikely journey Flint became the first city in the country to pass a fair housing ordinance by popular vote which was tremendous news and hard fought came through just by hair. Yet its also rather bittersweet because that vote came

07:12 two years before the census marked the first downtick in population for the city, a downturn in numbers that has continued on to this day. And with also the loss of a lot of these jobs it's created a cycle that has made it very difficult for people to live their lives in Flint right now Right on right yes that's great introductory contacts you mentioned housing and net flint has this toxic history of segregation, add to quote the book you write that in the past conditions had been set up so mortgages and homes outside of two designated neighborhoods remained beyond their reach for african americans.

07:52 Black real estate agents were barred from joining the Flint board of realtors serving as appraisers or accessing property listings on the industry standard multiple listing exchange. I mean, wow! Obviously we're talking about a little while ago but that's pretty shocking Right. In some ways it's not even that long ago, right? This is still living memory for people and it has real consequences. I mean segregation was enforced at every single level from the federal government to the state government to local government to private companies organizations groups like these

08:31 There were some folks who tried to circumvent segregation in Flint by, for example building a house in a white neighborhood so that maybe they could get their kid into the school they wanted them to go to and they would just redraw the district lines to keep them out. I mean it was just fiercely guarded this separate and unequal way of designing this city and as you said toxic I've heard other interviews where you even mentioned the prospect that some black families with white friends would have the white friends purchase the property and then sell it back to them just so they could get into a house they might want. People would try to, yeah, get around it that way though that didn't always go over well as well as hoped There was one story this was like in those years

09:22 After Brown versus Board of Education where schools were desegregated but the residential segregation was still held a lot, parents were complaining to a teacher that About the presence of a black child in the second grade class so they made that kid sit in a closet with the door open, you know to look at on the rest of the class while the teacher taught them. I mean it was every single way african-americans were told that they were second class citizens and it was having a concrete limitation on their ability to live their lives. This was also enforced in the jobs, all these GM jobs that had drawn such a large African-American population to Flint in the first place. They were given the lowest paying jobs they were given the dirtiest jobs most dangerous jobs like in these car foundries. They were just systematically kept out of the full opportunity

10:18 of living their lives and to pass on any generational stability and wealth to their children. And when it comes to the decade just before the water crisis, you have some pretty shocking statistics in the book too apparently between 2000 and 2010 22 000 people left Flint which is an 18 percent population loss And i guess what are some of the other factors that contributed to that obviously issues with the auto industry would be one the general two thousand eight recession would probably be another what else is there. Right now it's a big one right that foreclosure crisis housing prices account comes back a lot too homes so many ways both in the early twentieth century and today

11:06 I think another reason a lot of folks left is because their schools, as the population dropped, as property tax values that school budgets rely on dropped there was less capacity for the city to provide really terrific public education as it once did for many of its residents. And a lot of families left for the suburbs or elsewhere because they wanted to put their kids in schools where they felt they would have a chance. I think that first big drop of population in Flint over last 50 years was definitely white people the population loss in the 21st century has been more African-American families than others who have just had to absorb a lot. You know, when you have this sort of spiraling dysfunction in the city it just shows up in every way like schools public safety, the quality of the roads, the cost of the water...you know? It's just shows up and everything away and even folks who really love the city it can be hard too stick around

12:05 Yes indeed and i wanted to ask you about that the conditions leading up in this population loss because one of the saddest elements to me and the story is just how stock the remaining population is or was because anyone who had the money to leave they definitely did and i thought this is pretty shocking but at the time of the water crisis eighty percent of the people in flint had an income under forty thousand, and forty percent were making less than fifteen thousand a year and that is insane. It isn't saying anything is i mean just by some recent census estimates it

12:46 what are the parts of that report city per capita in entire country and when you have like poverty is a violence in itself and when you concentrate poverty, where is it in a city like flint your concentrating vulnerability it's not a coincidence that these folks are at the front lines. I'm number of these kind of disasters and crises they've been set up to be vulnerable in so many ways and it's just incredibly difficult. I mean, I grew up in a poor family and one of the reasons I had a shot is because I lived in a community where there was people way richer than me, so I went to better schools

13:23 It was safer when I walked down the street or played in parks. The economic integration helped give me some opportunities that I might not have had, had I grown up in a city where everybody was poor like my family. You just literally do not have the resources to support this city and of course even as its population went down and the average income of residents went down you know the city has a responsibility to serve square footage that it always had. It has to maintain these roads, deal with all these properties and infrastructure but it has far less resources to do it

14:02 Good points and you also mentioned that the state of michigan had this revenue sharing program which would take tax money and they can kind of move it wherever they wanted within the state and end up diverting maybe five point five billion that would have gone to flint and surrounding areas in the stage just use it to pay debts or work on other things instead of the infrastructure that it's really meant to be used for and all these problems just compounded like you said set up to be vulnerable that is a great phrase to use for such a situation, add when i comes to the water switching issue itself talk about where flint had been getting its water and why this decision was even made to switch the city's water source to the river.

14:52 Yes, very good question. Very important question and before I answer that I'm glad you brought up the revenue sharing thing too because that is one of like I would say the still unresolved issues. I mean there's...the state has Withheld a lot of money that would ordinarily many would say it was obliged to provide cities to pay for public services and it withheld even when the state itself had surplus and cities. Have struggled with that even wealthier cities but of course the city's bad have that narrowest margin for error have been hit the most and it's still a problem. But, okay back to the water switch this brings us to April 2014 that is when the switch happened

15:36 Flint had been getting, it's about an hour drive from Detroit. It had been getting its water through Detroit's water system for about 50 years and the Detroit water system biggest utility in the state had like 4 million customers nearly half of the states population and it got its water mainly from Lake Huron one of the great lakes beautiful gorgeous lake The water quality was very solid, but Flint had a number of grievances with the utility. It felt that as one of the largest customers it should have more say-so in the direction and most especially they were struggling with the cost of the water. Flint had excessively expensive water even before you get to the fact that its a poor community I mean it would be expensive for anyone

16:24 And the reason for that is because they were struggling to pay, to maintain a water system built for twice as many people and General Motors. And you have far fewer people and far poorer people to do it. The rates were super high even then they weren't able to totally maintain it So, the water crisis before the water crisis was there were just like rampant shutoffs and illegal water hookups that were then prosecuted. There's some worried it was going to be a public health crisis. People are frustrated with the water and they wanted some kind of change but that was the mood in town but the most significant factor in the switch was that Flint had an emergency manager at the time

17:05 This is somebody that the state appointed to the city to take total control over it. So, it had a power that the mayor would have and the power that the City Council would have. They no longer had those powers. That all was held by the state-appointed emergency manager and that emergency manager has extra powers in addition to that, that no elected official has like the power unilaterally sell city assets or break union contracts, things like that. This is what the state considered necessary to get this struggling city back on its feet and it did this to a number of cities in Michigan. It was one of the most expansive state oversight models in the entire country so under the emergency manager

17:50 The emergency manager decided they were going to leave Detroit's water system and they're gonna join this brand new water system called the KWA, Karigandi Water Authority. But the trick is this new water system wasn't yet built and wouldn't be for a couple of years And so under the emergency manager they decided that they were gonna reboot the old city plant Flintwater Plant by the Flint River and use the Flint River water to get them through the interim period before connecting to the KWA This was more or less celebrated at the time they did this real public press conference where they like toast with the river water at the city plant everybody in the video really regrets it now it did not go well at all anyway. And didn't make the water cheaper to that's the other thing cuz of problem wasn't

18:43 the water source it was infrastructure so while the manager implied that getting more local control of the water when lower people's prices and also just added to the city. And on this subject of the kwa i'm probably getting way ahead myself here but this was kind of mind blowing to me but you write about the punishing terms of the contract apparently if when were to miss even one of its annual bond payments the kwa can seize the city's treatment plant plus twenty five percent of it state revenue sharing money and i could also force the city to levy a tax, get its mind this is like that kind of thing that drives me nuts because i don't know if you could call the kwa corporation or private entity but just

19:32 We should put the people first in a lot of these situations and yet these little companies end up having this sweetheart deals that just completely, screw the people when the kwa is not important to people of flint are you know what should be more important than that's just kind of insane power to give to something like this. It is insane power and I'm glad to bring it up because the terms of this deal with the KWA has been really overshadowed by all the other stuff that happened with Flint's water. But even if everything had gone well in a public health respect with the water switch, there are a lot of reasons to raise your eyebrows at how this deal happened because this KWA it is technically this public agency but its also just unusual on many respects. This is a state that has

20:23 tons of distinctive water plants and utilities. It's odd to create a new one that is duplicating resources we already have, an emergency manager is technically assigned to these poor cities in school districts because they're supposed to get rid of redundancies and get rid of debt and all that by signing on with the KWA they took out $80 million dollars in debt which was beyond its legal limit it did this sneaky little workaround to basically in-debt Flint to this like long term contract with the KWA. They were also going to make the city responsible for treating and delivering its water even under the KWA, even when the switch was complete and it was doing all of this to provide Flint with what it already had which is water from Lake Huron right? Like that's what he was getting from Detroit. Emergency managers aren't supposed to add to the debt they're supposed get rid of the debt but even if they did I wasn't doing

21:20 Meet any of the other essential needs Flint had like with its police department or fire department or at schools. No, they did this deal to Give it what already had water from Lake Huron except now you have to treat it yourself You know It doesn't make really rational sense from even a financial point of view It's often said Flint switched its water to save money but even on that level The city budget had extra debt. People's water rates went up, who was saving money? Even if everything had gone perfectly well and the whole thing is very strange but Flint as it happened never did complete the switch to the KWA because things went wrong with its temporary stopgap water treatment plan. Right yes and let's get into that it's basically

22:08 Situation where they needed to reboot and old water treatment plant that hadn't been used in a long time and this is where the problem starts with toxic water right. Right number of things went wrong in one of them is that this will water treatment plan did not get there, investment or the staffing necessary to treat the water properly and that's especially important because the river is, any river not just a Flint River. Any river is going be more complex water source to treat which you and your listeners would know intuitively because when we take glass full of water from

22:46 a freshwater lake and glass full of water from the river, you can imagine how the river will be cloudier. It's just more complex to treat even in healthy rivers. They did not prepare appropriately first of all to treat this more complex water source the way it needed to be treated and the most serious thing they didn't do is they didn't add corrosion control to the water, which is what you're legally supposed to do by federal law. Legally supposed to do at the treatment plant which is something that you add to the water so when it passes through pipes on its way to your home, it helps keep the metals from corroding into the water, right? Because our pipes are almost universally even in wealthier communities almost universally super old and a lot of them a disturbing amount of them are made out of lead which is one of the world's best known neurotoxins. And while corrosion control does not eliminate all of it its still a big issue about how we just need to get the lead out of all of our water systems

23:43 But it helps a lot and not doing it was breaking the law and they didn't do it Not just for short time, but for a long time for more than a year-and-a-half. So this is how Flint's pipes start totally breaking down leading people to have Turn on the tap and find brown water orange water coming from like the iron the rust the corroded iron Or while it was invisible still present the lead as well as a number of other water issues that were happening all simultaneously. Yes this corrosion control issue was one of the most shocking things i learned from your book and it was immediately when I was like oh we can definitely do a show about this cuz this really is a system that's in place for the whole country it seems and

24:29 We all know i think that the american plumbing infrastructure is in trouble and it's largely lead pipes but intuitively i would think either you replace the pipes or there some kind of maybe a coating on the pipes to keep the lead from getting in the water but the idea of adding. Chemicals are adding something directly to the water so that doesn't strip the pipes i mean, I have concerns about the safety of that and the efficacy of that. It just seems like a strange way to go about it." Right, essentially basically there's no way to get all the lead out of our drinking water until all the leads out of our pipes and not just the pipe but also the plumbing fixtures sometimes things are inside the home anywhere in unfortunately everywhere without funding do you

25:20 people are at risk. And so this corrosion control plan, it's interesting you meant coating because when it works properly, it does create a kind of coating that separates the pipe from the water as it passes through and makes a big difference especially when your water supply is river water. River waters naturally more corrosive without it the coding breaks down and then the pipes break down in all that. It also even separately from lead as you mentioned our infrastructure drinking water infrastructure you know, just often 80 years old 100 years old I've heard of a active pipe being used in the city where I live that's still hollowed out log like a tree. A tree trunk like which is first of all kind of amazing that works and lasts so long but on the other hand it's a signal how little we invest in drinking water infrastructure? The pipes are underground easy to not think about them until they break until its problem

26:16 maintaining them is expensive, upgrading them is expensive and complicated. If you're an elected leader if you're somebody in charge of this stuff I mean it's a long-term commitment voters aren't typically asking about it It's just really easy to just not prioritize And so we haven't! So we try to get by on these temporary sort of stopgap quote unquote solutions that can help us delay actually solving the root problem Right right i totally acknowledge that it's difficult but i guess i think to win all this pipe was laid in the first place like there wasn't a tax base we were just building out infrastructure now you would think that yes its hard but,

27:00 I mean, what else are you supposed to do as a government but handle the hard problems that individuals can't handle? But I want to ask you a little more about just how pervasive lead is in our society. I loved your chapter titled alchemy because well, alchemy is a pretty provocative term already and everyone knows about this basic idea of turning lead into gold and symbolically this is the story of the American infrastructure. You call it a sort of ideological And I really liked that, but elaborate on it if you could. Sure! I'll tell you what... You and your community will understand. I really went down the wormhole with alchemy much more than I could put in the book because it's fascinating right? There is this like really thin line

27:45 It seems like sometimes between science and magic, and science and wizardry. You know? Like it's amazing that you can turn some things into other things. Cooking does that! Why not turn lead into gold right? Amen! I mean lead is a fascinating substance There's a lot of reasons why people want to make it work, right? For us. It is very durable metal and can last for long time this is why these pipes lasted as long as they did but its also very flexible so when you're putting pipes in you can kind of bend around cellars or tree roots things like that if you put lead and paint it makes it stick better on the wall or canvas and shine brighter so this is why we have

28:26 white lead paint, all that. Lead was added to fuel thanks to folks related to General Motors and Flint of all things because it made the cars run more efficiently and more smoothly required less oil as petroleum so we are where you can think of it is environmental there's always reasons why lead was a miracle substance in so many ways. It's plentiful, it's abundant and you know there are all these reasons but the downside is that it's poison. It's just poisonous but there is no amount of lead that is safe for human beings Unlike iron or copper, right? Like these zinc and these other metals that sometimes are considered a nutrient at a certain level. Lead works the exact opposite way. No amount of it is safe or natural for human beings and when we've exposed ourselves to it in so many ways, it has an effect, right? The fight to get lead poisoning acknowledged in a reasonable way was a long battle

29:28 and is still incomplete as we can see with things that happened with Flint. This is why I thought of it as ideological alchemy. We want to think that we can just make it work or won't be that bad, or you can work around it, or if we just treat with this it'll be whatever but the fact is its just poisonous and especially harmful infants and young children It can have incurable devastating consequences Its also dangerous to adults especially with reproductive issues. It can cause miscarriages stillbirths fertility issue It's dangerous to the nervous system to brain development and again there is no way, cure it or get rid of it and accumulate right like you got exposed to it maybe three drinking water also expose your paint chips and also expose to it too lead that's in the soil because of legacy. Let it auto fuel work came out and exhaust just

30:23 sprayed everywhere, it gets into your bloodstream first then it's absorbed into your bones and basically just stays there kind of like calcium right? It is kind of absorbed like calcium. And can be released later a little ticking time bomb that hinders you and one reason why its confusing and why took so long to get this acknowledged is that doesn't affect everybody the same It doesn't affect everybody immediately, but the patterns are very clear. And at a certain point we just have to deal with it. Man scary stuff and this lack of corrosion control obviously was a huge factor but it wasn't the only safety issue with Flint's water was it? Right lead is for sure a major problem and the most famous problem about what happened with the water But there were a number of other water issues lead didn't even

31:14 break into a headline first until almost a year later. So there was a number of escalating problems, so one was bacterial contamination like E. coli bacterial contamination that was causing a lot of shutoffs in different neighborhoods and boil water advisories things like that that was becoming a pattern The water was so corrosive, since it wasn't treated properly that there's a General Motors plant still in Flint. They found that it was corroding their machinery, their auto parts and they couldn't do their work and it was so significant that they switched on to a suburbs water source so they could return to Detroit water. People very reasonably were like well if this isn't good for GM is

31:58 Is it safe for me? Is it safe for my kids?" The state's like, yeah. It's fine for you. That's crazy and then a few months later there was something called... Its acronym is TTHMs This is a carcinogen that can get into the water. It's basically disinfection byproducts Basically they were trying to deal with E. coli problem with chlorine and it was getting all messed up and resulting in too many TTHM That was a Safe Drinking Water Act violation that was alarming people, that they tried to tamp down. And also this didn't even became public to anyone until

32:37 nearly two years after the switch, but there had been a two-year outbreak of something called Legionnaires' disease. This is what actually killed people these are the people who actually lost their lives. Legionnaire's disease is similar to pneumonia basically it's like really serious form in pneumonia and its caused by waterborne bacteria that you would inhale like maybe when taking a shower through steam or cooking with hot water something like that and it cost peoples lives The official numbers are about 90 or so people sickened and 12 people who died, though that's considered

33:14 a very conservative estimate because without this being acknowledged or seriously addressed, or without heads up given to doctors and hospitals and things like that it wasn't tested for as it should have been. Or documented as it should have been. And its believed that there are a lot more lives lost than were at the time called pneumonia but in fact it was Legionnaires disease and more uniquely connected to the water. Man, and so how long was it before people started to notice something was wrong with this new water? What were people seeing it seemed to happen pretty much right away. Right Yes as a journalist kind of looking back at trying to document what happened when you get a sense of the order like It was much sooner than I would have expected this switch the first which happened April 2014 that first complaints people were making too

34:06 various agencies, the state environmental agency that EPA even were in May. So a month later and to be fair there might have been just a certain amount of dissatisfaction even if everything was perfectly safe and healthy because you know it is a different water source it tastes a little bit different etc but these concerns Could not be just dismisses that an escalated overtime so yeah beginning in just a month after the switch people and plant were reaching out to whoever they could think of to say hey something doesn't seem right here or something does it look great here and their concerns were.

34:42 you know, repeatedly dismissed or officials were sort of saying well you know we'll just tweak this and that but don't worry it's fine. Again and again people are told it's fine until they really had to do a lot of collective organizing to show that a different story was true because they weren't being told the truth It just wasn't okay Right right People's concerns were ignored for a long time even though their seeing water come out looking like coffee as one person described And people are accused of lying by a lot of folks. A lot of people thought that like, oh you're just trying to be dramatic or you're just trying to get attention There was one woman who brought brown water that she got from her tap To an official meeting about the water and she was straight-up dismissed as being like Oh that didn't come from your tap You know? People were not seen as trustworthy people The people of Planet and this has proven to be very dangerous because of course this problem is worsening over time

35:39 the pipes are corroding over time. The more that people are ignored and dismissed, the worse the problem is getting so there were very direct consequences of them not being believed Yeah it seems like there's real parallels to the communities that have allowed fracking because they are in the same situation i notice these problems with their water, bring up in the meetings and they're just dismissed. So in the flint case of questions who knew what and when understand are still heavily debated but do we see deceptive testing or manipulated results coming from the authorities to some degree in this story?

36:21 Yes, though I have to say like a lot of what was done there was in many ways not unique To Flint or the Michigan the way these testing results were manipulated has been mistakenly considered a kind of best practice just nationally and Oh, I'm excited to tell everybody about it because people need to know so basically water systems are generally supposed to do lead tests for the water, but maybe every six months or so. In Flint they were supposed to do it every six months and take samples from like a hundred homes and so on. This is from the Lead and Copper Rule at federal level. The Lead and Copper Rule requires this. To be clear

37:06 This rule isn't tailored to a public health standard. It's essentially just used as a metric for whether or not your corrosion control is working. There is no legal requirement, like my water could be basically pure lead and that doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with that, anything illegal The setup is you do these water tests, if 90% of your sampled homes have less than 15 parts of lead per billion parts of water. You're fine 10%, that remaining 10%. Can have all kinds of lead in their water not illegal not fine No violation at all it doesn't mean any particular communities water is safe

37:46 So what happens is a lot, it's like people don't want to get a lead violation. They want to go past the action level they don't want to have more than 90% of their sampled homes to have excess lead in their water so they kind of find these ways of making it look like there's less lead in the water than there really is. And they can do this in a variety of ways, they can test homes sample from homes that they know have newer infrastructure you know since we stopped putting lead pipes on the ground which was only in 80s by the way You can pre-flush the water basically run that tap for awhile any lead that might be sitting in their tent to come out and the first flush

38:23 And if you let it run for a little while and then collect water, you're less likely to show the true amount of lead in the water. You can use bottles that have like a tiny opening at the top which makes it so that to fill it you're going to use a slow stream and that slow stream makes it less likely to take any flaked off lead. A fast streams more likely to pull off other pieces coming down into it So, all of this is considered totally legal and fine ways of sampling water though it's clearly manipulative and designed to make the water seem safer than it actually is. The other key thing that happened in Flint too was that there literally were some results that were dropped like in summer 2015 when things are reaching a pretty fever pitch with concerns about the water

39:14 They did their six-month testing. It looked like they were going to be past the federal action level, which means you're gonna have to do a public notice and take steps to fix it etc., etc.. And what they did is they dropped two of the highest levels of lead including the sample that woman who was accused of lying about her brown water at that meeting. They dropped two of the samples And then presented it as if like look everything's fine it was just enough to put them below the level and they presented is like a signal that don't worry everyone it's fine but it's not a true picture it was not a true picture of what was going on.

39:53 Man, lots of little dirty tricks here. And this is kind of in line with what you were just saying but I wrote this down because I thought it was important because a lot of people have this blind faith in the FDA or the EPA and we have to have some watchdog agencies and we have to put some trust in them they're there for something. We're busy, we got jobs families...we need some kind of protection but You wrote that the EPA is allowing of some level of lead in the water is really their way of acknowledging them without a complete overhaul there's just no way to reduce it to zero and i think that's a great point because what its kinda saying is that

40:37 The levels aren't set where they are because that is the safe level for consumption. It's that, that's the level where it doesn't look like we have a real health crisis because if you just said well no lead is good and zero as our standard, it'd be chaos! But I'm glad you're putting this out because I know it gets kind of into the weeds when we're talking about how its tested and sampled in all that but the key takeaway No lead is safe for people, but the way we regulate our water does allow lead in the water. And even when our community can say, look at our test results. They're totally meet all EPA standards or whatever that doesn't mean you don't have lead in your water. It doesn't mean you do not have a lot of lead in your water. They don't even require testing at like schools or childcare centers despite kids being more vulnerable to it or multifamily homes like apartments.

41:35 that is designed to prioritize public health. You're right, we do need agencies on the lookout for this kind of stuff. I think this is part of why the Flint water crisis got into the spotlight that it did, it meaned that this was an environmental and public health crisis that wasn't caused by some corporation polluting too much because they wanted to save money. This was caused and prolonged by environmental and health agencies in the public sector, the people who are supposed to be our protectors. And that's very frightening I don't think it means me that i'm polished the air whatever but it does mean we need to do it better. Yeah yeah the more i learn about these little situations is a little saga's just like there's no substitute for personal responsibility don't outsource,

42:26 All your concerns to these overarching organizations because they have slightly different priorities which is really just a keep everybody calm and not really alarm giant groups of people to up looming crisis, but this is something i got not from your book but just reading more about the situation it's actually from a great dot org article but they say the EPA is lead and copper rule part of the safe drinking water act only requires cities to test. For two metals every three years and officials are only required a sample about ten percent of residences, and then even when they do that data can be hard for the public access and you do right about these things too but

43:13 Man just even the transparency alone is a huge issue in this case it is a huge issue and even when it is technically transparent its you know course hard to understand. I had such a learning curve working on this book and reporting all the stuff because no who teaches you about heights almost don't even know if they have a lead pipe or not i mean it's so obscure and complicated parts for billion of what are we talking about 90th percentile. It's very confusing and I think there is an absolute responsibility when we're talking about drinking water which you know just to underscore is literally a life-and-death issue the information is both

43:54 available and accessible to people, and also contextualized in a way that makes the information meaningful to you. It's not just some inscrutable PDF on some random web page that you never... You know what I mean? It's just revealing and meant-to be revealing. It's a way to help empower people to have some agency about their water, make good decisions for their own health and for their family's health. And also especially when it comes to water sampling like people are supposedly supposed agents in this, right? They're often asked to collect samples or they're told that they are responsible for replacing their own pipe if it's lead. You know if its not under their private land. If you are expecting them to have some responsibility then you gotta have information available and they also have to be empowered to get input on it. In Michigan like with transparency one of the issues I think

44:41 led to this crisis going on as long as it did is the fact that we have one of the most secretive state governments in the country. We have an open records law that the legislature and the governor's office have exempted themselves from, so were only two states that does that makes its legislature and its governor exempt from open records laws community residents, activists in Flint were trying to get a handle on what was going on. It would have been very helpful if they had access to some of this information and they've been able to file open records requests try understand how some of the decision-making is going out with these conversations are going on and that was not available to them or journalists or other people who might have been trying intervene here I think that absolutely made the problem worse and it's still one of unresolved issues at the water crisis that is

45:28 not been remedied. We have not become a more transparent government since then." Well, that's definitely interesting context for sure and so in this saga the authorities who control the testing were telling people the water is fine for months, the people can tell that it's not when did the tide start to turn? More than a year after the water switch is when it really started to turn more than a year So the switch happened in April of 2014 October of that year, that's when GM Switched its water source because the water was too bad for them to be able to function Yet residents were still told it was fine. One of the big changes happened in June and May June of 2015

46:16 Couple things are happening one there was one home in flint the home of leanne walters the woman who is accused of taking a brown water. They had an excessively excessively high level of lead in their water as documented by an official at the EPA office in Chicago who kind of went out of his way to test it and study it. And he wrote up a memo, a kind of draft report on what is all going on just first of all like why was the problem her house which the city had essentially acknowledged but why wasn't just a problem at her house where I was really a citywide problem? It's real cause for alarm here

46:58 This memo got in the hands of a guy named Kurt Guyette. And Kurt Guyette had worked like 30 years at an Alt Weekly in the area and now was doing this pilot investigative journalist job at the ACLU of Michigan, he had been following emergency managers in Michigan and this is what led him to Flint. He got handed a copy of this memo and he published a story about it Not many people read that first story, but he had such a trusted reputation among other journalists that others including Michigan Radio picked it up. This was important because this is the first time you have actual data that countered the state's data

47:40 for more than a year when the story had been told it was like, the residents say the water's bad. The state says it's fine. The residents say its bad and the state says it's fine now for the first time you had this new element where you have official data that countered what the state was saying and it was coming from EPA official that supervised the State Agency so now you know this is one thing started to shift now you can ask better questions you know? You have more to investigate The other thing that started happening is that community organizers had been reaching out to outside experts to try and help bolster their concerns and questions. And they worked with some folks at Virginia Tech, to do a citywide water study. Basically they were going to generate new and better data to counter the state's data or just show what was true. If the state had been right all along this would show

48:32 They did a far more comprehensive citywide water test than the state's sort of six-month little check ins were. And what they published, what they were able to show is that just as the EPA guy had said it was indeed a city wide problem This escalated a lot and turned the heat up on the state government, but even this wasn't enough for the state to concede. You had yet one more step you had to show not just a deeply unhealthy amount of lead that was putting the entire city at risk and getting worse. You also have to show that in fact kids were harmed by it before anybody was going to do anything. This was a step that a pediatrician took, she coincidentally had a close friend who is a water expert and the two of them basically worked together to do this study that showed that lead poisoning had been worsening in Flint since the water switch so all this

49:25 together showing yes it's a citywide problem, yes we have the data to prove it. Yes it is causing actual harm for the children in this city then finally the state threw in the towel through point and said that its an emergency were going to reconnect to Detroit about a year-and-a-half after initial switch That was a huge win. It was also an incomplete one because these pipes were so corroded that even when you had proper, healthy well-treated water flowing through them they're so damaged that people weren't instantly fine and so the recovery of that has gone on ever since basically

50:06 Yeah, I mean the pipes are still in the ground and they've been damaged from the inside. So just switching to water source is probably not enough even with that corrosion protection going on Well you certainly have an immense amount of knowledge about this case it's really impressive the books really good and i'm sure you just had so many conversations about this do you run into any common misconceptions or myths about the flint saga that are worth addressing. I do. It is clear from this conversation, it is a case that can get really in the weeds. There are so many twists and turns and there's a lot to keep up with and then many ways of still playing out. So it's understandable in some ways that even well-intentioned misunderstandings would get out there but just a few to kind of throw out there, the bullet points for your listeners. One

51:02 It wasn't the river that caused the crisis, it wasn't the Flint River. This was a mistake I saw on the front page of The New York Times just a couple months ago they're doing well intentioned story about how kids in Flint are doing with school in particular how schools are handling and they make reference to you how the crisis was caused by quote the lead saturated river which is just wrong. The river isn't what caused the water crisis it was how the water inappropriately treated especially with the lack of control and infrastructure that it passed through the river itself well once being super polluted just like every urban river in the country people just don't anything into it and it was totally fine is legal we have had

51:49 the Clean Water Act since 1972. It doesn't solve every problem, but it's helped a lot and a lot of these urban rivers have recovered quite a bit and frankly one of the upsides of General Motors having abandoned the city the way it did is that there's less pollution right? So the Flint River is actually much healthier than its been in a very long time not perfect but much healthier. The river did not cause a water crisis. It was how people handled or mishandled And delivering it to people so that's a big one the other two just like kind of briefly is like one that this is just the thing that happened to people in flint rather than being agents of its uncovering like the folks are just victims here.

52:32 And the third, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about the emergency manager. I often see like references to like the city switched its water right? The City Council voted to switch its water or something like that No city official had any power at all It doesn't matter what they wanted or didn't want All the power was held by state appointed emergency manager That made the cause and effect here just much more direct than you often see and I guess similar cases. I think it's important to have that responsibility clear. yeah i'm glad we could address some of those things and another point you make in the book that's interesting. In the context of this water crisis is that if your end inland michigan you're never further than six miles from a natural water source net there are more than eleven thousand lakes including the great lakes of course meeting, mission is surrounded by one fifth of the fresh water on earth and this is ground zero for such a huge scandal n

53:31 you also talk about how industrial processes have been trashing the water for a long time and your mention of the river makes me think about a couple lines you have there about, like native american accounts or early colonial accounts of just how pristine and beautiful. The river was i mean i've learned a lot about that from previous guests talking about these early Settler accounts where they would say all the rest so much abundance our horses had to walk on the backs of fish across this river or a squirrel could get from the mississippi to the east coast without touching the ground because there were so many trees so many huge oaks savannahs and it is really just crazy i'm sure that's a little romanticizing that goes on but just look at our environment today and what western society has done to it

54:25 We might not realize it so different had we not had some accounts from those early days about just how black and white the differences really are. I like that you're attentive to that because its true, water is one thing that connects us to our past for better or worse holds a memory of all thats come before its the water cycle right? It just cycles through in many ways our water is ancient and then Michigan I'm a full-time freelance journalist. I could live elsewhere! One reason why I love this state is the water, it's unbelievable! These great lakes if folks haven't seen it from my human perspective they look like oceans. Water as far as eyes can see and white capped waves and shipwrecks at the bottom of them are so deep that they're just unbelievable

55:16 resources and more than resources, I mean they're just unbelievable facts and we're lucky to be on the same planet with them right? And then plus all this inland water that you described. This is a state that boasts of being the Great Lakes State or Pure Michigan are some of its taglines and I feel like of all places that should be able to get a handle on water it should be us right? Flint is 70 miles from Lake Huron. It's 70 miles from the Saginaw Bay, which is that bay that makes Michigan's thumb and it's a river town and it got to a place where it could not trust its water in place where people saw water as a threat like scarcity wasn't our issue here. It is in many places and perhaps will be more years to come I mean a lot of people talk about how this will be the century of wars not for oil but for water

56:05 And here we live in a place of abundance of water. It truly puts a chill down my spine to think that we could mishandle it in the way that this water will hurt people. I mean, that's not okay! become not a warning story for the rest of the country and world as Flint has made us, but I'd like to see us become a model for you know A better way of treating our water with the respect it deserves. For its own sake not just how it serves us But certainly also for its ability to keep us alive and well Well said well said and as bad as the situation was if one could say there was any silver lining to the flint saga one thing would be that it is a wake up call for the lead infrastructure problems across the country flint is kind of. Canary in the crumbling infrastructure coal mine so speak but where would you look to find the next blend actually this comes out towards the end of the book but it seems like their mind already be some candidates

57:07 There are i mean this is part of why i guess it would be another method not just story right there uniquely dramatic in urgent things that happened there but also it's part of a pattern part of a pattern and disinvestment impoverished core cities, how to separate and equal. place making and certainly a pattern for the vulnerabilities of crumbling infrastructure, especially infrastructure that is made out of neurotoxin. And so yes we have seen it already play out Newark has made a lot headlines in Newark New Jersey as they say serious very serious lead in water issue in the last few years that there

57:48 still in the heat of trying to resolve Pittsburgh has as well. I still have these Google alerts for Flint and water, and i'm pinged all the time with how communities are like you said pay more attention to water and their infrastructure than maybe they ever used too which is part of a good news but also Part of the challenge is that when you start paying attention, you tend to find lead. You tend to find problems that we can't go any longer with pretending it's not there and some folks are meeting the challenge right? They're being like okay we're going to take it seriously, we're going to get rid of the lead pipes, we're gonna invest in infrastructure... There's more maybe support in the community than they ever had then because they have been alarmed by Flint. Some folks are using it as a thing to run away from like

58:35 Don't worry about it. It's quote not as bad as when it's not we're not even if it very much is like in newark you saw some of that there was really pointedly being like guys were not don't freak out and I was really trying to get that message early on but It was very much like what's going on there. And the lane only exacerbates the problem, we just got to do it man. Lead is lead it's just poisonous which has got to get rid of it and by the way even our infrastructure that's not made out of lead is probably due for an upgrade. We're just talking about people's ability to live their lives have a home run their business in a way for kids who go to school have something to drink I mean it is expensive and complicated but

59:21 Doing it is investing in our communities and in our children and our future generation so I just don't see a good argument against that. Very well said. And just to add to it, quoting that same Grist article I found earlier, it says according to an investigative report commissioned by Congress about 2% of public water systems across the country exceed the federal limit on lead or exceeded the federal limit on lead between 2014 and 2016. That was with less than half of the states actually reporting back An expert in that same article says, even Flint's highest levels were not atypical for water systems in this country that have problems.

1:00:05 It's just very scary stuff. That is part of a pattern and that exceeding federal regulations when as we talked earlier, federal regulations aren't that great like they're not geared to public health standard anyway. Exceeding them is a red flag and people need to respond to them but it's not like if you don't exceed your water is lead free that is how that can be read a better standard starting from the top and also in each of our states and communities that just prioritizes public health for once, and steps up to make the big adjustments it'll take to meet that standard. I agree!

1:00:44 Man just this is been a lot of fun i mean depressing but find it talk to you and just excellent job doing the research and putting together the best breakdown of the flint water crisis that i found thanks for doing hard work as we're starting to wind down here do give the good people any info like about other works you have or events are just generally where they can get more and clark in their lives Well, that's a very sweet thing to ask. I'm getting shy all of the sudden as a journalist. You know what I mean? Like you tend to...I'm like, well it's the story not me! That's true But I guess if people are curious, I also added an anthology about Detroit that is very creatively called A Detroit Anthology That's Out There about another city that has a very fascinating and beautiful and strange history If any of your folks are in the Virginia area, I'll be at The Virginia

1:01:35 Book Festival in Charlottesville in a few weeks. It's gonna be really cool event with Harriet Washington who wrote the book about environmental injustice that is fascinating and we're going to do an event together, that'll be really great. And online I'm at AnnaClarke.net and write articles and try to tell True stories and so folks are into that i'm here very cool and it's just no problem and you did just kinda jog my memory but you've lived in detroit for over a decade is there anything to say about regrowth their. Yeah, I moved to Detroit in 2007 and that was a weird time to move here. The mayor was in the process of being indicted, automakers were couple years from declaring bankruptcy, the city with a couple more years from declaring bankruptcy and having emergency manager on its own. The recession and foreclosure crisis hit this city super hard it has been wild just be a stakeholder here let alone writer or reporter there have been

1:02:36 incredible change just in that time. Not all of it's good, some of it is hard but some of it is amazing and I love this city! I love this city! If folks haven't had a chance to be here, it is a fascinating place to explore there are really great people doing a lot of really great things to make this more livable space Just in the time I got here, half the streetlights were out at best. And I bike and walk a lot and it was literally dangerous just even on a... You're going to hit a pothole because you can't see anything but the street lights are back on now! It seems like a small thing but its a huge thing

1:03:15 There is momentum here that it didn't have when I got here. And while there's still a lot of tough questions asked about how to make a city, you know, it's for all its people justice issues things like that there's a lot of consolidation of power in just a few places but...I'm here because I love it! There are amazing people and there are amazing things to do if you're at all a creative person you're just going to go out of your mind with how many creative opportunities and art music literature and all that stuff it's very vibrant place yeah very cool i actually heard that its kind of become a hipster haven the artists are artists and artisans and craftsmen and even chef sue have ties to detroit or grew up there have come back

1:04:01 to lend their skills and rebuild the community. And that's a beautiful thing to see. Yeah, I ton of restaurants are here there's no huge urban farming movement that's connected to that rise of restaurants right in the food scene here in many ways yeah if you like to eat also enjoy it here awesome one last question I guess any plans for next book I don't have it yet except that there will be one basically i'm not honestly i've had a long hangover from the flip book and i'm getting for another large project but also know not to just do a thing just to do with things.

1:04:37 I'll recognize the right story when i see it. Yes well, I can imagine this was quite daunting and is very thorough and there's so many pages of notes and references in the back really well done so I really appreciate your journalism and your time keep fighting a good fight take care out there thank you so much for putting this together with every really this Maybe the most thoughtful interview that I've had a chance to do. I'm grateful too kind much appreciated All right, well have a good one. Bye And that is what I'm talking about good people mmm Anna Clark The Poison City great book and she knows a lot more about the wider implications and the deep history Than a lot of journalists who have looked into the Flint story as far as I can tell

1:05:31 And I'm sure a few listeners might have seen this show topic pop up and they started to think, well this is old news. Maybe it's not worthy of a full episode but it's not just a show about one water quality problem in one specific town the big takeaway to me is just how widespread this problem is and how vulnerable pretty much this whole country is to lead-tainted water Flint really is the canary in the lead pipe coal mine. And it's tough because we talk about so many issues on this show, and they're all kind of fighting for our attention so something like lead pipes that quickly drifts to the background but it need not. Sure, we've talked about pharmaceuticals and fluoride even chlorine levels that have been too high in the water have caused problems

1:06:26 And we've heard pretty blunt statements from the operators of these water facilities where they've said point blank, look our systems are not designed for the chemicals and the prescription drugs that are making their way into the water. Agricultural chemical runoff too on top of industrial processes and corporations that are just plain sloppy letting it be someone else's problem But to me, the biggest issue is that the pipes themselves are lead. That's got to be fixed! It's got to be drawn attention to. We've seen how many political debates recently and not a single question about fixing this fundamental issue? Whenever people bring up crumbling infrastructure they talk about the roads and bridges... Talk about the fucking pipes!! I'm sorry it has just been a major

1:07:21 Obsession for me the past couple of weeks probably driving my wife and my friends little nuts pulling up maps and figures of our own, city here in san diego and the parts per billion when it comes to lead and it's not good. I've looked at one of these maps, and it's all yellow or pink or deep red in the parts where me and my people live. And the only parts of the map that are considered safe, you know that are shaded green... ...are where the fucking mountains are! There is no one living there, and there are no pipes.

1:07:59 But when you look at the map as a whole, it looks like okay we have some problem areas and some areas are okay. But no! Anywhere where people live... It's a problem And the real shocking thing to me that I learned from this book and interview is that they put an additive in the water that keeps the lead from leaching in Maybe I'm just paranoid and I'm certainly not a scientist but that seems like a bad solution to a bad problem This chemical is strong enough to keep lead from leaching into water, but it's not a problem for us to be drinking that? I'm sorry but my trust in the EPA is shattered and I am not really cool with that as even a short-term solution let alone a permanent one. I hear politicians talking about things like free college tuition but there are no funds for fixing this?!

1:08:57 I don't know what to say, but...I do hope that some people out there decide to engage with their local government and hammer this issue home to them. What else can we do? It's not gonna be a federal thing! But you might make progress locally or at least you can better protect your own home So it's a cautionary tale and one where the details in the nuance really does matter And when you throw in the inequality and racial factors It's more than just a water crisis. It's a goddamn human crisis! We need to be reminded sometimes, just how hard it is to get out of poverty when you're in it... How hard it can be for people of different skin tone even

1:09:43 And I don't want anyone citing crime statistics to me. I don't even argue that minority populations have more crime on paper, but you know what they also have? More poverty, more frustration and anger at a corrupt system, more interactions with police less opportunity less guidance basically everything that creates quote-unquote crime on paper I've been pulled over a lot in life. My interactions with police have not been great, but if the factor that determined whether my whole car would be searched or not relied sometimes on my skin color well... If i was black we probably wouldn't be talking right now so just be humble you know? We're supposed to be advocates for the disenfranchised and sound the alarm over injustices and inequality

1:10:39 But a lot of the time I hear some pretty big voices in this conspiracy culture just worried about how things are going to affect them and people that look like them. Sometimes it's pretty gross actually, so it's nice to occasionally throw in a reminder that we're all in this together and that the uphill battle can vary in its steepness and remind ourselves of the real domino effects of poverty in this country. It is like quicksand for a lot of people, and at least we should have some acknowledgement and compassion for that plight. That said I guess it's a bit of a bummer of a show today but maybe just don't let it be in vain draw some attention to this before we have a dozen more city-sized crises

1:11:36 Although of course if you heard the plus show it seems like we already do but other parts of that plus show include just how much damage was done to the children of flint 27 000 kids is not a small number. We talked about the dark idea of sacrifice zones the lead problem in Washington, D.C., personal stories of some people who were affected in Flint, the silver linings of such a tragedy, how the EPA attacked those people that were providing good data and good information about this issue, some common misconceptions and myths about the Flint story, of course candidates for where we might see the next Flint issue

1:12:25 and just how bad this lead problem is across the country. So sign up for PLUS if you like hearing the full two-hour interviews, action packed and commercial free! It's what I do... it keeps us going... yada yada yada But i liked this one Anna did a great job clearly she kinda checked out THC a little bit beforehand and saw what we do We had a little fun with that I like some of the things she said about alchemy Quite provocative. So big thanks to her, and big thanks to you guys! Happy March, and I'm gonna get too moseyin'. Take care out there...I've done my part! Your Move Leadpipe layers untrustworthy agencies of infrastructure and activists who demand better

1:13:15 Your. Fucking. Move. I won't take it, no i refuse If its alright ill keep my refuge I've been scheming of bigger things and Have to leave my old life behind Gotta transfer To the inner earth I built a box Built a hole gotta need it up Going under And now you'll find me In the bunker Bunker Take it under Me in the bunker

1:13:58 Bunker, take it under Find me in the bunker, bunker Bunker Yeah they're laughing Ely classics While they're scheming masses Who do you think they are? Fancy suit and a stick Tell you the basics They print your money Got the Fed in your head Currency Now they're smiling And you're caged meat How this happened? How you don't see? Dun-dun-duh

1:14:47 Great pillage and plunder, plunder. It's a plunder! Great pillage and plunder, plunder. Plans are simple The best protection of all is the special shelter built according to specifications of your local civil defense organization The basement of any house or building will become a good improvised shelter if you block the windows with sandbags If you don't have sandbags, just what can you do? Bunker! Take it under You'll find me in the bunker, bunker Bunker! Take it under You'll find me in the bunker Bunker! Take it under Find me in the bunker, bunker Plunder is a plunder Rape, pillage and plunder Plunder is a plunder Rape, pillage and plunder

1:15:57 so