In Flint, Michigan, daily life revolves around lead fears

FLINT, Mich. – The longest line at Freeman Elementary School’s Family Fun Night was not for face painting or food. It was for lead testing.

For three months, families in the former auto manufacturing hub of Flint have taken their children for blood tests and lived on bottled water after doctors found high levels of lead in the bodies of the community’s youngest people.

“It really is a scary situation to know that we can’t get clean drinking water,” said Sherri Miller, who brought her first-grade son, Jameer, to have a finger-prick blood sample tested.

Nearly two years have passed since safe drinking water flowed from Flint faucets. The financially troubled city began drawing its water from the Flint River in 2014 to save money. Officials failed to treat the corrosive water properly to prevent metal leaching from old pipes. Worse, residents didn’t learn they were drinking tainted water until the state issued warnings a year and a half after the switch.

“It has such damning, lifelong and generational consequences,” said Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, director of pediatric residency at Hurley Children’s Hospital, where more than 2,000 children have been tested. She is credited with bringing the problem to the public’s attention after state agencies initially dismissed her concerns.

Gov. Rick Snyder finally acknowledged in September that the water was unsafe.

Flint went back to Detroit water in October, but some fear the old pipes must be replaced, at costs estimated as high as $1.5 billion.

On Monday, Snyder pledged officials would contact every household to ensure families have bottled water and a filter and to check whether they want to be tested for lead exposure.

Snyder’s critics got louder midweek, when the governor announced two spikes in Legionnaires’ disease had occurred in the county. Ten people died. Health officials said they cannot conclude the outbreak stemmed from Flint’s water, but others argued it had.

After Snyder declared a state of emergency Jan. 5, residents could go to fire stations to pick up a daily ration of one case of bottled water per household and a filter.

By Jan. 11, empty filter boxes were stacked against a wall at one station. Hours later, the water was gone after volunteers had given out almost 900 cases. And the fire station had not received any of the lead test kits.

Volunteers began going door-to-door to distribute water. Snyder called on the National Guard to help.

For angry residents, it’s still not enough.

“The state was telling everybody, ‘It’s fine, relax. … It’s safe,’” even as people complained the water looked cloudy and tasted bad, said community activist Melissa Mays. “They lied.”

Mays, her husband and three sons are taking medication to reduce high lead levels in their blood.

Rabecka Cordell said she learned from her doctor that she and her 5-year-old son, Dayne, have lead poisoning. She said she also has leukemia, and her son has learning and speech disabilities.

At the school’s lead testing Tuesday, more than 50 kids lined up. One was fifth-grader Maleah Gill.

“You wonder how long has it been in her system?” said her father, Matt Gill. “How much has she taken in? What’s the effects?”