Katrinell M. Davis - Tainted Tap: Flints Journey from Crisis to Recovery

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

CHAPEL HILL

2021 The University of North Carolina Press

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Designed by April Leidig

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The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Cover photo of lead pipes iStock/Brand Diverse Solutions Steven Barber.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Davis, Katrinell, author.

Title: Tainted tap : Flints journey from crisis to recovery / Katrinell M. Davis.

Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020051254 | ISBN 9781469662107 (cloth) | ISBN 9781469663326 (paperback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469662114 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Drinking waterContaminationSocial aspectsMichiganFlint. | Drinking waterLead contentMichiganFlint. | Public health administration MichiganFlint. | Water quality managementMichiganFlint. | Flint (Mich.)Politics and government. | Flint (Mich.)Social conditions. | Flint (Mich.)Economic conditions.

Classification: LCC RA592.M5 D38 2021 | DDC 363.6/10977437dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051254

I mustered up the nerve to write about Flint, my hometown, as I drove down US 23 South toward the National Poverty Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The radio was tuned to an urban gospel station, WFLT 1420 AM, out of Flint. A local pastor introduced his guest, a single mother, who spoke about her trust in God despite her ongoing struggles providing for her family. Moved by her testimony, the pastor urged communities to help working parents. He cited gaps in social supports as he prayed for this mother and others in Flint facing similar hardships, and my mind drifted to my own childhood. My single mother, too, had in many ways depended on help from our church family as she raised us. How muchor how littleI wondered, had changed for Flints working-class parents and children?

I grew up on the northwest side of Flint. We lived on Philadelphia, off of MLK Street, just a ten-minute walk from Stanleys Meat Market and its plentiful bins of penny candy and crunchy, salty, fatty, delectable junk foods. This was a working-class neighborhood, and its streets boasted bright lights, thanks to the efforts of the neighborhood block club. Things were usually calm.

By the mid-1980s, however, conditions in the neighborhood had declined significantly. Crack cocaine had arrived, just about the time General Motors plants began closing. Chevy in the Holethe Chevrolet factory and home of Flints 1936 sit-down strikewent in 1984, then the Buick City plant in 1987. Just before they could become members of the United Auto Workers bargaining unit, temporary workers were hit with several rounds of pink slips.

Communities like mine began to empty out. Homeowners, including folks who accepted GMs early retirement buyouts and others frustrated with neighborhood changes, moved away. More and more, the houses werent family homesteads but rentals. It might not have mattered before then that the neighborhood police station was closed, but now, when danger emerged, we could have used the protection. Houses were burglarized; cars were robbed in broad daylight. Crack houses proliferated, and neighborhood residents installed steel bars on their windows and bought guns for protection.

My most vivid memory of this time, as we watched the neighborhoodits identity and cohesionfall apart, features the local grocery store Landmark. Every time we needed groceries, instead of walking the short distance to Landmark, we had to fire up my mothers mint green, boat-length Buick Skylark and go to another store. I hated that car. It was like Christines cousin with a busted radio. But it got us around, despite its need to stop at least every two to three blocks.

I remember asking my mother why we couldnt just get our groceries from Landmark. Shed tell me, I aint spending my money in there. And there were good reasons she, like the other north-end residents, chose to travel at least twenty minutes away to find another affordable neighborhood grocery store. Landmark was their store of last resort. The moment you entered, you could smell the rotting meat and stale bread. The browning vegetables limply signaled that things werent quite right in this place. Still, the store seemed to have a consistent line of patrons, willing to pay almost double the cost of goods in other, larger Flint area grocery stores. That, in particular, struck me as odd. I was a magnet program student, touring Flints north and south sides in my daily travels to and from school, and I knew there were grocery stores in specific communities in Flint and just outside of the city that didnt seem to be ripping people off to this degree. What made my neighborhood a mark for this overpriced, abysmal food? Food is a source of life. Why wasnt Landmark out of business, either forced out or abandoned by customers? Didnt we deserve the best? Like the unexplained fires that burned throughout the night and the domestic bouts that ended in bloodshed without any police intervention, Landmark was another diss to our neighborhood. A big diss.

So, as I listened to the mother and the pastor on WFLT, I didnt immediately think about schools or the structure of work opportunity. I thought about Flints grocery stores, parks, and emergency services and wondered how persistent disinvestment and depopulation had impacted access to these services and amenities in Flints poor Black spaces. I wanted to investigate the factors that undermined community access to quality essential services. Toward this end, while working on completing another book at the University of Michigans National Poverty Center in 2012, I spent my free time pursuing these interests in Flint. I reached out to urban planners and started combing through community archives, firming up a study on the allocation of essential services in depopulating working-class cities and how these varied by race and class. Specifically, I wanted to write about how Flint and other citys residents managed the consequences of benign neglect as well as declines in the availability and quality of essential services.

Then, one morning, I received a phone call from a family member in Flint who mentioned that something was wrong with the water. After a summer of boil water warnings, this relative said, folks were marching in the snow claiming that the water was making them sick. When I hung up the phone, I googled these concerns; sure enough, Flint residents complaints were vividly splashed across Facebook, YouTube, and other cyberspaces. People werent silent about this problem. They voiced their issues with the water loud and clear, with consistency. It was the folks who were supposed to be doing the listening who were failing. Just like it had been okay to sell high-priced, low-quality food in the 1980s, it seemed it had become okay to flood the citys pipes with questionable water. Intrigued, I carefully followed Flint residents reporting on their water issues from my computer in South Burlington, Vermont. I was happy when the semester at the University of Vermont ended, because I was free to explore what was happening on the ground in my hometown.