Flint’s dirty water, just the tip of the iceberg: How different cities exhibiting lead contamination shows a larger problem than previously expected (2017-2021)
by Nico Oberholtzer
Site Description:
By now, I don’t believe there is a single person who hasn’t heard the name of Flint, Michigan, even if only in passing. The water crisis there was very well known, and lasted for a while, to the point where even now there are people still recovering from it. How then, is it possible, that within the exact same state, there are cities even worse off than Flint? Even as far back as 2017, there were over 70 other cities with more lead in the water, and very few people focused on that. The problem is worse than just bad water, however, with an article in September of 2021 showing that there was a town, Benton Harbor, with not only higher levels of lead than Flint, but that there was a town not three miles away from it, called St Joseph, that had perfectly fine water to drink. What some people thought was an isolated incident is statewide, and very clearly has some sort of racial undertones, at least for parts of it, so what is the root cause, and how can we fix it?
Final Report:
Introduction
Bobbie Clay lives in Michigan. One day in early 2017, she started to pour water from the tap, and it came out bubbly and white, in a way that one of her neighbours described as “sizzling like alka-seltzer.” Some blocks away, another resident of the town named Carmela Patton went to get some water to make coffee, and it almost looked like she didn’t need to, with how brown the water was when it came out. Rasta Smith, fortunately, had normal looking water, with the rather foul caveat that it smelled of rotting sewage. You might think this all took place in Flint, but as it turns out, this is a town almost on the other side of Michigan known as Benton Harbour.2
As it turns out, that guess was wrong for the right reasons. A test done in 2018 found that the entire reason for the water issues was lead contamination. Not even a small amount of lead, but levels of 22 parts per billion (PPB), meaning that if you separate a unit of water into a billion parts, 22 of them would be entirely contaminants.3 Even Flint had never been this bad, at its peak measuring contamination levels of only 20 parts per billion, when 15 parts per billion is the federal threshold4.
This, of course, is a problem, so why is it that to this day the citizens of Benton Harbour are still facing lead water issues, and why are these only now becoming well known? In order to find potential answers to this question, there are additional details to look further into. As an example, if this is another example of lead in Michigan waters, then it cannot be the only one. The details we will be looking into in this paper are what other cities within Michigan have issues, the causes of the issues, what links them together, and the reasons it’s taking so long to fix. Perhaps, just like Flint, the lead water issues are due to institutional racism, and, more importantly, I believe these issues persist throughout the entire state rather than being isolated to certain cities.
Water Issues Everywhere
It doesn’t take long to see what other places have water issues. Almost no time at all, in fact, if we look back at Flint, since it still has lead in the water, with last time it was checked measuring levels of 7 parts per billion. As of January of 2019, over seventy one other cities had higher levels of lead in their water than Flint, up from the 24 cities that were higher in late 2016. Even at the time of this research, our focus, Benton Harbour, was named as one of the many towns with higher levels of lead contamination, at 12 parts per billion at the time. Within the article discussing over 71 towns with higher levels of lead in their water than Flint, Marc Edwards, a professor from Virginia tech, who was involved in the testing of how corrosive the river water was, even said “Obviously, Flint benefits from a more rigorously vetted sampling pool than elsewhere in the state, so if anything, there are probably many, many more systems in Michigan that probably have worse water lead levels than Flint.5”, which we can see was incredibly relevant, seeing how nobody paid much attention to Benton Harbour, and we can see just how correct he was, between those 71 cities and the fact that some of those cities have shown to have contamination levels now that are higher than they were during 2019.
This picture was shared November third, 2021, and it was taken by a reporter for the site List23, during one of many attempts by the citizens to share clean drinking water with everyone who needs it. It was posted in an article that mentioned that the EPA had finally taken notice of Benton Harbour, though no action had yet been taken. The people in the picture are volunteers, as all those who helped distribute water are, going out of their way to help others who could not help themselves.
In the picture, we see a puddle of water in an uneven street, rough and in need of repair, though we cannot tell how deep this hole goes. It is only one of a couple puddles in the picture, but it’s not difficult to imagine the photographer is surrounded by them. Behind the puddles we can see a line of cases of water, all unopened. The focus of the picture, however, is on the reflection in the puddle. In this reflection we can see a few of the volunteers, unloading case upon case of water, with one man carrying two at once. We can tell that they are being unloaded because in the background of the reflection, we can see a pallet of cases, with the plastic wrap somewhat removed already. The row of cases seems to be stacked four high in at least one point, and the fact that we can see that pallet shows that this has not been the first one unloaded. The man carrying the cases is in what looks like a raincoat, and is likely one of the ones who helped to drive the cases over, while the man next to him is in layered sweaters, and may be one of the people local to the specific area they are in, helping unload before distribution starts to the possibly hundreds of people there, judging by the sheer amount of bottles.
Lead Water Causes
The causes of the lead contamination issues in these cities, at face value, are easy to see. Lead pipe failures due to corrosion led to contaminated water sources.6 Lead pipes, for years, were the most common type of pipe for transporting water, to the point where the term “plumbing” literally comes from the latin word for lead, “plumbum.” Estimates done by the NRDC state that there are likely over twelve million lead pipes remaining in the United States, with not a single state being completely free of lead plumbing. While lead piping remains a problem for all locations where it remains, there are at least some treatments that can be used to ensure that people are affected less by the contamination, such as using chemical treatment of the water. This will not last, however, as the pipes age further and become more deteriorated. Erik Olson, a senior strategic director for the NRDC, even said at one point that “Drinking water won’t be safe until the country pulls the millions of lead pipes out of the ground found in every state.”7 Replacing pipes in general is no easy feat, no matter how important plumbing and irrigation might be, and if pipes all over the state require replacement, then there has to be some sort of priority as to when it happens, as well as some sort of method to determine whose pipes get treated first.
Every so often, as seen above, a water pipe may even burst, and it must be repaired, but not only is repair rather than replacement often the full extent of what happens, but as happened in the photo above, even fixing the pipe did nothing for the drinking water supply, with people still required to go receive bottles of water being given out at local community centres.8 Unfortunately, even with treatment, the lead contamination in places like Benton Harbour has already become a massive problem. There has even been an emergency petition to the EPA from over eighteen different groups requesting immediate action, as well as demanding federal intervention.9 Flint once had to do the same thing, so then we get to the most important question of all: What, if anything, is the common factor that ties all of these cities with lead issues together?
A Common Thread
Benton Harbour, just like Flint, is a predominantly Black neighbourhood.10 While it is relatively easy to assume racism in America, we need more evidence to make a solid claim that racism is the core issue here. Fortunately, we have an example of a city that happens to be nearly the proverbial polar opposite of Benton Harbour. Just three miles away from Benton Harbour is the nearby town of St. Joseph. St. Joseph is a predominantly white town, and when looking at reports on drastic health issues, St. Joseph barely registers as having any issues at all. Even if we ignore race, Benton Harbour has more than 45% of the people living there below the poverty line, in contrast to the 7% in St. Joseph, while the Michigan state average is 13%.11 It is not the only town where we can witness this, but it’s the one with the most stark contrast, since residents of Benton Harbour will even occasionally visit St. Joseph for various reasons, and even the residents of Benton Harbour make comments about the difference they witness.
Even those outside of Benton Harbour and St. Joseph can see a dramatic difference between the two locations. One article, written by Carter Welch, a Dartmouth student who lives seven miles from the St. Joseph River, highlights that there are more issues potentially caused by race than simply water, when comparing the two cities. His examples highlight issues seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as Redlining, the practice of disallowing Black Americans the right to pay mortgages on property in specific white-controlled neighbourhoods, and the fact that 80% of the police force in a Black majority city just happens to be White.12
Why it’s Taking so Long
Despite pleas to the EPA and federal government, help seems to be slow to come to the residents of Benton Harbour, and the little bit of help that does show up never seems to be enough. The residents themselves have had to do what they can to help themselves and others, constantly procuring and distributing hundreds of gallons of water, in jugs, bottles, whatever they can use to give people clean water. This is sadly more than the elected officials are doing. As far as the residents are concerned, the issue lies with the local government, with even the mayor and water superintendent generally unable to be reached for comment. There are those who are willing to help who do have some element of power, for example Mary Alice Adams, a city commissioner, whose daughter passed away from seizures that may have gotten worse from ingesting lead-contaminated water. She offers what help she can, but even she believes that the most predominant reasons the issues are taking so long to be fixed are because of race. To put it in her own words, “If it were St Joe, it would be getting done, and it would be getting done damn fast.”13
Conclusion
While both Flint and Benton Harbour faced, and still face, many issues with regard to the lead contamination in their water, more and more the evidence seems to show that the water pipes aren’t even close to the real issue in Michigan. Certainly they’re the cause of the contamination, but if a place like St. Joseph can live happily without any sign of lead poisoning, then it shouldn’t be possible for a place as close as Benton Harbour to be constantly dealing with health issues worse than the most famous example of lead poisoning in recent memory.
The contamination was going to exist, but it could be fixed. It wasn’t, but perhaps it could have been treated. That also didn’t happen, but maybe it could be tempered before it became out of control. That certainly didn’t happen, but perhaps the government could show that they intend to fix the issue. No such luck, and so we come to now, when we have witnessed failure after failure with only the citizens themselves trying to help others. The only possible conclusion to make, based on the evidence, is that there is a layer of racism deep within the entire state of Michigan that needs to be fixed, or else just as we saw Flint, and just as we see Benton Harbour, we will see further towns suffering more than their neighbours just because of the colour of their skin.
Citations
1 Detroit news, Subscriber restricted
2 “A Black Town’s Water Is More Poisoned than Flint’s. in a White Town Nearby, It’s Clean,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, September 21, 2021), first section, paragraphs 1-4 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/21/benton-harbor-michigan-lead-water-poisoned.
3 Ron Fonger, “71 Michigan Water Systems Now Have Higher Lead Levels than Flint,” mlive, October 30, 2017, Caspio-powered data request system https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2017/10/71_michigan_water_systems_had.html.
4 Ron Fonger, “71 Michigan Water Systems Now Have Higher Lead Levels than Flint,” mlive, October 30, 2017, paragraph 4 https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2017/10/71_michigan_water_systems_had.html.
5 Ron Fonger, “71 Michigan Water Systems Now Have Higher Lead Levels than Flint,” mlive, October 30, 2017, paragraph 6 https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2017/10/71_michigan_water_systems_had.html.
6 Briana Stewart, “Benton Harbor’s Water Crisis Highlights Failing Infrastructure’s Impact on the Poor,” ABC News (ABC News Network, October 27, 2021) https://abcnews.go.com/US/benton-harbors-water-crisis-highlights-failing-infrastructures-impact/story?id=80681291.
7 “A Black Town’s Water Is More Poisoned than Flint’s. in a White Town Nearby, It’s Clean,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, September 21, 2021), ‘no end in sight’ section, paragraph 3 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/21/benton-harbor-michigan-lead-water-poisoned.
8 Monica Murphy, “Update: Benton Harbor Water Main Break Repaired, Use of Bottled Water to Continue,” https://www.wndu.com, accessed December 5, 2021 https://www.wndu.com/2021/10/21/water-main-break-leaves-much-benton-harbor-without-water/.
9 “A Black Town’s Water Is More Poisoned than Flint’s. in a White Town Nearby, It’s Clean,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, September 21, 2021), first section, paragraph 10 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/21/benton-harbor-michigan-lead-water-poisoned.
10 USA Census, “U.S. Census Bureau Quickfacts: Benton Harbour city, Michigan,” https://www.census.gov, accessed December 7, 2021, Race and Hispanic Origin section
11 USA Census, “U.S. Census Bureau Quickfacts: Michigan,” https://www.census.gov/, accessed December 7, 2021, income and poverty section https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/MI/AGE295219.
12 Carter Welch, “Dear Dartmouth,” Dear Dartmouth, accessed December 1, 2021, https://sites.dartmouth.edu/deardartmouth/2020/08/09/a-blue-dividing-line/.
13 “A Black Town’s Water Is More Poisoned than Flint’s. in a White Town Nearby, It’s Clean,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, September 21, 2021), ‘where do you begin?’, paragraph 6 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/21/benton-harbor-michigan-lead-water-poisoned
Bibliography
Stewart, Briana. “Benton Harbor’s Water Crisis Highlights Failing Infrastructure’s Impact on the Poor.” ABC News. ABC News Network, October 27, 2021. https://abcnews.go.com/US/benton-harbors-water-crisis-highlights-failing-infrastructures-impact/story?id=80681291.
“A Black Town’s Water Is More Poisoned than Flint’s. in a White Town Nearby, It’s Clean.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, September 21, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/21/benton-harbor-michigan-lead-water-poisoned.
Welch, Carter. “Dear Dartmouth.” Dear Dartmouth. Accessed December 1, 2021. https://sites.dartmouth.edu/deardartmouth/2020/08/09/a-blue-dividing-line/.
Benz, Terressa A. “Toxic Cities: Neoliberalism and Environmental Racism in Flint and Detroit Michigan – Terressa A. Benz, 2019.” SAGE Journals. Accessed December 1, 2021. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0896920517708339?icid=int.sj-full-text.similar-articles.1.
Fonger, Ron. “71 Michigan Water Systems Now Have Higher Lead Levels than Flint.” mlive, October 30, 2017. https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2017/10/71_michigan_water_systems_had.html.
Census, USA. “U.S. Census Bureau Quickfacts: Michigan.” https://www.census.gov/. Accessed December 14, 2021. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/MI/AGE295219.
Murphy, Monica. “Update: Benton Harbor Water Main Break Repaired, Use of Bottled Water to Continue.” https://www.wndu.com. Accessed December 5, 2021. https://www.wndu.com/2021/10/21/water-main-break-leaves-much-benton-harbor-without-water/.
Primary Sources:
The original article that got me interested in this project, it took me by surprise that I was seeing news about the water in Michigan because I hadn’t heard anything recently, but not only was I seeing an article mentioning flint, but the place it was talking about was even worse than flint, which was the poster child for bad water for over two years, at minimum.
While of course what happened in Flint is awful, and it’s good that it’s getting better, a look at cities throughout the state shows that fixing Flint is just fixing a symptom of a larger issue, with cities having higher lead levels without even having their names known outside of Michigan unless they’re already well known. When people compare Newark to Flint, and don’t even know the name of a single city worse than flint within the same county, you know there’s a problem.
3. Carter Welch, A Blue Dividing Line, Dear Dartmouth, dartmouth.edu, Aug 9, 2020
While the water is of course the main talking point, this article was written by someone who lives not far from both Benton Harbor and St Joseph, and it points out that the issues don’t stop with water, talking about how there were many issues such as police brutality, healthcare, and poverty were all highlighted greatly by the pandemic.
Secondary Sources:
This article, while focused primarily on Flint, goes into detail about some of the history of racism and, in fact, environmental injustice that goes on within Michigan, which seems to be both something that is pervasive throughout the issues in the state, and yet even the more liberal news sites don’t mention the systematic racism as much as racism on much smaller scales, such as directly contrasting Benton Harbour and St Joseph.
Jennifer L. Doleac, New evidence that lead exposure increases crime, brookings.edu, June 1, 2017
This article is less about the city itself, but is directly related to the topic at hand, considering that not only is the city in question contaminated by more lead than flint, but sources show that reported crime rates and police violence are both much higher in Benton Harbour than in St. Joseph. While some would argue that this means the black people are actually committing the crimes, so of course the police are after them, it also matches up with the fact that the police are much more violent in Benton Harbour, and even if it’s not legally considered a crime, police violence fits all the criteria otherwise.
While it is a news article, the relevant information is within the interviews and studies that the former mayor did, and this article is them talking to the former mayor about the information, so anything gotten from the interviews is not directly from the source. That said, from what the former mayor has found, she does say that many of the similarities between Benton Harbor and Flint seem to stem from racism around the demographics of the two cities.
Image Analysis:
This picture was shared November third, 2021, and it was taken by a reporter for the site List23, during one of many attempts by the citizens to share clean drinking water with everyone who needs it. It was posted in an article that mentioned that the EPA had finally taken notice of Benton Harbour, though no action had yet been taken. The people in the picture are volunteers, as all those who helped distribute water are, going out of their way to help others who could not help themselves.
In the picture, we see a puddle of water in an uneven street, rough and in need of repair, though we cannot tell how deep this hole goes. It is only one of a couple puddles in the picture, but it’s not difficult to imagine the photographer is surrounded by them. Behind the puddles we can see a line of cases of water, all unopened. The focus of the picture, however, is on the reflection in the puddle. In this reflection we can see a few of the volunteers, unloading case upon case of water, with one man carrying two at once. We can tell that they are being unloaded because in the background of the reflection, we can see a pallet of cases, with the plastic wrap somewhat removed already. The row of cases seems to be stacked four high in at least one point, and the fact that we can see that pallet shows that this has not been the first one unloaded. The man carrying the cases is in what looks like a raincoat, and is likely one of the ones who helped to drive the cases over, while the man next to him is in layered sweaters, and may be one of the people local to the specific area they are in, helping unload before distribution starts to the possibly hundreds of people there, judging by the sheer amount of bottles.