Luke Skywalker
Super Moderator
{vb:raw ozzmodz_postquote}:
Wayne Cole lives a couple of blocks from the fire station and picks up water a few times a week. Friday, March 4, 2016, in Flint at Fire Station 3(Photo: Kathleen Gray Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo
FLINT —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>A steady stream of drivers pull up to the curb at Fire Station 3 on Martin Luther King Avenue, just north of downtown Flint, on a sunny Friday afternoon in what has become a regular, and unwelcome, part of their routine.
Get out of the car, check in with the National Guard members housed at the station, get a case or two — or four — bottles of water and some filters, and walk back to the car with soldiers and their dollies full of water in tow. It doesn’t take much more than five minutes per carload.
Nobody is snarly or mean toward the National Guard members for being on the front line of the water crisis in Flint. Rather there’s a weary resignation that the trek for bottled water will be part of their lives for the foreseeable future.
DETROIT FREE PRESS
U.S. could face a $300B lead pipe overhaul, agency warns
So you’ll forgive them if they’ve grown frustrated and wary of politicians and elected officials who have either contributed to or are prattling on about their lot in life.
“It’s a clown show. I really think it’s a game to them that whoever can make the most political hay out of this mess is going to win,” said Wayne Cole, an administrator at Kettering University. “I don’t have much faith in them.”
But don’t translate that into apathy about the presidential race that will descend on the Whiting Auditorium in Flint tonight when Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will debate and make a last ditch attempt to lure voters to their side ahead of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Tuesday’s presidential primary election in Michigan.
DETROIT FREE PRESS
Utah senator delays Flint funding: It's 'grandstanding'
Sarah Heidenberger, whose neighbor Mike Smith drove her to the fire station so both could get their allotment of water, has already gotten her absentee ballot signed and ready to go. It’s a Democratic ballot, but she hasn’t decided yet between the former secretary of state or the Vermont senator.
Buy PhotoMike Smith, left, drives his neighbor, Sara Heidenberger, to pick up cases of water on Friday, March 4, 2016, in Flint at Fire Station 3.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Kathleen Gray Detroit Free Press)
“It’s hard. I’m still thinking about it,” said the 68-year-old woman.
Flint residents are accustomed to hard times. The city’s population has plummeted from nearly 145,000 in 1990 to the 99,000 who live here today. The fortunes of the city have always been tied to the automotive industry with employment at General Motors plants peaking at more than 82,000 in 1955. Today, 7,200 people work for GM in Genesee County, including the 5,500 who work at three plants in the city.
Median household income stands at $24,679, compared with $48,273 statewide, and 41.6% of the city’s population lives in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Value of the housing in the city in 2014, which is continuing to fall because of the public health crisis associated with lead contaminated water, is $36,700, compared with the statewide median of $120,200.
GM has pitched in to help with the water crisis with $50,000 from the company’s foundation in October for bottled water and filters for the city’s residents — 20% of GM’s workforce in the county lives in Flint. The auto maker also gave <span style="color: Red;">*</span>$3 million earlier this year from the company and the UAW<span style="color: Red;">*</span> to help pay for nutritional and early childhood programs, and ongoing care for children with elevated blood levels. The state has kicked in millions, too —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>$67 million so far for hooking back up to the Detroit water system, bottled water and filters and a variety of other services.
That’s one positive that’s come out of the crisis:<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Neighbors, both the residential and corporate kind, pitching in to help.
John Adams, who said he regularly picks up water for himself and seven other people in his neighborhood, doesn’t have much to think about. He’s a Hillary Clinton guy, but didn’t even realize that the two Democrats are going to be in town tonight. He has bigger problems on his mind.
Buy PhotoJohn Adams, Friday, March 4, 201,6 in Flint at Fire Station 3 where he picks up water for six or seven neighbors.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Kathleen Gray Detroit Free Press)
“I’m here every other day, because I’m helping some of the poor people in the neighborhood. Plus, I have to pay my water bill for water that’s poison,” he said. “I have two parents, both of them are deceased, and if they came back today and saw what’s going on here, they’d say ‘Take me back.’ It’s ridiculous.”
The Democrats have pounced on the Flint water crisis with ferocity. Clinton mentioned the controversy during a debate in mid-January, portraying it as a case of institutional racism because a rich suburb would never experienced such a crisis that the poverty-stricken city that has a population with a 56% majority of African Americans was facing. She visited the city in early February and said what was happening in Flint was immoral.
Sanders has called on Gov. Rick Snyder to resign over the crisis, which happened when the nearly bankrupt city, which was under the authority of a state-appointed emergency manager, switched its supply from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department water drawn from Lake Huron to the more corrosive Flint River. Not properly treated, the more corrosive water resulted in lead leaching from lead service lines and pipes into some homes and businesses in the city.
Sanders also visited the city 10 days ago and said it’s an example of crumbling infrastructure throughout the nation that desperately needs attention.
The Republican candidates have largely ignored the crisis in Flint<span style="color: Red;">*</span>unless they’re directly asked, and some have given credit to Snyder for taking responsibility for the problem and taking action to solve it.
The attention is a little annoying, said Cole, who leans toward Democrats but doesn’t even think he’ll vote in the primary because he isn’t a big fan of the nominating process.
“It’s frustrating that we have both political parties pointing fingers, but I guess that’s to be expected,” he said. “As long as they’re giving me water and filters, I can deal with it. But it’s the older people who can’t deal with it.”
It’s even more frustrating, he said, when he learned earlier on Friday that a Republican senator from Utah, Mike Lee,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>is holding up federal funding for Flint.
“His ideological beliefs are more important than getting these kids on clean drinking water,” he said. “It’s a political game and all about who can make the most political pay dirt on it.”
For Roslyn Hamilton, who got four cases of water on Friday which she hopes will last till Monday in her three-person, one dog household, choosing a Democrat is a given. But she has no illusions that a solution for her beleaguered city will come anytime soon.
Buy PhotoRoslyn Hamilton on Friday, March 4, 2016, in Flint at Fire Station 3<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Kathleen Gray Dertroit Free Press)
“It’s an election and they want them votes,” she said. “A lot of it is for political attention and gain. And when it’s all said and done they’ll say they’ve done what they can and we’ll still be in the same fix.”
And that’s what has Mike Smith keeping an eye on New York businessman Donald Trump. He and his wife only started getting free bottled water in the last couple of weeks because they have jobs and thought there were other people in the city who need it more than them.
“But then it got to the point that we were spending so much money on water because I’ve got two big dogs and a little one,” he said. “We just got to the point that we felt we were almost just working for water, and then I got this giant water bill from Flint.”
So he’s been paying attention to the presidential race when he can fit it into the unpredictable hours of his job at a restaurant and hearing about it from his wife, who is obsessed with the ongoing campaigns.
“I’ve got to admit that Donald Trump entertains me. I’m primarily a Democrat, but I’m not locked into that. I’ve got to believe that you’ve got to go with the lesser of two evils,” he said. “The idea of having a businessman is a good idea, but you’ve got to have the right one. The politicians to me, I’ve lost faith in all of them.”
Contact Kathleen Gray: 313-223-4430, [email protected] or on Twitter @michpoligal
Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed