Flint, Michigan Isn’t the Only City With a Water Crisis
Residents of Newark, NJ have been facing a lead water crisis for years
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Most people know about the water situation in Flint, Michigan. The media jumped to cover the situation in recent years, profiting off the sympathy of viewers and the hardships of the actual residents of the community.
In 2014, the city switched its water from the Detroit system to the Flint River in order to save costs. The river, however, had been used as an industrial dumping site for years, causing the water to be polluted with toxic chemicals and waste. That polluted, toxic water would be distributed to residents throughout the community.
However, not all people were affected in the same way. Low-income and minority communities did not have the same ability to access clean water as other, more wealthy residents did. When their tap water was contaminated, they couldn’t just go out and buy the bottled water that they needed.
This decision completely ignored these communities who were disproportionately impacted by this crisis. The polluted river water used in many households caused a number of health problems that soon put the city in the national spotlight.
However, those communities aren’t the only ones being impacted by the global problem of contaminated water. Many, many more are fighting for clean water all across the world. One of those communities is Newark, NJ — a city just an hour north from where I live.
The water crisis in Newark, NJ
For the past few years, lead-filled drinking water has been impacting the health of the disproportionately BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and minority population. More than half of the city is Black, one-third is Latine, and over a third live under the poverty line. The levels of lead are some of the highest recorded in the entire United States.
The crisis first started in 2016, when extremely high levels of lead were recorded in Newark public schools. 30 schools were reported to have increased lead levels. It soon became an even larger problem over the next few years, as lead levels in drinking water increased, causing massive health problems for the residents of Newark’s most vulnerable communities.
The lead problem itself stems from a lack of upkeep of the water system. Most of Newark’s water supply comes from the Pequannock treatment plant. In 2015, 12% of water samples tested contained levels of lead that were over the federal limit. That should have been a huge warning sign. However, it went ignored for years by Newark’s city government before the health impacts of lead poisoning became noticeable.
Even back in 2014, before those samples were taken, a state regulator told Newark officials that residents should be boiling their water. Yet no one spoke up or did anything to resolve the situation before it got worse.
Newark officials didn’t do anything to prevent this crisis.
City officials know that this is a huge problem. Factories were pumping out chemicals and toxic waste, causing tap water and other water sources to become contaminated. Lead poisoning was observed years before any health effects became apparent, yet no action was taken.
And now, for many years, the city has had the largest number of lead-poisoned children in NJ, and one of the largest numbers in the country.
Even after causing the contamination of the drinking water of tens of thousands of households, the city is refusing to help those impacted. With tap water still unsafe to drink, officials decided not to provide clean water. On October 8th, 2019, they stopped distributing bottles of water to Newark residents, even though no government agencies have released any data showing that the water crisis has been resolved.
With that notion, one can assume that the city government is expecting people to drink their own tap water. But they’re also refusing to provide water filters to families with contaminated water. Almost 30,000 households in the eastern part of Newark have not received filters and are still being forced to drink contaminated water or rely on bottled water, which they oftentimes cannot afford.
The city argues that those households are unaffected by the water crisis, yet Newark’s testing data shows otherwise, showing that those homes still had elevated levels of lead in their water.
From my point of view, Newark officials are trying to ignore this crisis and sweep it under the rug, even when tens of thousands of families in low-income, minority communities are being impacted.
We need to be talking about this.
There are people in the heart of Newark that think their water is safe to drink because of the city government’s inadequate testing. There are kids who have been drinking contaminated water for years. What’s going to happen to them?
Nobody is talking about this crisis. But it’s something that needs to be talked about, and not just by the people in Newark. We need to talk about this on a global scale — because soon enough, a crisis like this will happen in even the wealthiest communities if we continue to pollute our planet.
We cannot continue to ignore the impacts of environmental racism on minority communities. These people are being disproportionately affected by climate impacts that they didn’t even cause. Enough is enough.
If you can, consider making a donation to the Newark Water Coalition’s GoFundMe, to help them provide clean drinking water to Newark residents.
