The $600M Flint Settlement Is Further Insult On Grievous Injury.
Shafting The Kids
It was announced a couple of weeks ago that the ~20k children who suffered from the 2014 lead water contamination in Flint will receive $480M in the settlement. The total amount of compensation is $600M but only 80% of that amount will go to children who were under the age of 18 when the crisis was discovered. This amounts to $24k per child in Flint.
I don’t know about you, but $24k to address the toxic and permanent effects of lead sounds like a pretty insulting amount to me. It shows how little we care about the kids of Flint when we tell them that the adverse effects of lifelong damage to their brains and nervous systems can be swept away for the meager sum of $24000. We haven’t even touched on the damage done to the parents of these children who now live with the increased risk of high blood pressure and kidney damage. It’s as if, with the settlement, we are just continuing (and communicating) the incompetence and lack of care that led to the Flint crisis in the first place.
It’s Been a Cluster…
The lead contamination crisis in Flint was due to poor decision making, some incompetence, a little bit of deception, and capitalistic extraction. Considering the history of water quality and regulatory failings in the US, especially when it comes to African American populations, it is safe to suggest racism was also involved. How else can we explain the blatant unwillingness of the authorities to address the Lead contamination issue even when residents called officials with complaints and brought bottles of brown water to town hall meetings? But this negligence and racism on the part of officials are not new; A 1983 General Accounting Office report found that African American communities were the predominant population in 3 out of every 4 communities where toxic landfills were located.
The report was compiled after ~4 years of protests and riots by the predominantly African American population of Warren County North Carolina. This isn’t new. What needs to be new is our response.
New Paradigms
While the monetary compensation in Flint is a start, what is required is a mindset shift that starts to recognize clean drinking water as a right that all people, and considering the history particularly people of color, deserve. What should also change is the acceptance that the old approaches/technologies to water delivery continue to perpetuate the injustices of the past and those old approaches/technologies have to change. It’s time to move from a centralized water distribution system to single home or unit water reuse and reclamation technologies. These single home reuse and reclamation systems enable the continuous recycling and cleaning of water contained within one unit of residence (a home) leading to the sustainable allocation of clean water. I’ve worked in the utility industry for eighteen years of my career, including a stint as an operations engineer delivering electricity to half a million residents of the greater London area, and the technologies we have available at this moment enable the required paradigm shift. A paradigm shift is the only way we will ensure that equity and justice flow through our water systems.
Anything less would just be a continuation of the damage we let our government inflict on us, and more urgently, on our children by propping up the failing systems that currently deliver water. That being said, I believe that, societally, we have an abundance of the other ingredient required to ensure a clean water future for all; the will to make positive change.
Seyi Fabode is a Systems Engineer and currently CEO/Co-Founder of Varuna.
