Time For Flint To Guide The Nation Forward On All Fronts

[Ben Zonia]

A couple of weeks ago, Genesee County Sheriff Christopher Swanson joined protesters of the murder of George Floyd. Flint avoided a lot of the violence that happened in other cities. That did not surprise me. Flint has always been on the vanguard of tolerance and equality. Flint was the first major US city to elect a Black Mayor. When no Black Mayoral candidates were viewed as suitable for election a few years ago, a majority of BOTH Black and White voters elected a White Mayor, Dayne Walling.

People from all around the Country and World came to Flint in the 1950s and 1960s to learn and take part in the "Community Schools Concept", financed by former General Motors CEO Charles Stewart Mott, and instituted and led by Frank Manley.

Flint was the Birthplace of General Motors. It employed 80,000 workers at one point the the Flint Area, with very good paying jobs, a large percentage of which were held by African Americans. Several decades ago, a vengeful CEO of GM, Roger Smith, closed and demolished almost all of the GM Plants in Flint, and like a neutron bomb, left plants in other Michigan cities standing. Many of the previous CEOs had actual backgrounds in Automotive Engineering, and many had graduated from GMI, and had actually spent substantial time in Flint, seeing what the community was really like, and not going by horrible media accounts in numerous newspapers and magazines. Smith was from Bloomfield Hills, and went to The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and studied Accounting and Business. But then a resident of Davison named Michael Moore, equally hateful and vindictive, made the movie Roger and Me. Since then, Moore has racked up a fortune from fake documentaries, which has made his net worth far in excess of what Roger Smith's ever was. Since then, Moore has basically abandoned Flint, taking his residence and his Pied Piper Show on the road to Traverse City. Although he continuously posts as "MMFlint", almost nothing he has done actually helps Flint. In fact, his beliefs and movie have caused Flint to wallow in self pity for the last 30 plus years. Businesses and jobs rarely locate in Flint and Genesee County because of this perception and self fulfilling philosophy.

Then a few years ago, the Flint water crisis occurred, frankly and partly caused by the abandonment and neglect of the city as a result of Smith, Moore, and others, and the Detroit Water department overcharging Flint and surrounding communities to make up for Detroit financial shortfalls. Because of the financial situation caused by all of this, Flint made the fateful decision to switch back to Flint River Water, which had been used from the founding of the Flint Water Department, up until the mid 1960s, when a drought caused many suburban city wells to nearly run dry. Although this was a temporary situation which would have soon corrected itself, suburban water systems signed on to get their water from Flint. This overtaxed the water system, and it was forced to begin getting water from Detroit. A huqe 10 foot diameter pipeline was built, and brought in water from Lake Huron, near Port Huron. An 8 foot pipeline then went to the Northern Detroit Area, and a 6 foot pipeline to the Flint Area. The bifurcation of the pipeline is near Imlay City.

Despite the totally inaccurate news and editorials in the New York Times and other newspapers and network accounts, Flint River water is NOT inherently contaminated with Lead, and any trace amounts are not substantially different than any other source of drinking Water. The Flint River, in fact, begins in two other Counties, the North Branch in LAPEER COUNTY, and the South Branch in OAKLAND COUNTY. The reason for the Lead contamination was that the pH, or acidity/alkalinity of the water was too low, and it leached Lead from pipes in the distribution system into the water. Almost all old water systems used Lead pipes in the past, and many remain in place in other cities. The water needed an additive to increase the pH so that it didn't leach the Lead out from the pipes, old solder, etc. This was as a result of people who probably knew nothing about what they had or hadn't done. It certainly wasn't done intentionally. And the situation is much more complex than was ever reported. When people tried to explain it in more complex and technical terms, and that there was NO INTENT to poison the people, they were shouted down. In fact, there was evidence of tampering of water samples to increase the measured Lead content, to further the political agenda. That whistleblower was shouted down. Flint continues to wallow in the self pity of the water crisis, even though it is estimated that the problem is at least 99% solved.

The last straw for me was last night when a poster on a message board about the Brandon Township Supervisor's Facebook post that insinuated that the Supervisor and people of Brandon Township had been brain damaged by drinking Lead from Flint Water. Brandon Township is about 20 miles from Flint, and in OAKLAND COUNTY. It was never part of the Flint Water System, but may be a part of the Detroit Water System. And I'm sick and tired of people from Bloomfield Hills and The Grosse Pointes and Ann Arbor and their attitudes and finger pointing.

I hope Flint can move on from all this and again become a Shining Example of Success, Tolerance, and Equality.

[Colonel Flagg]

Agreed. The absurdity boggles the mind.

[audiophile]

Great post!