The New York Times revealed that on Friday, April 6, the state of Michigan stated that they would stop providing free bottled water to Flint, where the residents dealt with a crisis in 2014 involving high levels of lead in their drinking water. The state says that the amount of lead in Flint’s water supply has not exceeded federal limits in two years, so there is no need to keep providing them with bottled water. However, the lasting effects of the lead on the Flint community have not vanished, and Michigan seems eager to only do the bare minimum required to help the community of Flint. Meanwhile, Nestlé only pays $200 a year to pump water right outside of Flint, according to the Guardian. It is ridiculous that Nestlé gets to pay so little while using so much of Michigan’s water, yet continuing to provide aid to Flint is being treated like an infeasible endeavor. Nestlé should not be able to profit off of a resource so desperately needed by the residents of Flint.
The Flint water crisis began in 2014 because Flint began using the Flint River water supply instead of the Detroit water system to save money. Because the tap water was not properly treated before making its way to residents’ homes, it caused lead to leach into the Flint water supply from old pipes, exposing many people to high levels of lead. Michigan officials denied that there was a lead issue in Flint’s water supply for an extended amount of time, and many state officials were charged due to causing and then covering up the incident, according to The New York Times. The residents of Flint were the victims of this gross misconduct, and they have continued to pay the price. The number of children exposed to elevated lead levels doubled, many people fell ill or reported experiencing rashes and hair loss and fetal deaths increased by 58 percent, according to the Guardian. For years people were not being able to use their tap water for drinking, showering and watering gardens where food was grown. Many of the water pipes causing the contamination have been replaced, but there are still thousands that haven’t, according to The New York Times.
Nestlé applied for a permit to pump water from Michigan, and the state granted it because they could not find anything illegal with the request, despite vocal public opposition, according to the Detroit Free Press. Nestlé is paying practically nothing to pump hundreds of thousands of gallons a water into plastic bottles and profit from while residents are struggling to get clean water to drink and use. Nestlé should not get special treatment over the residents of Flint, who struggled just to get the state to acknowledge that they had lead in their water. Corporations should not be prioritized over citizens, as the state of Michigan has a duty to protect and take care of their citizens and keep them from harm. Nestlé could even be doing something to help the residents, like offering to replace the remaining contaminated pipes; if they are going to be making money off of their water, they should at least be giving back when there are people so clearly in need of aid due to lack of water resources.
It might even be more understandable if Nestlé was paying a lot more to use the water, but $200 a year is not even profitable for the state of Michigan, due to the amount of water Nestlé is using. Nestlé generates $7.4 billion from water alone, according to the Guardian, so it is not like they cannot afford to pay a larger fee to use Michigan’s water. The state is allowing Nestlé to use their water because it doesn’t violate the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act, according to the Detroit Free Press, but that doesn’t explain why Nestlé gets to pay such a cheap administrative fee. It doesn’t seem logical that Michigan would continue the deal with Nestlé for such a low amount of money on Nestlé’s end but still be looking for the earliest opportunity to stop providing resources to Flint. If they are concerned about the money it is costing them, then they should at least charge Nestlé more to continue siphoning water out of the state to make a profit on, especially when it is almost 100,000 times the amount the average Michigan resident uses per year, the Guardian reports.
Flint should not have to continue paying the price for the actions of others. The situation has been grossly neglected for four years now, and it’s time that the state of Michigan takes steps to help the residents of Flint recover from this crisis apart from just providing them with alternative sources of water. And if Michigan is not going to provide the residents of Flint with necessary resources, they at least need to cut Nestlé off from their control over a large amount of water that could be going to Flint.
