As of January, people have been aware of a Lifetime Original Movie starring Cher called Flint. If you’ve been completely oblivious to just about everything for the past year and a half, here’s a quick summary of the utter catastrophe going on in Michigan.
The water from the tap in Flint, Michigan, is toxic and pretty much undrinkable. Lead in the pipes is contaminating the water, and many people, including children, have gotten serious lead poisoning from drinking it. The water ranges from yellow to dark brown and disgusting to even look at. This is happening because in 2014, Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, changed the water flow system from Detroit water to water from the Flint River.
What people aren’t aware of is since the uprise of the crisis, the problem has spread to the opposite ends of the state of Michigan and aren’t improving much. In 2014, there were even six cities that are far away from Flint that had even worse lead levels. The cities were Detroit, Grand Rapids, Holland, Jackson, Muskegon and Saginaw. Over half of these cities are part of West Michigan while Flint is on the East side of the lower peninsula.
Other news released in January showed that the levels in Flint are below federal limit, meaning it’s not very safe to drink, but much better than it was. This is a great improvement, but it’s not over yet and people in Michigan still have no fresh water to use.
The movie “Flint” is to be centered around the Water Crisis in which the characters are shown not having their opinions heard and being affected by poisoning and having to find other water sources.
Michigan needs money, of course, to be able to put this all to an end, so any and all donations push toward the goal (there is a link to the United Way donation site at the end of the article). Since the movie will also cost a large amount of money for production, obviously the money will need to go one way or the other. It would make much more sense for the production money to go toward ending the crisis and giving the people of Michigan water from something besides a plastic bottle, but they decided that, even though it’s not yet over, to make the movie.
Michigan needs to have clean water. People cannot continue to get lead poisoning or use all of their water from bottles forever. If you wish to donate money to support the cause to end it, contribute here: http://www.unitedwaygenesee.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=5
