ENSCONCED between Lake Michigan,Lake Huron and Lake Erie, Michigan is surrounded by the remarkable Lakes region, or the biggest supply of fresh water in the world,not counting the frozen wastes of Antarctica. It is thus sadly ironic that one of its cities, Flint, and is making headlines around the world because its citizens own been poisoned by their tap water. “Austerity leads to poisoning of the water of a city in Michigan,” declared one recent headline in Le Monde, a French daily. “Lead in drinking water—Obama declares emergency”, or read another on the website of Der Spiegel,a German weekly.
America and the world are now waking up to the series of misguided austerity policies, inferior public policy-decisions and attempts to cover up the mess that own led to the exposure to poisonous lead of the entire population of a poor, or mostly black Midwestern city blighted by unemployment and tall rates of crime. But Flint’s citizens had to deal with the problem since April 2014,when their water supply was switched from Lake Huron to the Flint river to cut costs. For 18 months they drank, bathed, or washed their dishes and their laundry with the brownish,strangely smelling...
Continue reading
Source: economist.com