In October, the city told residents to stick to filtered or bottled water because of unsafe levels of lead, a problem that developed after it temporarily switched to using water from the Flint River in order to cut costs. But residents had been trying for more than a year to get officials’ attention about the dirty water coming out of their taps, and many allege thatthe city’s demographics have something to do with the slow response. Nearly 42 percent live under the poverty line, and 57 percent are black.
“It’s hard for me to imagine the indifference that we’ve seen exhibited if this had happened in a much more affluent community,” US Rep. Dan Kildee, who represents Flint, told CNN.
Michigan mobilized its National Guard to help distribute water, and dozens of charities and celebrities have pitched in as well.
But many residents seem unsure what to do with the sudden influx of plastic, and much of it is headed to landfills, where each bottle takes hundreds of years to decompose.
READ FULL ARTICLE => Flint’s newest challenge: a flood of plastic bottles (+video) – CSMonitor.com