Welcome to inside story. Im ray suarez. Flint was already a symbol of americas troubled industrial cities, long before it made the news in recent weeks. General motors and other employers left and took thousands of jobs with them. Population dlaind. Eclined. Home values declined. Incomes declined. In recent years theres been some good news, some redevelopment. While city governments wrestled with financial crises, aging infrastructure, things got worse when it was decided the city would use water from the flint river. Things were real, stayed unaddressed for a shockingly long period of time. Al jazeeras andy rosegen is outside flint michigan. Andy whats happening now with the water in flint . Still too dangerous to drink. Could remain that way for years. The governor, somebody in his administration said this could take 15 years to fix. And even though city switched back to the detroit water system from the flint river system, back in fall of last year, that water permanently corroded the pipes and thats why this could take so long to fix. This seems like now a triangular problem. Michiganders complaining about the problem and on and on and on. Do we know where the fault lies on this long term situation . If you ask all the leaders theyll point to somebody else, basically we know this. President obama last night committed 80 million to fixing this problem. The infrastructure problem. He said that the problem here was just inexcusable. It is a reminder of why you cant shortchange basic services that we provide to our people. And that we, together, provide as a deposit, to make sure the Public Health and safety [applause] is preserved. Now, Governor Snyder of michigan has been pointing fingers as well. Just last night, the regional head of the epa based in chicago but overseeing the flint area resigned as did the michigan director of the department of environmental quality. Both those agencies were accused of not doing enough, not taking seriously enough the complaints from the residents that started back in summer of 2014. Governor snyder addressed that in his state of the state on tuesday. No citizen of this great state should endure this kind of catastrophe. Government failed you, local state and federal officials, im sorry i let you down. You deserve better. You deserve accountability. You deserve to know that the buck stops here with me. But the governor is certainly not off the hook himself. There are calls for him to resign and hes going to be called to testify before congress as well, ray. Joining me now from frint, flint. Naira ra sharee. When did the people in flint first find out there was a problem with the water . I would say it was within a couple of months after the switch. So the switch to the flint river was in april 2014. So by june people were complaining of rashes and their hair beginning to fall out. And becoming sick. Did state or city officials already know, before the people started to get sick, that this wasnt working, the switch to the flint river had caused a problem . People were going down and contacting their city council and going to Public Meetings with the water that was coming out of their tap and the clumps of hair athat was falling ou that was falling out of their head and trying to get answers. When you say didnt get any answers, im not sure i understand that answer. How could when there was a demonstrable problem, when somebody said look at this water, it is making us sick, they said what . Nothing . The water is safe to drink. Hold on until we get a clean water source. Because the city of flint has joined the huron valley water system, and theyre building a pipeline to carry it. Even when the people were suffering the rashes and calling their representatives, the refrain was, the water was safe to drink. Not only was something wrong, something was dangerously wrong. Yes. Because people were getting their water tested and it was coming back high in lead. And those people werent even notified that they had a health issue. That they needed to follow up with their physicians. How long pasted between the time that finding was made, to the time that an emergency was declared and alternate water sources were finally provided to the people of flint . Well, the beginning of october, the county Health Department released a lead advisory. And that was only after we had independent testing from Virginia Tech, and we had a physician at a pediatrician who looked at the blood level rate for infants who were born in Genesee County and found that there were elevated blood lead levels. But we didnt get a state of emergency until we elected a new mayor. And it was within a moo after owners month after she took office that the state declared a state of emergency and that started the ball rolling as we say. What will it take for you to be able to walk over to your kitchen tap and open it up and drink a glass of water with a clear head . It is going to take a lot of testing. We need our entire infrastructure tested. Bigger than that the generation of children living in flint that are scared and terrifying of whats coming out of their tap. So i dont know what the cost for thats going to be. Or the psychological effect of that. Nayira sharif joined us, shes an organize with the defense league. Thank you for joining us. If you have been watching tv or reading the paper in scottsdale, arizona, richmond, virginia, you might have wondered how did this happen . How has response been so slow, stay with us, poor peoples water, stay with us. Mosquitos spreading rare diseases. As scientists wed be fighting a losing battle against mosquitos. Theyd kill one person every 12 seconds. Just like that, i might have genetically modified a mosquito. Its like a video game with genes. This is what innovation looks like. I feel like were making an impact. Lets do it. Techknow, where Technology Meets humanity. Only on al jazeera america. Youre watching inside story. Im ray suarez. Poor peoples water this time on the program. Were trying to get a handled on the long unfolding civic disaster in flint michigan. Joining me is trachelle le young peter glick and angela pochasky. Trachel, if you sue, who do you sue . Do you have to figure out who is responsible for what happened in flint . Thrashing, we believe we know thats correct, we believe we know who is responsible for the water in flifnt. Flijtd. Flint. It was Governor Snyder. Take us back, who was behind it . The city of flint was in the control of an emergency manager, in april of 2013 they decided that the city would join a new organization to get its water. The city of detroit issued a notice of termination to the city of flirn flint for their wr usage. We were going to continue to receive water from flint but to save money, the emergency manager decided we would get our water from the flint river, ignoring reports that the flint river would not be a viable source as a primary source of drinking water. Pamela we hear from time to time about boil orders, about people recommended to stay away from the water in their taps for a few days, and so on. But this isnt a critter, amoeba, a giard ardia in the water clean. It is a problem of chemistry isnt it . Its a preventible problem. The key issue here is the regulations that were in place werent followed. So it could have been prevented. Even when it was detected publicly known by the authorities, there could have been measures that were taken to protect flints citizens. Like what, would it have been complicated, expensive . Running cities is complicated and expensive but thats why it matters so much. Thats why elected officials, those that are put in place by citizens to steward their everyday needs, need to be held accountable. This was a state appointed city manager so residents didnt have that check on accountability that theyre entitled to. Peter glick, it sounds like there are several moments where they hit a fork in the road and every time the wrong decision was made. Ray, thats exactly right. This was an amissing combination of big mistakes. It was an economic mistake to try to save a little bit of money by going to a different water source. It was a technological and scientific mistake not to understand what the change in the chemistry would do to the existing water system and to monitor carefully, to measure carefully, and when the first evidence started to appear there was a serious water problem. We have a great water system in the United States but it doesnt take much to screw things up and to lose the trust that people have in that water system. And thats what weve seen here. Trachelle young, the hardest thing for me to understand, and ive been covering stories like this for over 30 years is why this took so long. We heard nayera sharif earlier in the program talk about the length of time, between the time somebody knew something was wrong until an alternative water source was supplied to the people of flint. They knew something was wrong almost immediately. The switch was made april of 2013. The city failed the Water Quality tests. And in june and july of 2014, they issued water boil advisors. They issued three boil advisors within a 22 day span. And then they send out a statement saying if you have a severely compromised immune system or you have infants, you should stop using the water. You could have liver problems, kidney problems, increased harm of cancer. There was absolutely no way the city officials did not know what was going on. This is what made this so egregious. They ignored the signs, ignored the people and the mdeq took steps to skew quality test results so they wouldnt have to report certain things. This behavior is criminal in my opinion. Pamela, this is a boil order. But lead gets concentrated in water when you boil it. It doesnt come out of water when you boil it. Im not much of a chemist but i think im right there, right . I think issue there is the shared responsibility. And the citizens of flint were failed on all levels. The saving grace was their own insight and knowledge. And having that civic sense that they needed to fend for themselves. I mean thats the essence of community resilience. So their reaching out to the Virginia TechResearch Team to get the data behind it. They were cut caught in that loophole of yes, the water looks murky but the epa is not responsible for the esthetics of water. Thanks omark edwards and his team they were able to selftest their own water and get the evidence to prove what they already knew. Stay right where you are. Are there other flints right out there, quietly marches to new infrastructure disasters, stay with us, its inside story. Welcome back to inside story, im ray suarez. Pamela, peter and trashelle are still with me. As we try obetter understand the events that led up to a city of 100,000 people tainted with toxins. Peter, what are we talking about as far as the minimum best practices after worst practices, what has to be done in flint, since obviously we havent saved any money, were going to spend much much more money. Theyre going to have to find a water source that provides high quality water to put into the system. The second thing is theyre going to have to identify which parts of the system, which pipes in which homes are going to have bad water delivery systems. Street by street, house by house and test every Single Source of water to make sure that the clean water that goes into the top is clean water that comes out at the tap. And the third thing theyre going to have to do is going to have to build back the public trust in the system. And the only way to do that is by education, by careful monitoring so people trust whats coming out of their taps throughout the system. And then by helping to educate the people that the water has been returned back to a safe reliable and affordable level. Its going to be a long, hard thing to do. Trachelle young, that sounds like its complicated, takes a lot of time and theres a real shortage of the kind of will it takes to make that happen. In the meantime, are those who can, going to leave flint . Well, thats the problem. Not many people in flint have the option of leaving flint. Flint was not a place that olot of people come because its a desired spot. Theyre here, theyre born and raised here, their family members are here we have a very low in terms of our unemployment rate, its high, but the people dont have a lot of choices in order to get out of flint. And to add insult to injury, the city is issuing shutoff notices to residents who couldnt afford to pay their water bills. We have one of the highest water rates in the country. And theyre turning peoples water off because they are refusing to pay for the poison thats being pumped in their houses and thats just unacceptable. It sounds pamela like a failure on so many levels. Its hard to sigh sec dissect i. Its a result of decades of disinvestment. Its not just the water crisis. I mean going back to the late 80s when the gm plant closed down no one at the city or state level took the steps necessary to actually ensure that flint remains economically competitive. That means job opportunity, education, for residents. Those who stay. And as peter described it as three steps, thats a much more significant level of investment than any flint resident had seen. And its critically necessary. Are there other flints pamela out there waiting to happen in places like the Northern Tier of new york state, other great states, cities that are past their prime frankly and they havent been able to afford to keep up the stuff that was built well in the 20s and 30s . We have a real crisis in this country around the social account. For even how the social contract. For how the federal government interacts with state and local municipalities. Thats been building for a long time. The rhetoric around regulation has kind of catalyzed this distrust of government in general. The answer is not less regulation, government can do well, needs to do well. The story of flint is just how important government regulation is. Not only of the private sector but also of how government functions themselves. You know trachelle, you have talked about how the state of michigan has failed you but arent there supposed to be back stops . How come the United States epa was not back stopping michigans dropping the ball . How come nobody else seemed to know . They did know. The epa in particular knew. They had an employee, miguel del toro who wrote a memo in july of 2015 that specifically addressed the water was not safe, that the city was engaging in preflushing which was basically washing many of the toxins out of the Testing Process and they tried to silence him. They isolated him. Thats why susan hedman just resigned from the epa but these resignations that are being allowed to take place they are not acceptable. There needs to be terminations, there needs to be accountability for whats going on and the government needs to step up and address the injuries, the personal injuries that the people are suffering right now. Weve had ten people die from the legion legionaires he disease. It doesnt seem like weve gotten this far into the crisis where theres a clear narrative this happened, this happened, this happened, and this is how were going to fix it. Were still waiting for that arent we . We are still waiting for that. And thats why were not happy. Thats why people are still upset. You know its nice that the whole country is really pitching in and sending in bottled water and these filters and the testing kits. But when you look at it, its like putting a bandaid on a bullet wound. We need to get to the real issue and that is that infrastructure, like he was saying, those three steps, were not talking about those steps and thats where the conversation needs to change. You know peter glick, pamela was talking about the encouraged lack of trust in government. Certainly theres been a big move in the United States and water. There are people sitting at home watching us talk right now saying, well maybe business would do a better job, wouldnt they . No, not necessarily. The vast majority of the Water Systems in the u. S. Are well run. They provide high quality, inexpensive water 24 hours a day, seven days a week and we take it for granted. As you said at the very beginning. Private companies do the same service somewhat but they dont do it any better and they dont do it any cheaper. Correct. This is the result of years of antigovernment seventh sentiment in our system. That we ought to be addressing all the time and there will be more flints if we dont tackle this. Flint was a combination of some serious mistakes but we could see this again. We saw a problem in charleston West Virginia last year, and its one of the most Amazing Things this country has. Pamela, in the minute we have left, it seems like theres no catalytic moment. We see the West Virginia disaster, what happens in flint and other parts of the country and no one ever says thats it. No we dont. We saw it in d. C. Not too long ago. Epa was aware of lead poisoning in washington in its own home territory. Again, i think were rightly focused on some of the expenditures that cities and governments need to make in order to kind of provide those basic services. But the real answer to avoiding the flints of the future is by investing more in this Economic Opportunity and just kind of not getting into the dire straits of what we are going to slash and cut in order to just balance the checkbook. I want to thank my guests for a great conversation. Peter, pamela, and trachelle, the attorney for Flint Coalition for clean and safe water. If you are watching the 6 30 eastern broadcast stand by for continuing coverage of the flint water crisis and a special from al jazeera america. Ill see you monday. Im ray suarez. Thats the inside story. Tunis yafs president warns that i. S. Fighters could take advantage of unrest and sneak in from neighboring libya. Im sphaw Fauziah Ibrahim in al jazeeras global headquarters. President ial runoff elections have been delayed once again in haiti. Millions of people in the path of an enormous u. S. Blizzard