On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we look at the ongoing water crisis of what is perhaps the most troubled city in America, Flint, Michigan. Flint has a productive history as the headquarters of GM. It was once called Vehicle City and was part of the boom in automobiles that made Detroit and the surrounding area known as The Motor City. Quite simply, Flint was part of Henry Ford's legacy. It was a city of high wages and sound living…until GM moved its plant. The once prosperous city fell on hard times and roughly half of the 200,000 people living there ended up bailing in order to find work.

The years that followed were filled with decay, unemployment, and crime, and just when things were at their worst, they got, well, even worse! The Governor of Michigan gave a special group powers that superseded the government of Flint, and they ended up trying to do everything they could to save money and make the city solvent again. One thing they did was switch where they got the city’s water from. Instead of a plant in Detroit, they used an old and inadequate water treatment facility inside of Flint and used water from the notoriously toxic Flint River.

Citizens were upset at this decision, but then when the water started flowing, things were worse than they thought. The water through the city was brown and filled with everything from lead to E.coli to Legionnaire’s Disease! The problem is, the water facility didn’t anti  corrosion chemicals. This means the PH level of the water was pulling lead and rust from the pipes of the 100 year old city, and poisoning the water. Lead levels in children doubled, all sorts of novel diseases and ailments showed up.

This is all bad enough, but the way it was treated by the Flint managing government was horrible. They lied to the populace and told them the water was fine (all the while paying for bottled water for city employees). The water was so bad that GM even had to lay new pipe to get back to the Detroit water because their machinery was getting ruined by the Flint River water.

So, is the water clean all these years later? How much would it have cost the city to add anti corrosive chemicals and avert this problem? Where does Nestle come in to play? What’s up with the Army’s live ammo tests in the abandoned parts of the city? Listen, laugh, learn.