The Surreal Flint Experience: 2014-2015 Water Crisis // Video of Resident Getting Arrested for Questioning Safety of Water

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“God have mercy on our soul… Let these people speak! We are dying here…Don’t do this, man! Don’t do it!”

Now that the 2014-2015 Flint Drinking Water Crisis has a name and is getting national attention, we wanted everyone to get a glimpse of the surreal journey of Flint residents. The scene was a City Council meeting about 17 months into the water crisis. Understandably, Flint residents were upset, as they were paying the highest water rates in the U.S. (average $200 per month) for water that is now acknowledged to have been dangerous and non-potable.

The residents had just collected their own data, with the assistance of Virginia Tech researchers, that demonstrated Flint water was not meeting Federal safety standards for lead. At the meeting, Flint residents were not allowed to speak, and if they did so, they were arrested. The only mode of asking a question to the government was to write them on Post-In notes or submit them on paper, and residents were told that answers would be posted a week later on the City of Flint’s website.  Moreover, questions from several Flint residents (like Melissa Mays and LeeAnne Walters) were never answered.

ABC news noted:

Many who attended Monday’s meeting had lots of concerns about the safety of their drinking water, but weren’t allowed to ask questions during the presentation. …”I’m dumbfounded. I don’t get it. I don’t have an opinion I guess,” Brisbane-Nobit said. She worries about the recent studies and her declining health “This is ridiculous. I have a pubis bone that’s breaking because one of the symptoms of lead is bone deterioration,” Brisbane-Nobit said.

Siddhartha Roy of Flintwaterstudy.org, was told that by Melissa Mays that this was a routine council meeting during the water crisis, and that Flint residents were “frequently arrested for questioning the safety of their water.”

Here is more proof from footage shot by The Flint Journal/mLive from March 2015 where Tony Palladeno Jr. was asked to leave and is heard discussing Ms. Walters’ initial lead results with then Mayor Walling:

One thought on “The Surreal Flint Experience: 2014-2015 Water Crisis // Video of Resident Getting Arrested for Questioning Safety of Water”

  1. I don’t know if it was incompetency, mismanagement or just plain deceit or all of these. It is like an onion, each layer of the onion that is peeled, the more the ugly truth is finally coming to fruition. In 2011, we residents received notices from the City of Flint that the rates were going up by 25-30% each year. The rates seemed like a runaway train. Then after years of complaints, we were told that we would be using Flint water. There was a big press release by the mayor and other dignitary’s actually drinking a glass of Flint water(at least that is what they supposed to have done). Shortly after that is when the real water problems started. Something was amiss. A City does not get national media attention like that for something insignificant.

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