Flint Water Crisis Summary

Pamela Puchalski is one author who believes that the government failed its people during the Flint Water Crisis, as she describes in her article “A Functioning Government Could Have Prevented the Flint Crisis” (2017). She attributes the poisoning of Flint residents to the incompetence of government officials at both the city and state level. Puchalski outlines the five different ways in which the government failed the people. First, she says, they made decisions based on what would be quick and cheap rather than what would be safe and beneficial to the well-being of citizens. The city manager decided to change the water supply to the Flint River from Lake Huron because it could be done quickly and would save money, but he did not consider the negative impact this would have on the cleanliness of the water. …show more content…
The public, local elected officials, Michigan’s Department of Environmental Equality, and the Environmental Protection Agency were not involved in the project. They should have been overseeing the change to ensure that mistakes were not made and that the city manager’s idea would benefit, and not harm, the residents of Flint. Third, the government was not open and honest with the people as it carried out this project. Fourth, the government failed to attempt to improve the economy in Flint. The struggling economy was the primary reason the water source was being changed, as officials were attempting to save money. Last, the government ignored the people. Residents were complaining about water that smelled, looked, and tasted strange, but their complaints were ignored until the crisis began to be covered by major news outlets. Overall, Puchalski explains that the water crisis would not have happened if the United States government was honest with its people and held to a higher