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Commentary By Ben Boychuk, Joel Mathis

Is Inequality to Blame for Flint's Water Crisis?

Cities, Governance Infrastructure & Transportation

Department of Justice officials this week said the FBI and other federal criminal investigators would look into whether the water poisoning crisis in Flint, Mich., was the result of criminal wrongdoing.

Although Flint's lead-contaminated water supply made national news in October, local officials and activists say the crisis' roots reach back years or even decades and are a result of steady economic decline along with state and federal government neglect.

If Flint were a prosperous city, would the water supply have been cleaned up sooner? Or is this just another case of incompetent government? Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis, the RedBlueAmerica columnists, weigh in.

JOEL MATHIS

Was Flint neglected because it's poor? Of course it was.

Put it this way: You'll never see brown water coming out of the pipes in Beverly Hills. Or in a Manhattan penthouse. Or in any other place you might call "rich." And if somehow you do see brown water in those locations, rest assured that government officials would fall all over themselves to fix the problem as soon as possible. Rich people always get the best government money can buy.

If you're in Flint? It turns out you and your children are disposable, barely worth a thought.

"Would more have been done, and at a much faster pace, if nearly 40 percent of Flint residents were not living below the poverty line? The answer is unequivocally yes," the NAACP said in a statement quoted on CNN.

My conservative friends sometimes like to tell me how awesome it is to be poor in America these days. After all, poor people have Xboxes! Poor people have refrigerators! They can even wear pretty nice shoes!

Well sure. But they're often undernourished. And live in struggling school districts. And they're much more likely to have brown water coming out of their pipes.

Here is what is especially tragic about this situation. A growing number of studies show there's a correlation between lead ingestion and crime: A 2013 story in the liberal magazine Mother Jones showed how that's true at the national -- and neighborhood -- level. Lead, it seems, causes "physical damage to the developing brain that persists into adulthood."

"Even moderately high levels of lead exposure are associated with aggressivity, impulsivity, ADHD, and lower IQ," the magazine observed. "And right there, you've practically defined the profile of a violent young offender."

It seems likely then that the poor, troubled children of Flint will grow up to be poor, troubled adults. My conservative friends will probably tut-tut about the pathologies of poverty. And maybe they'll be right. The people of Flint brought it on themselves, after all, by never getting rich enough to ensure their government protected them.

BEN BOYCHUK

If what happened in Flint isn't a crime, it ought to be. The criminals are government officials at the local, state and federal levels.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, so far has received the brunt of the criticism about the state's response to the crisis. The state was slow to act, it's true. But Snyder did declare a state of emergency and he did order the National Guard to truck in bottled water for residents. Snyder also asked the Legislature for $28 million in emergency funds to address the crisis.

But the governor is not the state's chief water manager. Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality is the state agency responsible for ensuring Flint's water supply conforms to state and federal requirements. Nobody there seems to know what's going on.

The agency's new director, Keith Creagh, told the U.S. House Oversight Committee this week that the Environmental Protection Agency kept his agency waiting for months for a legal opinion. Turns out, the Obama administration knew of Flint's problem for at least a year and barely lifted a finger.

Flint is not a great city. It's poor, broke and crime-ridden. And, by the way, Democrats have run the place for decades. Flint's Democrats did what Democrats often do: obliterated the tax base and spent the city into oblivion.

About 10 years ago, Flint went into state receivership and has had a series of emergency managers ever since. As it happened, Snyder appointed the emergency manager -- another Democrat, but who's counting? -- who along with the city's Democratic mayor and Democratic city council made the fateful decision to switch Flint's water supply from Detroit to Lake Huron as a cost-cutting measure. The city tapped into the Flint River as a stopgap, after the Democrats in Detroit cut off Flint's water before a new pipeline from Huron was finished. (It's scheduled for completion this year.)

Government exists to perform a few basic functions. Ensuring people have a clean, drinkable water supply is one of them. The party of big government failed in Flint, just as it has failed in Detroit and other cities with one-party rule. It will keep failing.

This piece was distributed by Tribune News Service

This piece originally appeared in Tribune News Service