Given everything that Flint has been through in recent years, the last thing we want to do is beat up on the city’s challenged school district. While some critics may suggest otherwise, the legal action we took last fall aimed at improving conditions in the schools is simply designed to ensure that every child who walks into a classroom, including those who need special-education services, receives the support necessary to thrive.

The ACLU of Michigan and the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund  today urged the Flint City Council to suspend local efforts to impose property liens on thousands of Flint homeowners for failing to pay delinquent bills for contaminated municipal water—which has been unsafe to drink for more than three years.

A newly announced plan to permanently keep Flint on the Detroit-based regional water system has both sparked hope and raised important questions.

This story first published on the Detroit Metro Times.

Residents of Flint will finally get their lead pipes replaced as a result of a settlement agreement being considered by a federal judge today. If approved, the settlement will require the State of Michigan and City of Flint to replace Flint’s lead pipes within three years, and will be enforceable by the court. The lawsuit was filed in response to the Flint water crisis, the result of failed government decisions that caused lead to leach out from aging pipes into thousands of homes in Flint.

Michigan’s emergency manager law is once again being fingered as a primary culprit in the lead poisoning of Flint’s water supply.

First, it was a gubernatorial task force. Then a bi-partisan legislative committee. Now, the Michigan’s Civil Rights Commission, in a report released last week, is casting blame on the controversial law for its role in the ongoing Flint Water Crisis.

On the same day that Gov. Rick Snyder gave short shrift in his State of the State speech to the ongoing Flint crisis his administration created, U.S. Reps. Brenda Lawrence, D-Mich., and Elijah Cummings, D-Md., continued applying pressure in an attempt to hold accountable those responsible for the poisoning of a city’s water supply.

Once broken, trust can be almost impossible to repair.

This maxim is more than evident in Flint, where residents were repeatedly given false assurances that their water was safe for 18 months following the disastrous switch in April 2014 to the Flint River as the city’s water source.

Who can blame these same residents for refusing to believe that Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration –the primary culprit in this unthinkable crime committed against a city – now only has the people’s best interests at heart?

After the State of Michigan stripped the residents of Flint of their ability to elect local representatives, state-appointed officials decided to use the Flint River as a water source without adding corrosion controls.  As a result, lead leached from the water pipes and poisoned the drinking water, causing untold harm to the people of Flint. 

When toxic, lead-laced water flowed through the pipes in Flint, immigrant families were among the most severely impacted.  Because public health information was not initially made available in languages other than English, many immigrants—and the children of immigrants—drank, cooked and bathed in the toxic water long after the state admitted the water was unsafe.  For a brief period of time, state-run water distribution centers even denied water to individuals who did not have identification documents.