TagFlint

Good news and bad news in the quest for safe tap water

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Late last year, I told you about the dire situation in the small, mostly black and underprivileged Louisiana community of St. Joseph. For years, residents had complained about the brackish and discolored water that flowed from their tap. But a largely unresponsive City Hall ignored those complaints, as did mostly unaware state and federal regulators. When the city water was finally tested in...

America’s water crisis slams a small La. town

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America’s crisis over the lack of safe drinking water feels like it’s spiraling out of control these days. It was just a couple of days ago that I told you about an emergency in Corpus Christi, Texas, where shoddy practices by a local Big Oil subsidiary had caused gallons of a highly toxic, carcinogenic chemical to back up into the Gulf Coast city’s main water supply. The crisis...

Corpus Christi is America’s newest Flint

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The name of the Texas coastal community called Corpus Christi translates literally as “the body of Christ.” But what’s been happening over the last few days with the water in this oil-and-chemical city and its drinking water has been anything but holy. Instead, Corpus Christi is joining the growing list of American cities whose tap water has been compromised, either from aging...

The real environmental crime in places like Flint

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The last couple of years have been rough for the environment. Fracking, oil spills, and, of course, climate change, which is frequently linked to floods and other natural disasters, have made negative news from the warm waters of the Gulf to the chilly climate of northern Canada. Inevitably, these events lead for a call that somebody be held accountable. This week, a New York Times op-ed made the...

Another poor Rust Belt community is under assault by lead

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It’s almost starting to become a cliche in 2016: That this poor community or that city is poised to become “the new Flint.” It’s not surprising that such a stunning case of governmental malfeasance — allowing residents of a mid-sized, economically challenged community to drink corrosive lead-poisoned water for nearly two years — would become the new low...

Is this America’s next Flint?

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America’s drinking water is under assault — from careless dumping of hazardous wastes to the lead pollution caused by our ancient infrastructure. Yet rarely do these tales of governmental neglect or industrial abuses make it onto the national radar screen. The Flint, Michigan, lead pollution story was different — a “perfect storm” that combined race, the poisoning of...

In Flint, they’ll need to go after the bigger fish

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There was a rare, positive development in the ongoing saga of Flint’s corrosive water supply and the lead poisoning of residents in the Michigan city — and hopefully it’s the first step toward something much more meaningful. The events that have transpired in Flint since early 2014, when cost-cutting state officials engineered a switch to that abrasive water from the Flint River...

“Flint’s best chance for a lawsuit”: My op-ed for the Washington Post

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In recent weeks, I’ve turned some of my attention north toward the deplorable situation in Flint, Michigan, where government bungling — or worse — caused citizens, including children, to be poisoned by lead-contaminated water. It’s clear that residents there will need to fight back by any means necessary. This weekend, I was delighted that the Washington Post’s new...

Who is to blame for Flint’s water crisis?

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The situation in Flint, Michigan — the beaten-down industrial city where poor residents were essentially force-fed toxic drinking water for nearly two years — keeps getting worse and worse. In addition to elevated lead levels in a growing number of Flint’s children — a situation that can lead to permanent brain damage — there are concerns that dozens of cases of...

The reckless disregard for the people of Flint, Michigan

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Over the course of a career as an environmental lawyer, with a focus on energy-related issues, I’ve seen a lot of changes. There have been oil booms and oil busts, especially in my home state of Louisiana. Coal, nuclear, natural gas have fallen out of favor, only to come back and then in some cases fall out of favor again. Some elected officials take a slightly more active approach in...

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
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