The poisoned victims had been waiting for years: the US state of Michigan announced Thursday that it would pay $ 600 million to settle the scandal of the lead contamination of the drinking water system of the city of Flint.
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“What happened to Flint should never have happened,” said Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of this state in the Great Lakes region. “It will take time to heal Flint,” she added in a video statement.
These funds are intended primarily for the children of Flint, a former industrial city that has become a symbol of social injustice in the United States.
The agreement was bitterly negotiated for 18 months. More than half of the total amount of compensation will be paid to the benefit of victims under the age of 6 when the water was harmful, said the Washington Post newspaper, which had access to the document before the announcement of the governor.
Water contaminated with lead in economically stricken Flint is one of the worst health scandals in recent years in the United States.
The tragedy was sparked by the decision of the governor (then Republican) of Michigan to change the city’s water supply in 2014, to save money.
Acidic, polluted water from the local river, preferred over clean water from nearby Lake Huron, has eaten away at the distribution system’s pipes, exposing residents to lead poisoning. Some 18,000 to 20,000 children lived in Flint at the time of this dramatic pollution.
Many residents of Flint continue to drink bottled water today, even though the distribution system is again supplied by the lake and the lead pipes have been mostly replaced.
The lead poisoning of thousands of Flint’s children threatens to have catastrophic health consequences for decades. At least 12 people have also died from Legionnaires’ disease, an infection caused by the initial contamination of the water.
For many, the Flint poison water scandal exemplifies “environmental racism” at work in the United States. This phrase refers to the disproportionate exposure of African Americans to pollutants in the air, water or soil.
Some 57% of Flint’s 100,000 residents are black and more than a third live below the poverty line.
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