Poison in the Water: Is Your Family Safe?

An Investigation into America's Poisoned Water Supply

LeeAnne Walters turned on her kitchen faucet one morning in Flint, Michigan and watched the water run brown. Not the faint discoloration you might dismiss as old pipes clearing themselves out, but the color of rust and ruin, the unmistakable shade of something profoundly wrong. She had three children in that house, and for months she had been telling anyone in city government who would listen that something was poisoning her family. They told her the water was fine. They told her she was overreacting. They told her to run the tap for a few minutes before drinking. They told her everything except the truth, which was that her children were being slowly poisoned by the very infrastructure meant to sustain their lives.

The water crisis in Flint has become something of a national symbol, a convenient reference point for politicians and pundits who want to demonstrate their concern for environmental justice. But Flint is not an anomaly. It is not a failure of the system. It is the system wo…