Judge Orders Door-to-Door Bottled Water Delivery in Flint, Michigan

DETROIT, MI — A federal judge in Detroit has ordered city and state officials to begin a door-to-door distribution of bottled water in Flint, where residents were exposed to lead-tainted water when the city switched its water supply to the Flint River while the financially struggling local government under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager.

Thursday’s decision by U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson of Detroit is hailed as a major victory for residents of the city who haven’t had access to safe drinking water in the more than two years since the switch. For many of them, tracking down safe water has been an exhausting struggle that has disrupted their lives and sense of normalcy, according to advocacy groups that filed the lawsuit.

Potentially thousands of Flint residents have been exposed to the lead-tainted water, including children, for whom lead poisoning can be a life sentence of emotional and intellectual problems.

Flint is in the process of fixing its water system and installing proper corrosion controls. Without them, the corrosive properties of the untreated water causes lead to leach from the pipes. But that isn’t happening fast enough, Lawson ruled.

“In modern society, when we turn on a faucet, we expect safe drinking water to flow out,” Lawson wrote in his ruling. “The relief is intended to provide a rough substitute for the essential service that municipal water systems must furnish: delivery of safe drinking water at the point of use.”

Under his order, city and state officials are required to make regular bottled water deliveries unless the government can verify that properly installed and maintained faucet filters are in place or if the resident declines the delivery.

Concerned Pastors for Social Action, Flint resident Melissa Mays, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan filed their motion seeking home delivery of safe drinking water as part of a case brought under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

Through the case, the plaintiffs are seeking to compel city and state officials to follow federal requirements for testing and treating water to control for lead and to order the prompt replacement of all lead water pipes at no cost to Flint residents. The suit also seeks appropriate relief to remedy the health and medical harms to Flint residents from the lead contamination. The lawsuit is not seeking monetary damages.

“This is a very significant victory for the people of Flint, who now have the assurance from a federal court that they will have access to safe drinking water every day,” Pastor Robert Blake, a member of the Concerned Pastors for Social Action, said in a statement. “But there’s still much more to do to fix Flint. As I testified in court, poverty is high in Flint, but just because you have impoverished people, we ought not treat them like third-world people.”

Dimple Chaudhary, senior attorney with NRDC, said Lawson’s ruling “affirmed that all people have the right the safe drinking water, including the people of Flint, Michigan.”

“The court correctly recognized that the government created this crisis, and it’s the government’s responsibility to ensure that all people in Flint have access to safe drinking water,” Chaudhary said.

Michael J. Steinberg, legal director of the ACLU of Michigan, said the ruling means that Flint residents “finally will have access to a reliable supply of safe drinking water until the lead pipes are replaced.”

“It is an important, but rare, victory for the people of Flint, who have suffered one setback after the next since poison started flowing out their faucets more than two years ago,” Steinberg said.

Photo by Steven Depolo via Flickr Commons