Pearl Jam, Partners Sending $300K in Love to Flint

FLINT, MI – More than $300,000 has been raised by the rock band Pearl Jam and some of its music industry partners to help out families affected by the Flint water crisis.

The band kicked in $125,000. Together, another $175,000 was raised by Republic Records, the band’s label; Ticketmaster; Live Nation; University Music Publishing Group; William Morris Endeavor Entertainment; and nonprofits, including Glaser Progress Foundation and Brandi Carlile’s Looking Out Foundation.

The Seattle-born group has asked fans to join them in giving on a CrowdRise campaign that had raised about $15,690 Saturday morning.

All the donations will be made to United Way of Genesee County, and the money will be used to buy water filters and bottled water, and fund emergency support services and prevention measures in Flint, the band said on its website.

After short-term needs are met, the band pledged to direct remaining funds to the Flint Child Health and Development Fund.

Detroit rapper Big Sean had raised about $18,260 through his Sean Anderson Foundation on a CrowdRise campaign Saturday morning. He previously donating $10,000 to help Flint families.

Flint residents and children were exposed to dangerous levels of lead when the city switched its water source from Lake Huron to the more polluted Flint River in 2014 while the city was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager.

The corrosive water from the river caused lead to leach from the city’s aging water infrastructure. Months after the switch, a study released in September by West Bloomfield pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, pediatric residency director at Flint’s Hurley Children’s Hospital, showed the proportion of children with above-average levels of lead in their blood had nearly doubled.

Lead poisoning can cause irreversible neurological damage in children.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has conceded in media interviews that the state’s mishandling of the crisis is his Hurricane Katrina, a reference to then-President George W. Bush’s handling of the 2005 disaster in New Orleans.

President Obama on Thursday approved an $80 million aid package for Flint, Congress has launched an inquiry into the crisis and Snyder on Friday fired two employees of the Department of Environmental Quality, where he has placed most of the blame for the mishandling of the crisis.

Snyder previously accepted the resignation of former DEQ director Dan Wyant.

» Official photo by Danny Clinch