The president of a charity initiative that collected bottled water for residents of Flint, Michigan, in early February said the organization hopes to make another trip in the near future.
Dr. Adrienne Hicks, president of the ALH foundation, personally drove several hundred cases of bottled water donated by Walmart and Greenwood Market Place shoppers to churches and civic organizations in Flint with the help of two other ALH members, Dash Brown and Jelani Barr.
Flint’s water supply became contaminated with lead shortly the city stopped drawing water from the Detroit municipal system and began drawing from the Flint River in April 2014.
The switch was executed as a cost-cutting measure while the city, one of America’s poorest, was under emergency management by the Michigan governor’s office.
Hicks said the trip was at once eye-opening and saddening. “People had skin lesions,” she sad. “They talk about it on the news, but it’s different when you see it in person.”
“Some people opened their doors to us, and anywhere that there was a sink or a tub, anywhere that water came up, they had to seal up that particular area so there wouldn’t be contamination in the air,” she said.
In addition to relying on bottled water for drinking, many of the Flint residents have to use it to bathe, often in old-fashioned wash buckets, said Hicks.
Flint residents reportedly told Hicks that donations of sanitary wipes are needed for hand washing so that more bottled water can be freed up for drinking.
Hicks said she hopes to do at least one more charity drive before the end of the month and collect sanitary wipes as well as water bottles this time.
Hicks said the ALH group encountered other charitable organizations from Iowa, New York City and the District of Columbia. “There’s been an outreach from people all across the country,” she said.
Lead contamination is not unique to Flint. In January, state health officials stated that 22 percent of a water sample taken from Jackson homes in June tested above actionable levels of lead, some as high as eight times the federal action level.
Although lead contamination is not as widespread or as serious there as it is in Flint, Hicks said it is still cause for concern.
In Flint, “people reached out at city council meetings when they first started noticing some of the issues,” said Hicks. “They were ignored. Now they are having to do a lot more than they would have if this had been dealt with two years ago.”
She added that she hopes the example of Flint will serve as a warning to Jackson officials to respond proactively to the city’s water troubles.
• Contact Nick Rogers at 581-7235 or nrogers@gwcommonwealth.com.
