Congressman: 'Obsession With Austerity' Triggered Flint Water Crisis

The congressman who represents Flint, Michigan has lambasted what he says is at the heart of his city’s water crisis: austerity.

Speaking at the White House Water Summit, which took place Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee (D) said, “I think the story of Flint, in part, is a story about water infrastructure. Because when we have aging infrastructure, particularly in Flint with so many lead service lines, we are at risk.”

“But, the other part of the story, which is really the trigger to the crisis in Flint, is a story about the effect or the consequence of a brand of governmental austerity that is really dangerous,” the Flint native continued.

“That backdrop [of aging infrastructure], with the overlay of governmental austerity that minimizes the need for robust enforcement of environmental protection, by essentially making it a second almost afterthought at the state level, and essentially defunding direct support for the city itself, created a series of almost unbelievable decisions to go from using the Great Lakes—the greatest surface fresh water source on the planet, which is only a few miles away from Flint, to the Flint river as a temporary water source, untreated,” he said.

“It is almost unbelievable that that could happen, but it’s this obsession with austerity,” Kildee declared. “And the result… is astronomically higher than the cost associated with preventing it in the first place.”

Kildee said a bill he introduced to fix the problem over the next ten years places the figure at “a billion and a half dollars,” but qualified by saying, “Simply replacing all the private lead service lines is about a $55 million equation.” That’s a far higher amount than it would have taken to prevent the probe, he noted. “Simply providing phosphate treatment to the river water was about a $100 a day.”

There’s a cautionary tale to take from Flint, he warned, saying that “an obsession around governmental austerity…is really dangerous and that’s really the lesson we had all better learn really fast.”

Kildee is not the first to make the connection between the lead contamination in Flint’s water and austerity. Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, for example, previously wrote, “Flint has become a nightmarish example of how misguided austerity policies can literally poison the public.”