Volunteers with Royalty Unite collected and loaded donated bottled water into trucks bound for Flint, Mich., Saturday, April 21, 2018, at the Frederick Douglass Community Association in Toledo.
RELATED CONTENT: Toledoans host water drive for Flint Royalty Unite founder Sheena Barnes is from Flint originally and organized the drive to help families who have been cut off after the state of Michigan stopped supplying bottled water to Flint residents.
Under direction from a state-appointed emergency manager in 2014, the city of Flint city switched its water source from Detroit municipal water to the Flint River.
The water wasn’t treated properly with corrosion control, exposing the population of about 100,000 people to elevated levels of lead leached from the city’s water pipelines.
Though lead levels have gone down and Flint has switched back to Detroit water, many people in Flint worry about the water quality.
Ms. Barnes said they received donations from a number of organizations and individuals, including the NAACP, Toledoans for Safe Water, and Toledo Public School students.
So many cases of water were donated, Royalty Unite had to rent a second truck to transport the water to a church in Flint.