Four years after Flint’s water crisis began, the stratospherically high levels of lead in local drinking water have dropped.
As residents fight to make the Michigan government bring back free bottled water until the pipes are fully replaced, one activist is also helping lead an effort for others across the country to test their own water, and to change the law that made Flint’s crisis possible.
Walters had been told that the brown water at her house was an isolated issue, but started attending city council meetings and realized she was not alone.
“And we realized that it was not specific to our home.” When the city tested the family’s water, it said that lead levels were at 104 parts per billion, the highest that the city had ever seen.
While lead levels have fallen, most lead pipes have not been replaced, and–as in other cities with old lead pipes–that means that some homes still have elevated levels of lead.
Even in homes where the water may now be safe, and where the government has also handed out filters that can remove lead, most people are still using bottled water.
Even when cities aren’t experiencing the extreme levels of lead in the water that happened in Flint, lead pipes can still leach lead into water.
Walters is still fighting for Flint.
One problem is that cities often don’t have good data about which homes have lead pipes.
For those who still have lead pipes, Edwards says it’s wise to use filters.

ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) – An unusual emergency impacted thousands of people at Mayo Clinic-Saint Marys on Monday–the water in the complex was declared unfit to drink.
Signs were up all over the campus directing people: "do not drink the water."
When people flushed toilets at Saint Marys, dark-colored water came into the toilet from water supply lines.
On the internal Mayo Clinic News Network, the direction to staff was more specific, saying, "Refrain from consuming the water and using it in clinical care until further notice."
Mayo leadership said bottled water would be given to Saint Marys hospital units for medication administration.
After 3 p.m. any Saint Marys units that needed more bottled water were instructed to call an emergency phone line.
However, as of 8 p.m., the only official statement from Mayo Clinic’s public affairs team was that there was an awareness of the water quality problem.
"We are aware of the issue and are working to determine the cause.
I will let you know when I have more information to share," said Mayo Clinic spokesperson Sharon Theimer.
"We have backup plans in place to manage this issue."

For most of us, plastic is not a welcome dietary supplement.
What the Research Found According to a recent study at the State University of New York, tiny pieces of plastic, or microplastics, are present in most of the bottled water on the market.
Researchers analyzed 259 bottles of water from 11 different brands and nine countries, finding tiny pieces of plastic in more than 90 percent of them.
Microplastics, like nylon and polypropylene, were found in all but 17 bottles and are thought to be introduced during the packaging process.
Plastic Bottles’ Carbon Footprint Not only do manufactured water bottles contain pesky microplastics, they almost always end up as litter or garbage.
America’s plastic recycling rate is a lowly 23 percent, resulting in billions of plastic water bottles ending up in landfills, rivers, oceans and our neighborhood streets each year.
Plastic water bottles have a sizable carbon footprint, too.
What You Can Do Avoid consuming potentially dangerous microplastics by drinking tap water from a reusable water bottle instead of buying single-use plastic bottles.
Stainless steel and glass bottles are popular, eco-friendly hydration choices on the market; each has its strengths and weaknesses.
Glass is fragile and weighs more, but it’s more easily recycled.

Residents from a tiny Victorian town have been ordered to pay $90,000 in legal costs after they launched a failed bid to prevent a farmer from extracting and selling groundwater as bottled springwater to a subsidiary of the Japanese beverage giant Asahi.
The supreme court of Victoria made the costs ruling last week, four months after a residents association in the town of Stanley, which has a population of 400, was denied leave to appeal previous decisions allowing the water extraction.
The Stanley Rural Community Inc, which had 41 people attend its last meeting, objected to a licence that allowed Tim Carey, trading as Stanley Pastoral Pty Ltd, to extract 19GL of groundwater a year from a bore on his property and truck the filtered water to the Mountain H2O plant in Albury to be bottled as springwater.
Australia gets UN to delete criticism of Murray-Darling basin plan from report Read more The latest court ruling comes as a second farmer, Boyd Collins, has threatened to take a similar case to the Victorian civil appeals tribunal (VCAT) after he was denied planning permission by Indigo shire council to run a similar 19ML water mining operation on his property, also in Stanley.
The permit application specified that the water would be extracted then filtered, stored in tanks and on-sold in bulk using water tankers.
He successfully challenged that refusal in VCAT, which granted the planning permission in 2015.
Stanley residents appealed that decision to a single judge in the supreme court, who also found in favour of Carey, before applying for leave to appeal the decision in January 2017, raising $20,000 through crowdfunding as a surety to cover Carey’s costs.
Indigenous group ‘offered $10m in water’ to help pass Murray-Darling plan Read more Residents had argued that allowing water mining would deplete the local groundwater resource, an argument that was supported by expert witness, hydrologist Peter Dahlhaus.
Unlike surface water irrigation licences in the Ovens river catchment, which are subject to strict rostering during the summer months, the holders of groundwater licences are allowed to extract their full allocation year-round.
Drawing the full allocation from the bore over the summer months, Dahlhaus said, “will almost certainly result in a reduction in the irrigation water available for agriculture, since there is clear connection between the groundwater and surface water in the Cue Springs area”.

The move comes two months after federal regulators backed off plans to add the mine to the list of the most toxic U.S. Superfund sites.
Atlantic Richfield, owner of the former Anaconda copper mine, was suddenly halting the free home delivery of bottled water it’s provided since 2004 to about 100 residences on a neighboring Native American reservation in Nevada where scientists continue to track the movement of a poisonous plume of groundwater.
The Yerington Paiute Tribe alleges the abrupt change was retaliation for its fight against a recent move that puts the state and the company in charge of cleaning up the mine site instead of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Over the tribe’s staunch objections, the EPA in February backed off plans in the works for years to formally elevate the mine to priority status on a list of the most contaminated Superfund sites.
It will resume home deliveries, as well as groundwater sampling on tribal property, once a “valid access agreement can be obtained” from the tribe, Clanton said.
The neighbors had accused past owners of conspiring to cover up the extent of groundwater contamination.
The company continues a legal battle with the tribe.
The EPA said in announcing the Anaconda mine’s removal from the list that “cleanup activities progress, and completion of specific milestone and timelines have benefited from the administration’s influence.” But Dietrick McGinnis, a longtime environmental consultant for the tribe, said the new timelines the EPA released in conjunction with the February agreement to defer any priority Superfund listing indicate groundwater cleanup will be delayed by more than four years.
Sandoval announced in 2016 he was reluctantly dropping the state’s opposition because the listing would make $31 million in federal cleanup funds available.
On Friday, several volunteers helped a delivery driver for Alhambra Waters unload several tons of water at a market off the reservation about 2 miles (3 kilometers) north of the mine — most of it in 5-gallon (19-liter) jugs but also in 24-packs of thousands of plastic bottles.

Compton residents will be provided free bottled water as Los Angeles County continues to respond to complaints about discolored water.
Bottled water will be distributed to residents both Saturday, April 28 and Sunday, April 29, the LA County Department of Public Health announced.
The decision to distribute bottled water comes as residents who receive their water from the Sativa Water District continue to point out the brown water coming from their taps.
Residents, however, are not convinced.
"You tell me the water is legal, but it’s still brown," said resident Esker Nolen.
"I’m still drinking brown water.
I’m still cooking with brown water.
Something’s wrong."
Those who continue to receive brown water are asked to report it to the following agencies: Sativa Water District 310-631-8176 https://www.sativawd.com/ State Water Resources Control Board, Division of Drinking Water 818-551 2004 Los Angeles County Department of Public Health 888-700-9995 Concerned residents can also attend a water quality town hall hosted by Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragan on Wednesday, May 2.
NBC4’s Patrick Healy contributed to this story.

Atlantic Richfield, owner of the former Anaconda copper mine, was suddenly halting the free home delivery of bottled water it’s provided since 2004 to about 100 residences on a neighboring Native American reservation in Nevada where scientists continue to track the movement of a poisonous plume of groundwater.
Over the tribe’s staunch objections, the EPA in February backed off plans in the works for years to formally elevate the mine to priority status on a list of the most contaminated Superfund sites.
It will resume home deliveries, as well as groundwater sampling on tribal property, once a "valid access agreement can be obtained" from the tribe, Clanton said.
The neighbors had accused past owners of conspiring to cover up the extent of groundwater contamination.
The company continues a legal battle with the tribe.
The EPA first determined the site qualified for priority Superfund status in 1994 but didn’t formally propose the listing until 2016 — 31 years after Nevada regulators first accused Anaconda Mining Co. of discharging pollutants illegally.
But Dietrick McGinnis, a longtime environmental consultant for the tribe, said the new timelines the EPA released in conjunction with the February agreement to defer any priority Superfund listing indicate groundwater cleanup will be delayed by more than four years.
Sandoval announced in 2016 he was reluctantly dropping the state’s opposition because the listing would make $31 million in federal cleanup funds available.
She said the EPA’s proposal for priority listing remains on the table until the cleanup is completed under state oversight.
On Friday, several volunteers helped a delivery driver for Alhambra Waters unload several tons of water at a market off the reservation about 2 miles (3 kilometers) north of the mine — most of it in 5-gallon (19-liter) jugs but also in 24-packs of thousands of plastic bottles.

Multiple tests, both independent and government-run, have shown average lead levels dropping back below the federal action level as a result of switching the city from the highly corrosive Flint River back to the safe and clean Detroit water system.
But many of the city’s residents don’t much believe the water’s safe.
Because of decisions made by state-appointed emergency managers and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, they were forced to use water laced with dangerously high levels of lead, a potent neurotoxin, and contaminated by bacteria that cause Legionnaires’ disease, which claimed at least 12 lives during the 18 months the city used the Flint River as its municipal water source.
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the Flint pediatrician who proved blood lead levels in children dramatically increased after the switch to the river, tweeted that bottled water should continue to be provided until all the city’s lead service lines are replaced.
In March 2015, Flint’s emergency manager refused to allow a return to Detroit’s system, saying there was no need because the water was “safe.” Then, a few months later, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality insisted the residents of Flint should just “relax” because extensive testing showed federal lead standards were being met, despite warnings from scientists that those tests were dangerously flawed.
For families who got sick believing official lies about the water, there are few reasons for faith in government now, especially when some of the very officials accused of playing a role in the crisis — including two health officials charged with involuntary manslaughter — remain on the job, while taxpayers finance their defense.
Emergency Manager In 2012, legislators passed an emergency manager law, which enabled the state to take complete control of Flint governance because of financial woes.
Multiple class action lawsuits and dozens of individual actions have been filed in an attempt to win some compensation for the damage done to residents of a city that is about 57 percent Black and has a poverty rate that hovers around 40 percent.
When everything’s accounted for, the emergency manager’s decision to save $5 million could easily end up costing taxpayers well over $1 billion.
If you ask the residents of Flint, they will tell you the crisis continues, regardless of what the governor says.

We ask that people attend town meeting, keeping their minds open to hearing another approach to providing drinking water.
The EPA has calculated that only about 30 percent of our plastic recyclables get to a processing plant.
At least half of the water in PET plastic bottles is filtered tap water.
Great Barrington’s town water is excellent.
See filters for this purpose locally at Carr Hardware and on the internet.
Concord, Massachusetts, began a similar ban on the sale of PET plastic water bottles on January 1, 2013.
Economics: We are extremely concerned that small merchants not suffer from this change.
The customer would purchase a compostable cup and lid from the merchant.
Great Barrington will set a model for area and regional towns to follow for similar bans.
It’s up to us to make these critical decisions now.

A world health group is now studying what that could mean.
The research started after a group at the State University of New York at Fredonia found microplastics in tap water.
Bottled water is bottled tap water, so the researchers wanted to find out if there is just as much plastic in bottled water.
They discovered there is more.
"So, think of a period at the end of the sentence or a grain of salt or a grain of sand."
The team found twice as much plastic in bottled water as it had in tap water.
A bottle of Evian water had up to 256 pieces of plastic.
Aquafina had nearly 1,300 pieces of plastic and one bottle of Nestle Pure Life had more than 10,000 pieces.
"On average, within every liter of bottled water, we tested we found 325 pieces of microplastic," Mason said.
The plastic found in the bottled water is the same kind used to make the bottle and cap.