Yet for all that celebrity firepower, now four years on, do the residents of Flint have clean drinking water?
Yet, today, more than 12,000 homes are still without access to clean water.
Public protests had forced the free distribution of bottled water to Flint residents.
How damaging is lead in drinking water to children?
While Flint was experiencing the worst point in its water crisis, only two hours away in Evart – small town America, with clean streams and an untainted aquifer – the corporate multinational, Nestle, was pumping the equivalent of 100,000 times an average Michigan resident’s water use into plastic bottles for sale at $1 a bottle across the American Midwest.
Two hours from Flint, Nestle is bottling millions of gallons of Michigan’s water for just $200 a year.
In poor communities like Flint, the health problems caused by lead exposure are simply added on to the other challenges associated with poverty, high levels of violence, reduced access to quality medical care, and low-performing public schools.
The story of water in the US is the quintessential American story of wealth, class, race and privatisation of national resources running roughshod over human rights and equality.
In poor communities like Flint, the health problems caused by lead exposure are simply added on to the other challenges associated with poverty, high levels of violence, reduced access to quality medical care, and low-performing public schools.
"We were like, no, something’s not right here …" One of Walters’ children was diagnosed with lead poisoning, the others testing positive for lead exposure.