{"id":144433,"date":"2016-04-15T09:27:42","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T15:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=144433"},"modified":"2016-04-15T09:27:42","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T15:27:42","slug":"why-i-missed-the-flint-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/04\/why-i-missed-the-flint-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I missed the Flint story"},"content":{"rendered":"

COMMENTARY:\u00a0<\/strong>I shouldn\u2019t have missed the story of lead-contaminated water in Flint.<\/p>\n

Not because I\u2019m an environmental reporter, but because my mom told me what was happening in my hometown, and I didn\u2019t listen.<\/p>\n

\"Talia

Courtesy photo<\/p>

Talia Buford<\/p><\/div>\n

I tell people\u2019s stories for a living. Our team at the Center for Public Integrity spent most of 2015 seeking\u00a0examples of environmental discrimination \u2014 places where communities of color sat next to sewage plants, pesticide-covered fields and noxious landfills. Places where people went to meeting after meeting begging someone for help.<\/p>\n

Our project<\/a> detailed the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s limp enforcement\u00a0of one mechanism to address discrimination \u2014 Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Before I worked on it, I hadn\u2019t realized how easy it is to ignore those fighting to be heard.<\/p>\n

I grew up in a place a lot like the ones I now report on \u2014 Flint, Mich. I left after high school but return for holidays and milestones. In between, I call my mom for news. She still lives in the modest white house on the north side of Flint where I grew up. She\u2019s spent most of the last 44 years there. The city long ago abandoned its part of the bargain, but she refuses to sell her hedge-lined piece of the American Dream.<\/p>\n

When we talk, she usually details the latest city struggle \u2014 a new fee residents pay to keep street lights on in front of their homes; the police substation that closed up the street; her volunteer work with the abandoned-housing census. The day in August 2014 she casually mentioned a boil-water advisory, it didn\u2019t even register. I brushed it off when she mentioned it again the next month. I ignored the loop of images in my Facebook feed showing hydrants flushing brown water. All of these things were routine, I reasoned. There\u2019s nothing to worry about.<\/p>\n

By now, you know the story.<\/p>\n

In a cost-saving move, an emergency manager appointed by the state to oversee the city\u2019s finances agreed to switch it from water supplied by the Great Lakes to water from the Flint River, once an industrial dump site. When the switch was made in April 2014, city officials toasted it with river water and called it \u201chistoric.\u201d<\/p>\n