Commissioner collecting water for Flint, Mich.’s crisis

A DeKalb County commissioner is collecting bottled water for the Flint, Mich., water crisis.

On Oct. 1, 2015, the Genesee County Board of Commissioners issued a public health emergency declaration for residents using the Flint city water supply due to elevated levels of lead.

“I’m making a spirited effort to collect bottled water for the children of Flint, Mich.,” DeKalb County Commissioner Stan Watson said. “We all know the tragedy that happened with the contamination of drinking water.

Watson said he wants to make sure Flint children have “a necessity that they don’t have right now and that’s pure drinking water.”

Watson will be sending the donated water to Genesee County Commissioner Brenda Clack, who will coordinate its distribution. Flint is in Genesee County.

Clack and Watson served in their respective state houses at the same time.

“I was really, really happy and was gratified to know that he thought that much of us in this community to want to send this water,” Clack said in a phone interview Jan. 28.

Clack said Flint’s water problems are “beyond a crisis.”

“What is happening to our community is inhumane,” Clack said.

At one of many water distribution sites at a Flint fire station, Clack said she recently witnessed “women getting out of their cars at 6:30 at night in the dark and putting water in their cars.”

“This is inhumane,” Clack said. “This should not be happening in this state, in this country, unless you’re in a Third World [country].

“It’s becoming a panic because mothers are concerned about the future of their children,” Clack said.

Clack said many mothers are not bathing their children in the municipal water, and people have broken out in rashes.

“It’s becoming a psychological panic, also,” she said. “You’d have to see it to believe what our people are experiencing. Long lines—you can go to so many sites in our city and you’ll see long lines of people coming to get water.”

Clack said, “It’s gratifying to know that people…all around the country people are concerned about us,” Clack said. “I know they put themselves in our position to say ‘if that were me, what would I want someone to do?’

“Thank you to all who are concerned about us in this community, who have reached out to us, because it is important that people reach out to us at this point and show us that they really care,” she said.

Watson said Flint’s water crisis reminds “us in DeKalb County, as we undergo our watershed capital improvement project, that water is an important element of our everyday lives.”

“We need to make sure our water is pure and people don’t have to boil water and they don’t have zinc and lead in our water,” he said about the county’s billion-dollar watershed capital improvement project under way to address its sewer system.

Watson said he is working to have the water donation transported to Michigan on Feb. 6.

Bottled water will be collected at Watson’s free monthly community breakfast on Saturday, Feb. 6, in the cafeteria of Southwest DeKalb High School, located at 2863 Kelley Chapel Road, Decatur, from 9 to 11 a.m.

To arrange a pickup of a donation, call Watson’s office at (404) 371-3681.