In her small lavender-colored lodge southeast of Flint, Michigan, LeeAnne Walters smokes quietly on the front steps. The neighboring house is abandoned, like many others in this former working town. Once her cigarette has been consumed, this 45-year-old woman with long brown hair enters her cellar and counts the number of bottles of water, soda and juice that she has left in her two huge fridges. A domestic routine before once again going shopping at the supermarket.
On the ground, packs of water pile up, in reserve. There seems to be enough to hold a seat, but it’s just consumption for a short week. Because LeeAnne Walters and her family use bottled water to quench their thirst, but also to brush their teeth and for other everyday gestures. “Tap water is only used for washing dishes, then we rinse all our utensils with bottled water, she explains. And we cook with filtered, then boiled tap water. »
It’s been nine years since LeeAnne Walters lost faith in the quality of running water. The one who had trained as a medical assistant before becoming an activist was the very first to warn about the worrying nature of the orange-brown water flowing from the taps in Flint. It was in 2014.
The American pulls out of her kitchen cupboard a bottle of water taken at that time: its color is similar to that of carrot juice. The nauseating odor has disappeared. Nobody, at the time, wanted to hear the doubts of this mother of four children about the quality of the water. Before city officials admitted she was severely contaminated with lead.
A “sacrificed” city
Six years after the first alerts from LeeAnne Walters, who helped reveal one of the worst health scandals in the United States, a landmark trial in environmental law was held from 2020. As part of an agreement negotiated in 2021, the State of Michigan was ordered to pay 626 million dollars (572 million euros) in damages to the victims, including nearly 20,000 children and adolescents. It was the first time that a public authority had been sentenced to such a heavy sentence.
But the water crisis in Flint went down in history for another reason: it constitutes ” the most serious example of environmental injustice and racism in recent American history,” explains researcher at the University of Michigan, Paul Mohai. This notion of environmental racism, which is not used as such in American law, is based on the well-documented observation that poor populations of color (blacks, Amerindians, Asians, etc.) are the most exposed to ecocides. It appeared in the United States in the 1980s with the first actions of popular revolt against polluting industrial sites. In 1982, the inhabitants of Warren County (North Carolina), with a strong African-American majority, had mobilized for six weeks against the installation of a toxic waste dump.
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