| 9781250125149 |
| 1250125146 |
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Summary
Summary
Winner of The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism - 2019
When the people of Flint, Michigan, turned on their faucets in April 2014, the water pouring out was poisoned with lead and other toxins.
Through a series of disastrous decisions, the state government had switched the city's water supply to a source that corroded Flint's aging lead pipes. Complaints about the foul-smelling water were dismissed: the residents of Flint, mostly poor and African American, were not seen as credible, even in matters of their own lives.
It took eighteen months of activism by city residents and a band of dogged outsiders to force the state to admit that the water was poisonous. By that time, twelve people had died and Flint's children had suffered irreparable harm. The long battle for accountability and a humane response to this man-made disaster has only just begun.
In the first full account of this American tragedy, Anna Clark's The Poisoned City recounts the gripping story of Flint's poisoned water through the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it. It is a chronicle of one town, but could also be about any American city, all made precarious by the neglect of infrastructure and the erosion of democratic decision making. Places like Flint are set up to fail--and for the people who live and work in them, the consequences can be fatal.
Author Notes
Anna Clark is a journalist living in Detroit. Her writing has appeared in ELLE Magazine, The New York Times , The Washington Post , Politico , the Columbia Journalism Review, Next City, and other publications. Anna edited A Detroit Anthology , a Michigan Notable Book, and she had been a writer-in-residence in Detroit public schools as part of the InsideOut Literary Arts program. She has also been a Fulbright fellow in Nairobi, Kenya, and a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the University of Michigan. Her books include The Poisoned City and Michigan Literary Luminaries.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Clark (Michigan Literary Luminaries: From Elmore Leonard to Robert Hayden) provides a comprehensive account of the Flint water crisis. Drawing on both existing and original reporting, Clark boils down this complex tragedy and chronologically traces the series of reckless decisions by city and state officials that led to the poisoning of a city: the changing of the water source, trust in an insufficient treatment program, failure to acknowledge residents' complaints, and repeated cover-ups. The book also demonstrates how, rather than the result of a single decision, the tragedy was "a decades-old, slow-burn emergency" rooted in such broader social, political, and economic trends as industry divestment and population decline, underfunding of cities, inequality and the legacy of segregation, and a "democracy deficit" caused by the emergency management system. Clark also sprinkles in compelling forays into the history of lead, the initial settling of the area, and the early development of public water systems. While devastating, this account is also inspiring in its coverage of the role of Flint's "lionhearted residents" and their grassroots activism, community organizing, and independent investigation in bringing the crisis to national attention and to the courts. This extremely informative work gives an authoritative account of a true American urban tragedy that still continues. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In the first full accounting of the Flint water crisis, Clark combines a staggering amount of research and several intimate story lines to reveal how the Michigan city was poisoned by its leaders and then largely abandoned to its fate by state officials. Entirely a man-made environmental catastrophe, the incident made Flint the face of America's burgeoning infrastructure meltdown. Incisive and informed, Clark takes readers through events in the city's political, social, and cultural history as she focuses on the circumstances that brought in an emergency manager. The state's rampant disregard for Flint's residents and struggling economy is mind-blowing, and the many officials (including some in the EPA) who exerted more energy covering up the crisis than stopping it emerge as cowards of the first order. Clark takes no prisoners, naming all the names and presenting the confirming research. Neglect, she warns, is not a passive force in American cities, but an aggressive one. The Poisoned City is an environmental tent revival for people who continue to suffer and a call to arms for everyone who values professional local journalism. Amen, Anna Clark, Amen.--Mondor, Colleen Copyright 2010 Booklist
Choice Review
Clark, a journalist, has written a thorough, riveting account of the events that brought about the recent water crisis in Flint, MI, and its aftermath. Prior to the catastrophe, she writes in the prologue, "Flint sat atop a teetering tower of debt, dysfunctional urban policy, disappearing investment, disintegrating infrastructure, and a compromised democratic process." These factors combined with a series of poor decisions by city and state officials to bring about a public health disaster of epic proportions, which included lead poisoning as well as outbreaks of E. coli and Legionnaires' disease. Clark is attentive to the role that the history of deindustrialization played in Flint's weakening economy as well as how insufficient and discriminatory public health policies made the water disaster possible. Her discussion of systematic racism and disenfranchisement would be enhanced by sociological literature on urban segregation, such as Douglas Massey's American Apartheid (CH, Jun'93, 30-5888). Similarly, considering the neoliberal implications of the emergency management system she describes would strengthen her account of the multiple ways in which the government failed Flint residents. Nevertheless, the book explains the tragedy and attempts to first downplay it--and later to remedy it--well. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Julie Anne Beicken, Rocky Mountain College
Library Journal Review
Detroit-based journalist Clark provides a compelling account of the still-unfolding Flint, MI, water crisis. This work puts this complex environmental, public health, and human rights disaster in historical and political context. Moving fluidly back and forth between contemporary events and the long history of racialized inequity in Flint, Clark demonstrates how systemic disinvestment in public infrastructure threatens the health and safety of all citizens-and disproportionately puts the poor and people of color at risk. Readers are also introduced to individuals who collaborated to bring the story of Flint's contaminated water system to national attention: Flint resident LeeAnne Walters, Miguel Del Toral at the Environmental Protection Agency's regional office in Chicago, investigative journalist Curt Guyette, and environmental engineer Marc Edwards of Virginia Tech. Following their years-long search for answers and ongoing struggle for restitution, Clark reminds us how access to safe water became only a recent expectation in the United States and how fragile and dependent on enforcement that access remains. VERDICT A compelling must-read about issues of environmental activism, urban issues, systemic racism, and the accountability of the government to the people whom it serves.-Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc. © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Prologue | p. 1 |
| Part 1 Taught By Thirst | |
| 1 The Well | p. 13 |
| 2 Corrosion | p. 31 |
| 3 Revelations | p. 43 |
| 4 Saturation | p. 62 |
| Part II Divination | |
| 5 Alchemy | p. 79 |
| 6 Citizen/Science | p. 101 |
| 7 Meditations in an Emergency | p. 122 |
| 8 Blood | p. 138 |
| Part III Water's Perfect Memory | |
| 9 Switchback | p. 153 |
| 10 Legion | p. 166 |
| 11 Truth and Reconciliation | p. 182 |
| 12 Genesis | p. 195 |
| Epilogue | p. 210 |
| Notes | p. 217 |
| Selected Bibliography | p. 289 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 292 |
| Index | p. 295 |
