The Significance of Flint Towards Environmental Injustice - Essay Sample

Introduction

Environmental injustice is the unfair treatment and involvement of people of a given community due to their race, nationality, income, or color in the issues of development, enforcement, and implementation of the environmental protection laws, policies and regulations. The failure to ensuring proper water safety in Flint is very significant as far as environmental injustice is concerned. Racism compelled the government officials to remain reluctant to the Flint water crisis despite having prior knowledge of it earlier before the press, and the environmental activists finally uncovered it.

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Flint, Michigan is one of the metropolitan areas dominated by the black and the African-American residents in the United States of America. According to Campbell et al. (2016), the city has a population of about 100,000 residents who are relatively impoverished and have no proper means of social welfare. When comparing the condition of service provision in this city with that of other cities dominated by the wealthy white residents, it is very evident that the service provision here is extremely poor. In April 2014, the Flint failed to treat properly the water that is delivered to the public resulting in elevated lead exposure to the residents until December 2015 (Gostin, 2016). Lead is a dangerous chemical poison (Campbell, 2016). High levels of lead exposure are known to be detrimental to both children and adults. The results can be either immediate poisoning or long term effects that might be equally extremely dangerous to human life. In children, lead destroys brains, diminishes creativity, erodes intelligence, impairs communication skills and the ability to make decisions, reduces the span of being attentive, and predisposes them to very aggressive and hyperactive behavior.

Despite knowing all these lead poisoning effects, the government in state, federal, and local levels, the national environmental authorities, as well as the officials of the water treatment company all failed terribly to prevent or even reduce the mass lead poisoning. According to the task force report convened by the governor of Michigan to look into this matter (Gostin, 2016), "The blame is entirely on the state officials who had the full responsibility and authority to reinforce social welfare to the people of Flint." The report revealed that those responsible for the mass lead poisoning involved the Office of the governor, the state environmental agency, as well as the emergency managers responsible for running Flint water services during that period. It is therefore shameful to find that the lead poisoning took place in the hands of the government officials who were supposed to safeguard the life of the civilians. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The government and other responsible agencies neglected and threw a cold hand on the issue leading to a massive lead poisoning to the innocent residents due to their racial background, low-income status, and poverty. According to Gostin (2016), this is a reflection of environmental injustice.

Flint failure depicts environmental injustice in because of the lack of concern and the indifference by the government and the responsible persons concerning the possible harm that could result from the failure. However, it is shocking that even after the problem had been established, there was no sense of urgency to fix the problem. The government, the environmental authority, and the emergency managers were all very reluctant to lay their hands on the matter for an effective solution. This depicts a high level of racism in handling the case given that the residents are black and African American persons with relatively low income as compared to their white counterparts in other cities. The white cities are reportedly receiving the best water services in the country (Butler et al. 2016).

Based on the Flint water treatment failure, the types of environmental injustice depicted by the case include the procedural injustice, distributive injustice, social injustice, and the corrective injustice. Emergency managers who were imposed on Flint water services were an example of procedural injustice (Butler et al. 2016). The people have the right to be respected and treated with equal dignity; in this case; the emergency managers were just appointed by the governor, not elected by the public. This undermined the people's right to participation. Hence it can be considered a procedural injustice.

The distributive injustice occurred because the government failed in its duty to provide safe and high quality water to the residents. Despite the people's concern and demand for quality water supply, the government opted for cutting costs at the expense of destroying the health of the citizens. For this reason, the government depicted the distributive injustice to the people of Flint (Gostin, 2016).

According to Campbell et al. (2016), the government allegedly ignored the contribution of the public in the affairs that directly touched their lives. This was a serious form of social injustice to the residents of Flint. The government officials did not give respect to the public as those who elected them to their position of authority. Instead, they treated them with contempt and undermined their rights, underrating the power of their voice.

Despite knowing about the adverse effects of lead poisoning to the public, Pulido (2016) notes that the government remained silent and ignored their rightful duty to ensure proper health concerns were addressed for the welfare of the public. The emergency managers did not take responsibility to administer corrective measures to the water contamination crisis. Instead, they ignored every appeal by the residents to the case Campbell et al. 2016). Consequently, their silence and lack of concern spurred the general irresponsibility by the entire authority.

References

Butler, L. J., Scammell, M. K., & Benson, E. B. (2016). The Flint, Michigan, water crisis: a case study in regulatory failure and environmental injustice. Environmental Justice, 9(4), 93-97.

Campbell, C., Greenberg, R., Mankikar, D., & Ross, R. D. (2016). A Case Study of Environmental Injustice: The Failure in Flint. International journal of environmental research and public health, 13(10), 951. doi:10.3390/ijerph13100951

Gostin, L. O. (2016). Lead in the water: a tale of social and environmental injustice. Jama, 315(19), 2053-2054.

Gostin, L. O. (2016). Politics and public health: the Flint drinking water crisis. Hastings Center Report, 46(4), 5-6.

Pulido, L. (2016). Flint, environmental racism, and racial capitalism.