The irony of that is Flint has gotten a really good water filtration system since that crisis took place.

• Water mains in Flint, most laid in the first half of the 20th Century, were constructed of cast iron. But the lines connecting homes to the mains were made of lead, because it was cheaper and easier to work with. A few lines were galvanized steel, which doesn’t last forever, and eventually the zinc will flake off and expose the steel below.
• In April 2014, the city government switched Flint from Detroit City water, which it had been using since 1967 (?), to Flint River water. It was thought that the switch to a local source would save money, and at the time, the local government was in a financial crisis.
• The Flint water plant added WAY too much chlorine to the Flint River water, in an effort to kill bacteria.
• To save even more money, and an item of litigation to this day IIRC, the plant didn’t add orthophosphate to the treated water. Orthophosphate is absolutely necessary when you have old lead lines in a water supply, because it forms a protective layer inside the pipes, and prevents the lead from leaching into the water.
• The combination of excessive chlorine with zero orthophosphate resulted in the protective layer that WAS in the pipes breaking down, in both lead and galvanized pipes – the chlorine attacked the steel under the zinc coating of the galvanized pipes, and was the cause of much of the orange-brown tint and stench to the water that many residents experienced. Of course, with the protective layer gone from the lead pipes, the lead poisoning of thousands of people resulted.
• Flint switched back to the Detroit city water in October 2015.
• The local and state governments have worked hard to replace all lead and galvanized service lines throughout the city since the crisis, and failed…. But the crisis catalyzed a statewide effort to replace lead lines, one which continues to this day.