Mitch Smith, Julie Bosman and Monica Davey

“Here’s to Flint!” Dayne Walling, the mayor, said, taking a gulp of river water.

The Flint water crisis was born that day. Almost immediately, Flint residents began telling their elected officials that there was something wrong with the water, which smelled terrible, tasted like metal and seemed to give them skin rashes. They confronted elected officials outside City Hall, hoisting bottles full of rust-colored water from their taps, only to be told, again and again, that the water was fine.

The water was not fine. Flint officials had failed to add needed corrosion controls to the river water. Lead from the city’s old pipes leached into the water, causing alarmingly high lead levels in the blood of many residents. The outcry that followed forced a change in the city’s leadership, criminal charges against state and local officials and a yearslong effort to replace Flint’s dangerous lead pipes.

But in Flint, the water crisis is by no means in the past.

“It’s a community that’s still dealing with the trauma and the aftermath of having been poisoned at the hands of the government,” Karen Weaver, who replaced Walling as mayor largely because of anger over the water crisis, said in an interview this week. Weaver continues to tell residents to drink only bottled or filtered water.

On Thursday, pastors and activists gathered outside the city’s water treatment plant to call for more help. Some wore shirts that said “Flint Is Still Broken.” Half a decade into the water crisis, here is what has changed in the city — and what has not.

Attention Faded, But Not in Flint

Five years ago, Melissa Mays was a concert promoter in Flint who drank from the tap and never worried about lead or Legionella. But when the water turned foul, Mays spoke out. She organized protests, filed lawsuits and became one of the most visible faces of her city’s troubles.

Today, she drinks only bottled water. She showers quickly. She does not trust what the government tells her. “It’s one huge nightmare piled on top of another one,” Mays said this week.

She has scaled back her work in music. She now helps people find social services. There is also a personal toll. “I used to be a lot more optimistic and cheerful,” she said, “but now I’m literally just pissed.”

For a bit, several years ago, Mays said there was a sense that Flint might get enough national notice over the water crisis to overcome it. But she said not enough has been done. Attention faded. Faith has dwindled.

“We’re back to where we first started, where we’re yelling and screaming,” Mays said. “And it seems like nobody can hear us.”

‘We Don’t Trust’

As the state of Michigan tells it, the water in Flint now meets federal standards. Levels of lead and copper are down. “Flint’s water continues to test the same as or better than similar cities across the state and country,” the state says.

But residents are wary. After all, in 2014 and 2015, officials also had insisted the water was safe, brushing aside the concerns of residents. Bottled water remains in high demand, and suspicion abounds about the city’s lead pipes, its decaying water infrastructure and pretty much everything else.

“We don’t trust,” Weaver, the mayor, said. “Trust was broken on every single level of government.”

Weaver vowed after taking office to replace all of the city’s lead and galvanized-steel service lines, and she has made progress. More than 8,000 service lines have been replaced so far, and thousands more have been examined and found to not be made of lead. She hopes to have the rest — as many as 7,000 more — finished this summer.

But as work on the pipes progressed, officials have tried to wean residents off the free bottled water that National Guard troops distributed at the height of the crisis.

The state closed its bottled water distribution sites last year. Bottles donated by Nestlé continue to be handed out, but only from a few locations and on certain days, and with no promise of it continuing past August.

A City of Woes Well Before a Crisis

Flint’s struggles did not start with the water. In the middle of the 20th century, Flint was a small but thriving city, a hub of manufacturing where solid, middle-class jobs at General Motors were plentiful. When the automotive industry faltered, so did Flint.

After thousands of factory jobs left Flint, so did many of its residents, and neighborhoods throughout the city are still marked by blight and abandoned houses, often vandalized or taken over by squatters. The city continues to lose residents: In 2017, Flint’s population fell to 96,448. In 1960, the city was twice as big.

“Water was a symptom of this much bigger problem of a community with a really rich history that rightfully feels that it’s continually being left behind,” said Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., whose district includes Flint.

Though the city has been lifted by its universities and a small but energetic push to rebuild small businesses, the solid jobs in manufacturing that were lost decades ago have not been replaced. With a declining tax base, the city’s fiscal condition slid, too. Ultimately, Flint’s finances were so perilous that the state sent in emergency managers to oversee city operations, a move that irked local leaders and left many in the Democratic stronghold complaining that Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, was taking away local control.

An emergency manager was still guiding the city at the point at which Flint switched water sources, a decision that was aimed at saving money.

“Flint was, I think, before the water crisis, just on the edge of a crisis of some kind,” Kildee said. “And all it took was this one thing to tip the scale.”

More Criminal Cases to Come

Authorities pledged to bring justice to Flint. Those at fault in the water crisis would be held responsible, they promised. “These charges are only the beginning,” Bill Schuette, Michigan’s former attorney general, said three years ago, as he announced the first criminal cases. “There will be more to come — that I can guarantee you.”

And there were more. By now, 15 people who worked in state and local government roles have been charged with crimes in Flint’s crisis. And the charges have reached high levels of Michigan’s government, and suggested that officials had failed to warn residents of known risks and allowed their desire to save money in financially strapped Flint to come before the safety of water.

Still, five years later, no one has been sentenced to prison time. Seven people have pleaded no contest to misdemeanors as parts of plea deals, while others — including some of the highest-level employees — have cases still pending.

“Whether they plea bargain out or actually do jail time, I think it would mean a lot to the community,” said Eric Mays, a Flint City Council member who is not related to Melissa Mays. He added: “We are in a watching-every-step-of-the-way mode.”

A New Cast of Characters

Some of the Flint leaders who stood before the cameras, toasting the city’s new water supply, are gone — at least partly because of the water.

A re-election bid by Walling, a Flint native and Rhodes scholar who seemed to have a promising political career ahead, fell apart in late 2015 as test results confirmed what residents had been worried about for months.

Others who are gone: Snyder, Michigan’s governor at the time; a manager appointed by the state to oversee Flint’s finances; and numerous state and local employees who were involved in the city’s water system.

Snyder was prevented from seeking re-election by term limits. But Flint was perhaps the most difficult chapter of his eight years in office. Snyder was not charged with wrongdoing, but some of his administration’s leaders were, and some residents blamed him.

Mays, the councilman, said he had seen progress since the city was released from state oversight and since Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, took office this year.

“I don’t say it’s over,” Weaver said, but “we’re moving from crisis to recovery, and you can see the progress that we’ve made.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="7553976f-e0b2-346c-a2f6-c32fbfcdf49d" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/flint-water-crisis.html">The New York Times</a>.

Five Years After a Crisis, Flint's Residents Doubt the Water Is Any Safer

On April 25, 2014, a group of smiling officials in Flint, Michigan, stood in front of television cameras, held their glasses aloft and toasted the switch to the city’s new water source, the Flint River.

Five years after a crisis, Flint's residents doubt the water is any safer

Half a decade later, she drinks only bottled water. She showers quickly. She does not trust what the government tells her. “It’s one huge nightmare piled on top of another one,” Mays said this week.

The state closed its bottled water distribution sites last year. Bottles donated by Nestlé continues to be handed out, but only from a few locations and on certain days, and with no promise of it continuing past August.

Beyond the Water, Entrenched Woes

Criminal Charges, and More Waiting

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/flint-water-crisis.html" id="7553976f-e0b2-346c-a2f6-c32fbfcdf49d">The New York Times</a>.

Flint's Water Crisis Started 5 Years Ago. It's Not Over.

“Thriving, prosperous, better, stronger, fairer — for everyone,” Lightfoot said, beaming from a microphone in the hours after the votes were cast.

But this is Chicago, a city that is vast, complex, set in its ways and full of problems that are now Lightfoot’s to solve.

Lightfoot, who will become this city’s first black woman mayor and its first openly gay mayor when she takes office in May, made clean government a centerpiece of her agenda. But Chicago still carries the vestiges of its notorious political machine and, by some measures, more corruption than any other American city. Chicago’s entrenched and decadeslong struggles with crime, segregation, policing and inequity loom. And its long-standing fiscal problems are urgent: Lightfoot must come up with another $1 billion to deal with a looming pension crisis, and fast.

“This is all hard,” said David Axelrod, a longtime Chicagoan and political strategist. “She’s just pulled off an extraordinary political feat and that bespeaks a certain intellect and strength that is important.

“There are other skills that will be needed now — to cajole people, to get people to accept compromise, to recognize how much of the loaf you can have,” he added. “This is really a challenging job and she comes to it in not optimal times.”

Uncertainty in the City Council

When Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor, arrived at City Hall in 1983 promising change, he was greeted with a stone wall of opposition from a large group of white aldermen. What followed was a period of racially charged political fighting that came to be known as Council Wars.

While Lightfoot is unlikely to encounter that level of organized resistance from the 50-member City Council, she will have to contend with it as a formidable governing body: theoretically powerful, thick with alliances and at least partly stocked with aldermen who supported Lightfoot’s opponent in the mayoral race, Toni Preckwinkle. Historically, mayors like Lightfoot’s predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, have held a firm hand over the council in setting the city’s agenda, but Lightfoot’s relationship with the aldermen is uncertain for now.

“None of them owe their elections to Lori, and so for the first time in perhaps 55 years, you may see the emergence of the kind of Chicago city government that during that time has only existed on paper — a weak mayor/strong City Council government,” said Marilyn Katz, a political consultant who worked on the Harold Washington campaign. “What she uses to get them to vote for her proposals is unclear.”

David Orr, a former county clerk who served briefly as an interim Chicago mayor in the 1980s, said he thought Lightfoot’s overwhelming margin of victory — she won all 50 of the city’s wards — would ease her efforts to make inroads with the City Council.

“It’s going to be a battle, OK — a battle in the sense that power never wants to give up what it’s got,” Orr said.

Ja’Mal Green, an activist and former mayoral candidate who supported Lightfoot, said he believed that voters understood that Lightfoot could not instantly make all the changes she has pledged.

“She’s not going to be able to make good on every promise,” Green said. “She’ll be able to start the path for all the things that she promised.”

The City Council is not the only possible roadblock between Lightfoot and her ambitious agenda. Lightfoot, who promised in her campaign to kill what’s left of the sputtering “Chicago machine,” a system of patronage and corruption that once dominated city politics, will also face the challenge of working with Preckwinkle, who remains the president of the Cook County Board and will work in an office near Lightfoot.

Preckwinkle and Lightfoot sparred during debates this year, yet they exited the campaign on a gracious note. At the urging of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, they both appeared on Wednesday morning at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition on the city’s South Side, holding hands in a gesture of unity.

Crime, Policing and Promises of Reform

Another challenge ahead for Lightfoot: the scandal-prone Police Department and persistently high homicide rate, both of which damaged the city’s reputation and vexed Emanuel through eight years in office.

She will quickly be tested. After running on promises to reduce gun violence, Lightfoot will take office just before summer, the season when shootings traditionally spike.

“No child should have to worry about the consequences of going to the park and no parent should have to keep their kids inside on a warm day for fear of violence,” Lightfoot’s campaign website said.

Generations of Chicago mayors have struggled to tamp down violence and root out police misconduct, sometimes making progress but never ending the problems. Lightfoot, who made the issues central to her campaign, will have to decide whether to pursue her promised changes with new leadership in the Police Department or keep Superintendent Eddie Johnson in his post.

Lightfoot’s role with law enforcement is complex. She emerged in recent years as one of the chief critics of the police, and she led a panel that found patterns of excessive force, systemic racism and strained community relations in the department. But she has a background in law enforcement, including a stint as a federal prosecutor, and has worked in police oversight roles in Chicago, including as the president of the Chicago Police Board.

Vague Plan for a Financial Mess

Perhaps most of all, Lightfoot will be tested by the city’s urgent fiscal woes.

All four of the pension funds are miserably underfunded. Lightfoot also must dream up a plan to solve an expected budget shortfall in the coming year. That all comes as Chicagoans are increasingly frustrated over mounting taxes and increased fees — and loath to even talk about digging up any more cash for City Hall. And the possibility of worse economic times could make matters even more dire.

“The city and state of Illinois descended into their worst-in-the-nation financial condition during one of the longest economic expansions in U.S. history,” Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a watchdog group, said. “Neither government is currently prepared to weather the storm in the event of a recession, particularly if it is deep or long-lasting.”

The fiscal challenges have developed over decades and multiple mayors, and they loom. During a combative campaign, neither Lightfoot nor her opponent laid out a comprehensive plan to solve the problem.

“The hard part starts now,” said Eric Adelstein, a political consultant in Chicago who helped with Lightfoot’s campaign. “There are huge challenges facing this city. It’s an exciting moment, but these jobs are rough.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/us/lori-lightfoot-chicago.html" id="3724f0e7-f783-3238-a512-973af9d86e0d">The New York Times</a>.

Lori Lightfoot Promised Change as Chicago Mayor. Now Comes the Hard Part.

CHICAGO — Lori Lightfoot, a political novice, swept into Chicago’s City Hall in staggering style, winning 73 percent of the vote and sending a deafening message to the political veteran she had defeated. She pronounced the results a “broad mandate for change.” She promised to break the city’s endless cycle of corruption. She pledged to remake Chicago.

The polar vortex that arrived earlier this week has for days disrupted life across an entire region. Deaths and injuries were reported. Decades-old records fell. And, for one more day, even stepping outside remained a painful, risky experience.

But the forecast finally suggested relief ahead. By Thursday night, temperatures across much of the Midwest were expected to poke above zero. By the end of the weekend, meteorologists predicted as much as a 70- or 80-degree swing, with balmy-for-February readings in the 40s or 50s and rain instead of snow.

Still, risks remained. A band of snow complicated travel on Thursday, and in the Northeast, officials warned of their own cold wave, with heavy snow in some places and subzero wind chills in others.

At least eight deaths have been connected to the Midwest’s dangerously cold weather system, according to The Associated Press, including that of a University of Iowa student who was found behind an academic hall several hours before dawn on Wednesday.

A weather observer in Mount Carroll, Illinois, recorded a temperature of minus 38 on Thursday morning. If confirmed by state officials, that would become Illinois’ record low, supplanting the previous record of minus 36.

The sustained cold taxed energy systems across the Midwest, leading to some power failures and urgent calls to customers to reduce the heat in their homes.

Many schools, businesses and restaurants remained shuttered on Thursday, though some offices were reopening and many more were expected to reopen Friday. By midday on Thursday, airlines had canceled more than 2,200 flights in the United States, according to FlightAware. On Wednesday, cancellations topped 2,700.

The East Coast was feeling the bitter cold, too. Temperatures barely broke the double digits in New York City.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/us/extreme-cold-weather.html" id="1b2e615f-e76d-3243-a7b8-d073b7a01471">The New York Times</a>.

CHICAGO — Midwesterners trudged ahead Thursday into a familiar, grim reality: temperatures well below zero, schools and businesses closed, stern warnings to wear extra layers or, better yet, just stay indoors.

Polar Vortex Live Updates: Bitter Cold Spreads From Midwest to East Coast

Here are the latest developments:

— At least eight deaths have been connected to the Midwest’s dangerously cold weather system, according to The Associated Press, including that of a University of Iowa student who was found behind an academic hall several hours before dawn on Wednesday.

— A weather observer in Mount Carroll, Illinois, recorded a temperature of minus 38 on Thursday morning. If confirmed by state officials, that would become Illinois’ record low, supplanting the previous record of minus 36.

— The sustained cold taxed energy systems across the Midwest, leading to some power failures and urgent calls to customers to reduce the heat in their homes.

— Many schools, businesses and restaurants remained shuttered on Thursday, though some offices were reopening and many more were expected to reopen Friday.

— By midday on Thursday, airlines had canceled more than 2,200 flights in the United States, according to FlightAware. On Wednesday, cancellations topped 2,700.

— The East Coast was feeling the bitter cold, too. Temperatures barely broke the double digits in New York City.

An Iowa college student is among the dead

In Iowa City, a student at the University of Iowa was found dead in the early morning hours of Wednesday. Gerald Belz, 18 and a pre-med student, was found lying outside, unresponsive, near a campus building after 2 a.m. local time.

He was one of at least eight people whose deaths were believed to be tied to the streak of extreme cold and icy weather in recent days. Among the others were an elderly Illinois man who fell and was found not far from his home; a man who was hit by a snowplow in the Chicago region; a couple in a vehicle crash along snowy roads in Indiana; and a Milwaukee man who the police say was found in his garage and likely froze to death.

Hospitals have treated dozens of frostbite patients

Throughout the Midwest, hospitals reported patients arriving with symptoms tied to the weather. The Illinois Department of Public Health said at least 30 people statewide had been to emergency rooms for frostbite or hypothermia-related visits by Wednesday morning.

At Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, the emergency department reported “many patients” who were injured or ill because of the weather. Frostbite cases alone led to at least 13 admissions.

“It’s busier than it would normally be,” Douglas D. Brunette, an emergency room doctor in Minneapolis, said Wednesday afternoon. “But it’s not a mass casualty incident yet.”

Temperatures are plunging in the Northeast, too

Officials in New York and other parts of the Northeast warned residents to prepare for temperatures that, while not nearly as cold as the Midwest, could still be dangerous.

In Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut, where it was expected to dip into the single digits or lower, officials opened warming centers.

In New York City, where it was 10 degrees at midday, Mayor Bill de Blasio urged people to “bundle up and stay inside as much as possible.” With wind chills expected to fall below zero, city officials warned landlords to provide adequate heat to their tenants.

Conditions were worse in the western part of the state, where Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declared a state of emergency in several counties and instructed some state workers to stay home. More than 13 inches of snow fell Wednesday in Buffalo, a record for Jan. 30, and more was falling on Thursday.

Records were broken, but there is some warmer weather coming

At least two cities in Illinois reached record lows overnight, as a dangerously deep freeze kept its hold on the Midwest.

In Rockford, Illinois, temperatures dipped to minus 31, breaking a previous record of minus 27 from Jan. 10, 1982. Moline, on the border with Iowa, also broke a record, reaching minus 33 on Thursday morning, according to the National Weather Service. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, set a record of minus 30.

Chicago did not reach a record low overnight — the previous record was minus 27, from Jan. 20, 1985. But the city was expected to be hit with 1 to 3 inches of snow on Thursday, beginning in the late afternoon and stretching into the evening.

After several days of brutally cold weather, Chicagoans have something to look forward to, said Matt Friedlein, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“We’ll be on our way up here soon,” Friedlein said. “In fact, later in the week, it looks like temperatures in the 40s across much of northern Illinois. No matter what, it will be a significant warm-up when you consider how cold we are right now.”

Rescuers come to the aid of hundreds stranded in their cars

Car breakdowns and medical emergencies took on greater urgency across the Midwest as police and fire departments dealt with dangerously low temperatures and increased workloads.

The Illinois State Police assisted more than 1,300 drivers over an eight-hour period on Wednesday, about 10 times troopers’ normal workload. In Michigan, where the extreme cold thwarted efforts to treat frozen roadways, emergency workers closed part of Interstate 675 on Thursday after a series of crashes. And in Indiana, a state trooper helped a dog named Marley and its owner warm up after finding them in a stalled car along a highway.

The cold was especially risky for those surrounded by water. The Coast Guard used air boats to rescue seven people stranded in an ice shanty off the coast of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. And on Mackinac Island, Michigan, where the dangerous weather made plane travel impossible, another Coast Guard ship sliced through the ice to rescue a woman needing medical attention.

“The crew responded admirably in adverse conditions to answer the call,” said Lt. Steele Johnson, the commanding officer of the ship that rescued the woman, in a statement. “We’re happy to have done our part in getting her the advanced medical treatment she needed.”

Calls to reduce the heat despite the frigid cold

In Minnesota, Xcel Energy asked customers to conserve power and reduce their thermostats to 63 degrees or 60 degrees, depending on their location. Xcel also paid for hotel rooms for customers who lost their gas supply in Princeton, Minnesota, where the temperature on Thursday morning was minus 35.

“Your cooperation is critical to try to prevent widespread natural gas outages,” the company posted on its website.

In Michigan, a fire Wednesday night at a Consumers Energy facility led to fears of a natural gas shortage. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer went on television late at night urging residents of the state’s Lower Peninsula to reduce their thermostats to 65 degrees or less.

“You can play a role in helping people across the state survive these extreme temperatures,” Whitmer said in a statement.

Consumers Energy also asked several manufacturers to halt production because of the natural gas shortage. Erin Davis, a General Motors spokeswoman, said work was stopped on Wednesday night at 11 plants in Michigan. Many workers had been told not to report for their shifts on Thursday.

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Mitch Smith, Julie Bosman and Monica Davey

Articles written by the author

Five years after a crisis, Flint's residents doubt the water is any safer

Flint's Water Crisis Started 5 Years Ago. It's Not Over.

Lori Lightfoot Promised Change as Chicago Mayor. Now Comes the Hard Part.

Polar Vortex Live Updates: Bitter Cold Spreads From Midwest to East Coast

Polar Vortex Live Updates: Bitter Cold Spreads From Midwest to East Coast