A small scale campus fundraiser aimed at aiding the victims of the Flint water crisis saw overwhelming success with the Behrend community donating over 3,000 bottles of water and approximately $300 to the cause.

 

Sophomore SGA Senator Seun Babalola organized the fundraiser through his role as SGA’s Diversity Committee Director. The fundraiser was held in the Reed Union Building each afternoon from Tuesday, March 14 to Friday, March 17.

 

Babalola received help from several other Behrend students in organizing and operating the fundraiser’s table. Assisting Babalola with the fundraiser was Assistant Director of SGA’s Diversity Committee Sidiky Keira, as well as several other members of SGA and Behrend’s Multi-Cultural Council.

 

With a population near 100,000, Flint is almost identical in size to Erie, PA. Located about an hour outside of Detroit, Flint previously received its water from Lake Huron and purchased it from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. However due to a financial emergency in Flint, the Michigan state government controlled the city’s funds and chose the Flint River as the city’s temporary water source in 2014 in an effort to reduce the city’s financial deficit.

 

The Flint River was known for accumulating decades worth of pollution and contamination, yet the river was still chosen as Flint’s primary water source. Additionally, the Flint River water was not treated properly by officials, which caused the lead from aged pipes to seep into Flint’s water supply, which exposed over 100,000 people to high levels of lead in their drinking and bathing water.

 

Over the past three years, Flint’s residents have had to unfortunately live without one of humanity’s most essential public goods: water. According to a research study conducted by Virginia Tech in 2015, the river was found to be 19 times more corrosive than the Detroit water supply.

 

Many of Flint’s tens of thousands of residents have felt the consequences of the being exposed to extremely unsafe drinking water. Alarmingly, an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 children have been exposed to lead as reported by WNEM. In support of this report, Hurley Medical Center released a 2015 study exhibiting that the proportion of infants and children with increased levels of lead in their blood had nearly doubled as a result of Flint River water. Additionally, Legionnaire’s disease, a waterborne illness, appears to seemingly be on the rise with 87 of cases and even 10 deaths on record, as reported by the Flint’s county in 2016.

 

After over two years of being exposed to unsafe drinking and bathing water, Flint was declared to be in a federal state of emergency by President Barack Obama and received $5 million in aid. The declaration of emergency brought the Flint water crisis to the nation’s attention, with many individuals coming to the city’s aid. Currently in 2017, the city’s water quality has returned to acceptable levels. Still though, Flint residents are advised against drinking their city’s water due to the unsafe lead pipes that are still in place and are not expected to be replaced in the foreseeable future.

With the people of Flint still without possession of clean drinking water, there are thousands of individuals and families who are still living without water. Hopefully, the Behrend community’s generous donations will help aid several families in need of clean drinking water.