Residents ordered to pay overdue water bills

FLINT, Mich. — Thousands of Flint residents have been warned that they could lose their homes if they don’t pay outstanding water bills — even with the city just starting to replace lead-tainted pipes after a contamination crisis linked to a dozen deaths.

Warning letters were mailed to more than 8,000 residents in April, according to the city, a few weeks after state officials ended a program that was paying the majority of the water bills.

But many Flint, Michigan, residents still don’t trust their taps. They’ve been lining up for free bottled water or installing cityrecommended filters after revelations in 2014 and 2015 that dangerous levels of lead had leached into the water system after officials tried to cut costs.

“I’m not going to give them one penny,” a resident who owed $822.62 told The Toronto Star in March, shortly before letters warning of tax liens were mailed.

More than $5.8 million in water and sewer charges need to be collected, according to the city.

“This is difficult for residents,” city spokeswoman Kristin Moore said. “It’s a tough place to be in, but we’re just trying to do the best we can.”

The letters give residents with six months or more of unpaid bills a month to pay up or face possible foreclosure on their homes.

But Moore said residents will have until February to pay before the county is called in to enforce the warnings. The city called the 8,000 letters “routine” in a statement, though no one got one last year in the aftermath of the lead-poisoning crisis.

In 2014, a state-appointed manager switched Flint’s water supply from a lake to the Flint River.

More than a dozen state and local officials have since been charged with crimes after corrosion from the new water source allowed rust, iron and lead into the water supply. They’re accused of ignoring warnings and knowingly putting the industrial city’s 95,000 residents in danger.

“The catastrophe exposed thousands of children to high levels of lead, which can cause long-term physical damage and mental impairment,” Brady Dennis wrote for The Washington Post. “And water contamination also has been linked to the deaths of a dozen people from Legionnaires’ disease.”

The city has since started paying Detroit, about an hour from Flint, for tap water. Earlier this year, state officials said lead in the water had fallen to safer levels.

But in March, resident Melissa Mays and other plaintiffs forced the city through a lawsuit to begin replacing 18,000 leadtainted pipes.

Under the settlement, the state also must keep distributing free bottled water to residents who want it, and ensure that every home has a working water filter.

Shortly after, the state ended a crisis program that paid 65 percent of residents’ water bills.

Mays, one of many who still doesn’t trust the water system, refused to pay.

“We just don’t want to pay to have ourselves killed,” she told the Toronto Star at the time.