Do not take drinking water for granted, University of Windsor researchers say
The notorious water crisis in Flint, Mich., shows why no one can afford to take drinking water for granted, say University of Windsor researchers who wrote a recently-published case study on that city-wide contamination in 2015.
“Our water systems are at risk and it’s not just Flint. It’s everywhere and we need to be paying attention. We really need to be active,” University of Windsor assistant professor Wren Montgomery said Monday.
“Water services are an easy place to cut back, an easy place to not invest. If you don’t invest in roads, people start calling the city because they’re angry about the potholes but nobody really knows what’s going on with their pipes.” Montgomery said she hasn’t studied the local water treatment systems but, in general, she said, the crisis in Flint shows cities should not cut costs when it comes to drinking water. Municipalities need to keep spending to update old infrastructure and make sure water plants can test for and filter out a wide range of pollutants, she said. Residents need to be prepared to see their water bills increase and to think more about protecting lakes and rivers, she said. Montgomery pointed to such steps as not flushing old medication down the toilet and reducing the use of products with microbeads. Montgomery, an assistant professor of management at the Odette School of Business, and her former student Natalina Aquino did a case study on the Flint water crisis, which was published this month in Sage Publishing, a prominent online academic resource of case studies. Aquino, who has since graduated with her business and economics degree and wants to study law, was the lead author. She was heading to Chatham-Kent on Monday to learn more about the well water issues some local residents blame on pile-driving for wind turbines. “It can really just happen anywhere,” Aquino, 22, said warning people not to take water for granted.
Flint, a once prosperous city, fell on hard times as General Motors jobs disappeared there in the 1980s.
In an attempt to save money, Flint officials decided to stop buying water from Detroit and treat the water from the Flint River beginning in 2014. Tests in 2015 showed the water had dangerous levels of lead, which in children is linked to learning disabilities. Flint declared a state of emergency in December 2015 and soon the Michigan National Guard was distributing bottled water and people, including Windsorites, were donating bottled water. The study noted that because Flint had lead pipes and the river water was corrosive, the city should have used an anti-corrosion treatment. Windsor officials said in 2016 that the Flint crisis couldn’t happen here. Aquino said Flint’s case is sad. “It was a very simple solution that could have been implemented from the beginning,” she said. “They tried to save money and in the end they didn’t. It cost themselves millions or billions of dollars.”