What The Eyes Don't See

What The Eyes Don’t See tells the shocking and unfortunate story of the public drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan and how one woman stood up against government corruption and racism to make a positive difference for the city.

In 2011, Flint was in financial trouble. A provision of US law declares that a state’s governor can send an emergency manager (EM) to help in situations like this. Receiving their own EM would spark the beginning of the issues in Flint.

The mayor basically loses their power anytime an EM is installed in a city. That means that while the EM is looking for ways to cut costs, they don’t care much about how their actions will hurt citizens.

In an effort to decrease spending, officials changed the source of Flint’s drinking water in April of 2014. Before then, the city had to pay to access Lake Huron’s water. Now, they would get drinking water from the Flint river.

But this was a factory town, and waste and runoff had been poisoning the river for decades. The water had to be tested to make sure it wouldn’t corrode the pipes, which could leak lead into it.

For some reason, however, Flint didn’t test their water. GM’s plant found out about the lead in it only six months after the change because the water was corroding its auto parts. They go a waiver to change back to lake Huron water.

But the rest of Flint wasn’t so lucky. They weren’t even aware of the issue until Dr. Mona became involved.

Through another fascinating story all on it’s own, Mona Hanna-Attisha, born of Iraqui parents in the UK, became the director of the pediatric residency program in a medical center in Flint. Her primary concern has always been for her patients-the children of Flint. A friend of hers with a job in D.C. was the first to tip Mona off to what was going on with the water in her city. The acquaintance revealed that, although the news said otherwise, a leaked memo revealed the dangerously high lead levels in Flint’s water. As Mona began looking into the amount of lead in blood samples of children, she discovered the worst. There was a spike in the number of kids with higher levels of lead in their blood right after the change of water source. Considering her own two daughters, Mona had a difficult time thinking about anything but Flint’s water crisis. Knowing it was getting worse by the day, she began reaching out for help. After connecting with environmental engineer Marc Edwards, she finally had a fighting chance to make a change. Edwards, with his experience in fighting for clean water as…