The mayor was finally ready to talk water. “We’ve just this morning had a meeting about this with the EPA and DEQ,” he said. “And they’ve told us there’s no corrosion issue. It has to do with old pipes in residents’ homes and couldn’t be helped.” Something inside me wilted. He was copping out already. Okay, maybe there is lead in the water, he was saying, but it isn’t the city’s, the state’s, or the feds’ responsibility—or mine. It’s the people’s fault. I couldn’t help but think how this echoed the lead industry’s blaming of victims. Then he mentioned the prohibitive cost of switching back to
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