The Poisoned City Quotes

“Lead is one toxic legacy in America's cities. Another is segregation, secession, redlining, and rebranding: this is the art and craft of exclusion. We built it into the bones of our cities as surely as we laid lead pipes. The cure is inclusion. Flint's story is a clear call for committing anew to our democratic faith in the common wealth. As the water crisis demonstrates, it is simply not good enough for government officials to say, 'Trust us.' For all the inefficiencies and messiness that comes with democracy, the benefits - transparency, accountability, checks and balances, and the equitable participation of all people - are worth it.”
― Anna Clark, The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy

“The Flint water crisis illustrates how the challenges in America's shrinking cities are not a crisis of local leadership - or, at least, not solely that - but a crisis of systems. Paternalism, even if it is well meaning, cannot transcend the political, economic, and social obstacles that relegate places such as Flint to the bottom. The chronic underfunding of American cities imperils the health of citizens. It also stunts their ability to become full participants in a democratic society, and it shatters their trust in the public realm. Communities that are poor and communities of color - and especially those that are both - are hurt worst of all.”
― Anna Clark, The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy

“If you wanted to kill a city, that is the recipe. And yet Flint was very much alive. In 2014, the year of switch to a new source of drinking water, it was the seventh-largest city in the state. On weekdays, its population swelled as people commuted into town for work in teh county government, the region's major medical centers, four college campuses, and other economic anchors. For all the empty space, teens in shining dresses still posed for prom photos in the middle of Saginaw Street, the bumpy brick road that is Flint's main thoroughfare. Parents still led their children by the hand into the public library for Saturday story time. Older gentlemen lingered at the counter of one of Flint's ubiquitous Coney Island diners, and the waitresses at Grandma's Kitchen on Richfield Road kept the coffee flowing. For about ninety-nine thousand people, Flint was home.”
― Anna Clark, The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy

“This city did not deserve what happened to it. Neither does any other shrinking city. Half a century after the Kerner Report tried to inspire a new approach to urban life, we are at another crossroads between how things were once done and how we can choose to do t hem in the future. In a way, public drinking water systems are the perfect embodiment of the ideal that we might reach toward. The sprawling pipelines articulate the shape of a community. House by house, they are a tangible affirmation that each person belongs. They tie the city together, and often the metropolitan region as well. If only some have good, clean water and others do not, the system breaks down. It isn't safe. The community gets sick. But when we are all connected to the water, and to each other, it is life-giving - holy, even.”
― Anna Clark, The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy

“This isn't just Flint's fight. We built all our cities out of lead. We were sure we could make this metal work for us. History revealed a pattern of poisoning, but we were certain that we could contain it, control it. Progress came when we acknowledged how terribly harmful lead is and instituted anti-lead laws that reduced our exposure to one of the world's best-known neurotoxins. But the next great challenge - a tremendously difficult one - is reckoning with the lead that is still in our environment. Individual solutions, from purchasing bottled water and investing in private purification devices, isn't enough. As the nineteenth-century water wars revealed, a community is not safe and certainly will not thrive if only some have access to clean water and others do not. Infrastructure, the ties that literally bind us, one to another, requires our consistent care and attention. At a certain point, 'doing more with less' no longer functions as a mandate. Sometimes less is just less. Public health historians Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner put it this way: 'If the history of lead poisoning has taught us anything, it is that the worlds we as a society construct, or at least allow to be built in our name, to a large extent determine how we live and how we die.”
― Anna Clark, The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy