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Environment prize goes to Flint water activist
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of BBC News
Posted: April 29th, 2018
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43840275
The founder of a citizens' movement that helped expose the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, is one of the recipients of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. Nearly 100,000 residents of Flint were left without safe tap water after lead began leaching into the supply. Mother of four LeeAnne Walters led a citizens' movement that tested the tap water to expose the health threat. In 2014, the water in Ms Walters' home turned brownish and she noticed rashes on her three-year-old twins. Her daughters' hair then fell out in clumps. Walters ... then teamed up with environmental engineer Dr Marc Edwards, from Virginia Tech, who helped her conduct extensive water testing in the city. She methodically sampled each zip code in Flint and set up a system to ensure the integrity of the tests. They showed lead levels as high as 13,200 parts per billion in some parts of the city - more than twice the level classified as hazardous waste by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The contamination was traced to the city switching its water supply away from Detroit's system, which draws from Lake Huron, and beginning instead to draw water from the Flint River. This switch was meant to save the city millions of dollars. But the water from the Flint River was more corrosive than Lake Huron's water and the pipes began leaching lead, which is a powerful neurotoxin. The city has since switched back to using Detroit's water system. But Flint continues to wrestle with the aftermath of the crisis.
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