Flint residents are being punished for not paying for poisoned water

[Hermit-The-Prog]

The ‘fix’ for Flint promised by politicians never came, instead residents face a final indignity – residents’ water supply is being cut off for unpaid bills for water that made them sick

Anthony Baxter Wed 4 Apr 2018

Nakiya Wakes, who lives in Flint, refuses to pay for the water supply that made her family sick. “I refuse to pay for poison,” she told me. Because she owes $1,983.59 to the city of Flint in unpaid water bills, the city cut off her water supply last month. She turns the taps, and they run empty.

Nakiya showed me the boxes of bottled water stacked up on her porch outside. The state has shut a number of free bottled water pick up sites in Flint – or PODs as they’re known here locally. It is feared the remaining four will soon face the axe. That means more residents are forced to buy the bottled water they need.

Nakiya and her son begin to pour bottle after bottle of Nestle water into the cistern of their toilet. “It takes two cases of bottled water for just one flush,” Nakiya tells me. “And so we can wash, I pour bottled water into a pan and heat it up in the microwave.” Those costs add to Nakiya’s $180 a month bill for power and light. And the trash in Nakiya’s bathroom is overflowing with crushed plastic bottles.

Nakiya, who holds down a low paid part-time job and lives paycheck to paycheck, stopped making any further payments on her outstanding water bill over a year ago. She and her family underwent tests which revealed an alarming rise in the level of lead in their blood. Her son has learning difficulties. Her daughter has suffered a seizure. Nakiya blames drinking Flint’s poisoned water – as she does for the loss of her unborn twins.

[...]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/04/flint-residents-punished-poisoned-water

[TrumPutin and his cronies are not the only GOPers doing ongoing damage to us all.]