Created Equal, Season 2: Journalist Ron Fonger Says Water Crisis Was Government’s Failed Attempt “To Save Money”
WDET’s “Created Equal” Season 2 focuses on the Flint Water Crisis and the elected officials, health care and environmental experts, and citizens who were on the ground from the beginning.
Longtime journalist for the Flint Journal and MLive Ron Fonger talks with Stephen Henderson about his work covering the crisis.
Click on the player above to hear the conversation.
After Flint’s water source was changed to the Flint River in April of 2014, it was just a matter of weeks before Fonger says he started seeing people coming into City Council meetings and coming into City Hall to complain about their water. Fonger recalls that the complaints were all anecdotal initially.
Fonger remembers Flint officials telling the public that “there was no need to be alarmed.”
“It wasn’t anything we could put our finger on, but we knew there were a lot of people with issues with the taste of their water and the smell of it, we only found out later what was causing all of that to happen,” he says. Fonger remembers Flint officials telling the public that “there was no need to be alarmed.”
The podcast season is a companion to the book “What the Eyes Don’t See,” written by Flint pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, whose research showed Flint children had elevated lead levels in their blood after the switch. The Flint Water Crisis began in April 2014 when, under the authority of a state-appointed emergency manager, the city of Flint switched its water source from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department system to water from the Flint River.
