Created Equal, Season 2: Lindsey Smith On Immersing Herself in Flint and Telling Residents’ Stories
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.
In this episode, Stephen Henderson speaks with Lindsey Smith, p. 273, Michigan Radio’s Investigative Reporter. Her 2015 documentary about the Flint water crisis, Not Safe to Drink, won the station a national Edward R. Murrow Award, an Alfred I. duPont – Columbia University Award and a Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Award. Smith spent a great deal of time with families in Flint, telling their stories and witnessing their struggle to get answers and tap water that’s safe to drink.
“The failure of the EPA and specifically of the DEQ — if they had done their job correctly, then the water crisis wouldn’t have happened,” says Smith.
The podcast season is a companion to the book “What the Eyes Don’t See,” written by Flint pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, above, 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.
