From [HERE] In a city synonymous for half a decade with disaster, something remarkable happened in February 2019. A team of researchers reported that Flint’s homes—even the ones at the highest risk for undrinkable, lead-poisoned tap water—finally had clean water running through their pipes.

After years of painstaking cleanup and rebuilding, the study’s results were a sparkling capstone. Earlier tests already hinted at good news, and this one confirmed it: In the vast majority of such homes, lead levels were 5 parts per billion or better—far below even the strictest regulations in the country. Local news outlet MLive trumpeted the news, and Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality tacked it to their ongoing list of promising signs that indicated the city’s potable present and future.

But a few weeks later, another, equally remarkable thing happened. As part of a United Nations-sponsored “World Water Day” celebration, the City of Flint parked 12 semitrailers stacked with pallets of bottled water on the city’s street corners, offering them to any city resident who could show an ID. People flocked to the pickup locations. They lined up their cars and popped their trunks to collect cases of water to use in their homes—water in bottles, from somewhere else, that they actually trusted.

The wariness wasn’t out of ignorance. Equally wary was Jim Ananich, a lifelong Flint resident and outgoing leader of the Democratic minority in the Michigan State Senate. Ananich wasn’t in line that day, but he understands why people were.

“I can’t tell somebody they should trust [claims that the water is safe], becauseI don’t trust them—and I have more information than most people,” said Ananich. “Science and logic would tell me that it should be OK, but people have lied to me.” [MORE]