Goodrich- Fresh water is often taken for granted these days, so when a neighboring community’s supply was recently compromised it became news.
District students, along with village residents, recognized the need and acted.
‘Many of the students heard the story about the water in Flint on the news along with the lead contamination impacting children,? said Evie Moffett, Oaktree Elementary School third grade teacher.
‘The students wanted to help. We discussed helping the community and the students took the water project from there. They created posters and signs to promote the Flint Needs Clean Water Drive. Soon after, parents began dropping off water each day along with filters’the cases of water are heavy and hard to carry into the school.?
The Oaktree class collection, coupled with collections during the Goodrich vs. Lake Fenton Football game on Oct. 9 and a collection from Goodrich Middle School, has produced a small mountain of cases of bottled water. The donations will be heading north to Flint sometime after Oct. 16.
Every drop counts for Flint residents.
According to news sources, in the winter of 2014, Flint decided to change its water source to the Flint River due to continued rising costs from the Detroit drinking water system.
The decision was made despite the fact Michigan Department of Environmental Quality had classified the Flint River source water intake as having a very high susceptibility to potential contaminant sources, its worst rating. In older cities such as Flint, lead pipes and lead solder is routinely found connecting homes to drinking water mains. In 1986 lead was finally banned in pipes; however, it still exists in just about every major city in the United States. According to a study by the University of Pittsburgh? 70 percent of all cities with populations greater than 30,000 in 1900 used lead service mains exclusively or in combination with some other type of main. The problem for Flint began when corrosive water enters those pipes and dissolved the lead. One of the most important contributors to this corrosion was salt and every winter Michigan roads has plenty, some of which found its way into the Flint River, according to at least one news source.
After switching to the Flint River for its drinking water, the city tested for lead, taking over a hundred samples throughout the city. Oddly, it chose to test only in the summer and fall, not a time of year likely to reveal the impact of road salt. When recent tests revealed a doubling in the number of children with dangerous levels of lead in their blood, the city finally stopped using the Flint River.
Area residents were also dropping of bottled water the Goodrich Village Offices, 7338 State Road.