But Is It “Safe?”: Water Quality Regulations, Citizen Science, and Power in the Flint Water Crisis

• In Event: Citizen Science, Law and Policy - I

Abstract

In April 2014 Flint, MI switched its municipal water supply from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the Flint River, in a cost-saving move. For the following 18 months (until October, 2015 when the water supply was switched back) officials and scientific authorities told Flint residents that their water could be safely consumed. However, the repeated refrain that the water was “safe” clashed with residents’ everyday experiences of harm in the form of hair loss, rashes, respiratory ailments, and a variety of other health symptoms popularly believed to be caused by the water. In Flint citizen science efforts provided a counter narrative to the one provided by government. However, when residents’ views conflicted with experts they were quickly attacked, called “tribal,” and made peripheral in their own movement. This paper examines the ways in which the regulatory state, scientific experts, and water activists work in various and sometimes conflicting ways to shape the discourse around the safety of water, focusing in particular on the power asymmetries that make it difficult for lay experts to advance their own views of water safety when those views conflict with state and scientific agendas.

Authors

• Ben Pauli, Kettering University

• Michael Mascarenhas, University of California, Berkeley