Additional Resources

Books

Ben Pauli, Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis (MIT Press, 2019)

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A political science professor at Flint's Kettering University, Ben Pauli lived in Flint during the water switch and conducted an ethnography of local meetings and events following the crisis. This book provides clear explanations of what happened to Flint's water system, and focuses on residents' efforts to publicize and remedy their water problems. The book is available as an open access resource online.

Katrinell Davis, Tainted Tap: Flint's Journey from Crisis to Recovery (2021: University of North Carolina Press) 

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Katrinell Davis is a sociology professor at Florida State University who grew up in Flint. In this multimethod study, Davis sets the Flint Water Crisis in the context of Flint's history of environmental injustice, explaining the connections between industrial contamination and harms to Flint's water system, as well as Flint residents' tradition of fighting for justice. Later chapters are especially useful for understanding the fallout of Flint's crisis, covering lead line replacement and residents' planned state settlement.

Andrew Highsmith, Demolition Means Progress: Flint, Michigan, and the Fate of the American Metropolis (2015: University of Chicago Press). 

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Andrew Highsmith's history of Flint has been central to providing perspective on long-term historical factors leading to Flint’s crisis. Highsmith focuses on General Motors' role in making and unmaking the city, from its creation of "community schools" to segregated housing, and its shift from industrial concentration within the city to the suburbs, at Flint's expense. 

Ashley E. Nickels, Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan: Unpacking the Policy Paradox of Municipal Takeovers (2019, Temple University Press)

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Nickels' book gives important detail and context to Flint's experience of emergency management, especially in relation to the "community development regime" Nickels identifies operating in the city.

Anna Clark, The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy (2018, MacMillan Books) 

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In this book, which was among the first published on the Flint Water Crisis, reporter Anna Clark assembles interviews and news articles to narrate the stages of the crisis.

Mona Hanna-Attisha, What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City (2018, Random House)

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Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha tells the story of the Flint Water Crisis from her own vantage point as a researcher and pediatrician at Hurley's Children's Hospital in Flint. In late summer 2015, Hanna-Attisha helped document the effect of Flint's lead-poisoned water by tracking children's elevated blood lead levels.

Academic Articles

Elevated Blood Lead Levels in Children Associated With the Flint Drinking Water Crisis: A Spatial Analysis of Risk and Public Health Response (2016, American Journal of Public Health)
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This article, published by a team led by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, found that the percentage of children with elevated blood lead levels increased after Flint’s water source was changed to the Flint River, and that the increase was more pronounced in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods. This finding confirmed that Flint’s elevated water lead levels had lead-related health consequences for the city’s children. The research was initially dismissed by state officials when the group presented their draft results, before state representatives admitted at the end of September 2015 that their own analyses aligned with these findings.

Jason Stanley, "The emergency manager: Strategic racism, technocracy, and the poisoning of Flint's children" (2016, The Good Society)

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Stanley's essay explores "technocratic" narratives around Michigan's emergency manager law, and how the law threatened or reshaped Black cities' assets, especially water systems.

Sara Hughes, Andrew Dick, and Anna Kopec, "Municipal Takeovers: Examining State Discretion and Local Impacts in Michigan" (2022, State and Local Government)

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This academic study looks at the higher likelihood of Michigan's emergency manager law being used against cities with large Black populations. The study also shows that these cities often experienced changes to their drinking water sources during emergency management, leading to higher costs, water shutoffs, and frequent threats of privatization.

Documentaries and Podcasts

Here’s to Flint 

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This documentary, produced by filmmaker Kate Levy with the ACLU of Michigan, depicts the timeline of Flint’s ongoing water crisis and the political decision-making that enabled it. Examples of negligence on behalf of the Department of Environmental Quality are discussed via excerpts from the same email database analyzed by the Flint Email Lab team, alongside an explanation of the FOIA requests that precipitated the creation of the email dataset underlying our archive.

Dirty Water: Danger from the Tap 

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This documentary, produced by CNN, highlights the issue of unclean, unaffordable, and unaccessible water in lower-income and predominantly African American communities across the United States. It documents how residents in these communities struggle to receive help from state and local officials in improving their water quality and protecting their health, alluding to the importance of representative and just water governance across the United States.

Frontline: Flint's Deadly Water 

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This 2019 PBS documentary, based on a two-year investigation, documents the toll of Legionnaires' disease caused by the Flint Water Crisis. Since the disease is often misdiagnosed, the official count of 12 deaths significantly understates the likely true number of deaths, according to an epidemiological analysis that found Flint experienced 70 excess pneumonia deaths (a common misdiagnosis for Legionnaires’ disease) while on river water.

Nor Any Drop to Drink: Flint’s Water Crisis, Cedric Taylor, 2021

"Tens of thousands of Flint residents drank lead-tainted water leading to what is considered by many a human health disaster. Both the state and federal government declared a state of emergency. What was the human toll? The film, “Nor Any Drop to Drink: The Flint Water Crisis” explores the factors leading up to the crisis, its impacts and social inequities."

Rachel Maddow, "Who's Really at Fault for Flint Water Crisis?" 

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This 2016 episode of The Rachel Maddow Show connects Michigan's Emergency Manager law to the origins of the Flint Water Crisis.

Katrinell Davis, The Tainted Tap Podcast

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From the show’s description: "When did Flint’s water crisis start? How did it impact this community? Is it over? Does Flint have clean water? Welcome to the Tainted Tap Podcast where we explore the roots, effects, and the aftermath of the Flint Water Crisis."

News Media

Curt Guyette, A Deep Dive into the Source of Flint’s Water Crisis (Detroit Metro Times)

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Guyette, a longtime political reporter now working with the ACLU of Michigan, helped break the story of the Flint Water Crisis with his reporting. In this April 2017 piece, Guyette reviews the political precursors to the crisis, especially around the formation of the KWA.

Melissa Mendes and Anne Elizabeth Moore, "'There’s No Way We’re Gonna Drink That': Fighting for Clean Water in Flint" (2017, TRUTHOUT)

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 This graphic comic represents residents' experience with and perspectives on the Flint Water Crisis, while succinctly explaining its origins.

Reports, Resources and Guides

The Flint Water Crisis: A Guide to Information Resources (UM Flint)

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The University of Michigan at Flint and Ann Arbor have compiled resources on the Flint Water Crisis available through the Frances Willson Thompson Library. The resources include collections of timelines created by news media, official reports and hearings, and academic sources. The guide also included a Flint Water Crisis Course offered free at UM Flint, archived here.

Bridge Magazine, Flint Water Crisis Timeline  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (through 4/15/16)

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Bridge Magazine's timeline of the Flint Water Crisis, drawing extensively on early releases of the emails in this archive, is the most thorough day-by-day timeline of events surrounding the crisis, including annotations and analysis conducted with the Truth Squad.

Michigan Civil Rights Commission: “The Flint Water Crisis - Systemic Racism Through the Lens of Flint" (2017)

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This report, based on public hearings, resident and expert testimonies, explains the Flint Water Crisis as a manifestation of systemic racism.

Peter Hammer, "The Flint Water Crisis, KWA and Strategic-Structural Racism" (2016)

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Peter Hammer, Law Professor at Wayne State University, gave testimony in 2016 for the Michigan Civil Rights Commission's investigation of the Flint Water Crisis, based on his investigation of state emails in this archive. Hammer focused on state-level actions leading to and enabling Flint's participation in the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), and ultimately to Flint's switch to using the Flint River. An abridged version of the testimony has been published as an academic article here.

Great Lakes Law, “Flint water crisis litigation – resources and pleadings” (updated 2019) 

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This list links to the initial filings of a number of resolved and ongoing lawsuits and criminal prosecutions related to the Flint Water Crisis.

We the People of Detroit, "Mapping the Water Crisis: The Dismantling of African-American Neighborhoods in Detroit" (2016) 

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We the People of Detroit (WPD) is a community-based grassroots organization that aims to “inform, educate, and empower Detroit residents on imperative issues surrounding civil rights, land, water, education, and the democratic process.” WPD provides water to Detroit residents affected by the city’s Water and Sewage Department’s water shutoff campaign. WPD’s water-related research has produced maps and data visualizations, compiled in a book available on their website. The book shows Detroit's harsh water shutoff policies are a result of Michigan's Emergency Manager law and the restructuring of Detroit's water and sewer department through the city's bankruptcy.