Whitmer Neglected Republican Area With More Lead In Its Water Than Flint

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer ran on clean water for Flint, a heavily Democratic city in Michigan that has been shown lots of love from high-profile Democrats like Barack Obama over the last several years.

As governor, though, she dragged her feet on helping another city that leans Republican and had dirty water saturated with even more lead than Flint’s. Now, her administration is scrambling to make up for lost time.

Benton Harbor is a city in southwest Michigan, 180 miles west of Flint. For the past three years, Benton Harbor residents have suffered from emergency levels of lead in their water.

While the cities’ water crises looked similar, their political leanings do not. Genesee County, where Flint is, voted nearly 54% for Biden in 2020, while Berrien County, where Benton Harbor is, voted for Trump by nearly 53%. Both cities are majority black.

In May 2018, while Whitmer was running for governor, Benton Harbor received $284,000 from Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s administration to replace compromised lead pipes. At that point, Benton Harbor Water Superintendent Mike O’Malley estimated that 60 percent of Benton Harbor homes had lead-tainted pipes.

That was not enough to fix the problem, however. Several months later, in August, Benton Harbor homes tested above the federal action level for lead in their water pipes. Then in November 2018, water fixtures at the city’s schools tested above the federal action level for lead. Since then, residents have been repeatedly advised of high lead levels in the water.

Meanwhile, Whitmer campaigned on fixing lead-tainted pipes in Flint and other areas in Michigan.

“This government has failed the people of Flint time and time again,” Whitmer said in a video she released in May 2018 that showed her handing out bottled water to Flint residents.

In a July 2018 ad, she even admitted that Benton Harbor’s pipes “now [have] more lead than Flint.”

Once she was elected in 2018, however, she paid little attention to the small city of about 10,000 people.

Flint, on the other hand, has received hundreds of millions of emergency aid for its water crisis. Of the $390 million in state aid Flint received, about $129 million was spent on economic development and “social development,” and only $144 million was spent on ensuring the city’s drinking water supply was safe, according to state spending data.

During a 2018 gubernatorial debate, Whitmer called clean drinking water a “fundamental human right” and promised that residents complaining about water “won’t get

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases