Jeff Goodell at the NYT:
On a cool spring day in April 2014, Dayne Walling, the mayor of Flint, Mich., entered an old water-treatment plant and, amid cheers from a crowd of city officials and engineers, pushed a small black button on a cinder-block wall. With that gesture, the mayor switched Flint’s water supply from a tested and reliable source provided by the city of Detroit to a cheaper and untested one, the nearby Flint River. City officials defended the move as necessary cost-cutting for a bankrupt city. Like his colleagues, Walling — a Rhodes scholar who had a master’s degree in urban studies — believed that Flint, by deciding to rely on its own river for water, was taking control of its destiny. He called it “a historic moment.”
more here.