BENTON HARBOR, MICHIGAN – It’s a freezing weekday morning, before truckers could plow the heavy, wet snow. In the back parking lot of Lighthouse Ministries in Benton Harbor, a crew of 26 people is transferring pallets of bottled water from a nearby parked semitruck trailer into U-Hauls and pickup trucks. The bottled water is delivered from Indiana and funded by donations from organizations outside the city.
For over two and a half years, three days a week, the president of the Benton Harbor Community Water Council (BHCWC), the Rev. Edward Pinkney, has coordinated bottled-water distribution for nearly every single city resident.
His water distribution crew is composed of residents from the overwhelmingly Black city, and sometimes volunteers from out of town join, too. Once the trucks are loaded, teams of eight are assigned specific routes and unload six cases of bottled water at each house until supply runs out. The average home receives 18 cases for the week.
The reason they do this is that since 2018, the city’s public water system has consistently tested above federal and state limits for lead contamination. On a day-to-day basis, Benton Harbor residents are supposed to use the bottled water to bathe, brush their teeth, cook, mix baby formula, and so on. “Think of everything you use water for,” a crew member said. A resident said, “I use a case just to cook [a meal].”
But while Flint, Michigan, has gotten sustained national media attention and eventually policy action to fix its pipes, Benton Harbor has been suffering the same problem without remotely comparable attention or action. For years, city and state officials procrastinated about a blatant pollution emergency, but only now are there any plans to seriously address the problem—and they probably still aren’t enough to get the job done.
More than three years into the crisis, funds for lead pipe replacement are finally coming in. The Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which passed last November, reserved $15 billion for lead pipe removal. However, the Prospect reported how the final bill’s allocation still fell far short of the $60 billion figure the drinking water industry estimates is needed to replace every known lead pipe. For Michigan, the IIJA awarded $10 billion—$1.3 billion of which is reserved for water infrastructure.
As of October last year, Michigan estimated it would cost $30 million to replace all of Benton Harbor’s lead service pipes on an 18-month timeline. To date, the city has awarded $33.2 million to five different contractors, with $21.8 million so far secured from a mix of state funding and federal grants. The remaining $11.4 million will come from either the state’s budget or the federal government. Most of the non-lead pipes are made of galvanized steel, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warns that lead particles can attach to the surface of this material and over time enter drinking water systems. Probably almost all of the pipes should be replaced.
Pinkney is glad the funds are in place, but past experiences with state and city bureaucracies leave him skeptical of what the final result will look like. He is currently training his crew to work as water inspectors to oversee pipe replacement in the coming months.
THE LEAD PROBLEM AT BENTON HARBOR has been in plain view even before those official tests. Several months prior, Rev. Pinkney recalled in an interview with the Prospect, he had tried to get the attention of state regulators after water from a resident’s outdoor faucet came out discolored. Nobody listened to his pleas at the time. “Everybody who could’ve acted, didn’t,” he said. Instead, Pinkney contacted researchers from the University of Michigan who conducted preliminary tests in 2017 that confirmed his suspicions.
Warnings also came from the city government. In 2018, then-superintendent of the Benton Harbor water plant Mike O’Malley warned city officials that 60 percent of houses in Benton Harbor had lead or galvanized steel pipes connected to their main water lines.
According to 2018 reporting from local newspaper The Herald-Palladium, after O’Malley warned city officials, former city manager Darwin Watson told the newspaper that the best way to reduce the amount of lead in drinking water was to “run the tap cold for three to five minutes before using the water to drink or for cooking.” The article also documented that the city received a modest $300,000 in state grant money for lead and galvanized steel pipe replacement.
“[O’Malley] came to me for help,” recalled Pinkney.
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Photo
The Rev. Edward Pinkney has coordinated bottled-water distribution for nearly every resident of Benton Harbor, Michigan, over the last two and a half years.
The 2018 reporting also reveals that Watson told the public that the city was responsible for the pipelines up to the sidewalk, but that homeowners were responsible for the water lines that went into their house. Despite the fact that the $300,000 in grant money could be used for private property, Watson said city and state officials decided they would focus on replacing galvanized steel pipes before the lead ones.
Presumably, city officials would have been in close contact with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ). The 2018 reporting reveals that MDEQ issued a health advisory for Benton Harbor that read, “Elevated levels of lead in the drinking water can cause health concerns.”
About a year later, in April 2019, the MDEQ would reorganize and expand, just one day before a Status Coup documentary called Flushing Flint premiered. This film exposed how MDEQ staff manipulated water testing by running cold water for minutes before collecting samples—the exact same guidance Watson urged for the residents of Benton Harbor one year prior. The new agency was called Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE), and its creation was widely thought to be a response to the Flint crisis, according to a source within the agency who requested anonymity. (An agency representative disputed the idea that it was a response to the documentary.)
An email from August 2020 to the new city manager Ellis Mitchell reveals O’Malley insisting, “‘BENTON HARBOR IS NOT FLINT’… The corrosion treatment [EGLE] crammed down our throats back in February. Came to us from EGLE with no background or evidence of its use (other than Flint). They do not know what they are doing and do not care!”
O’Malley was a complicated figure. Pinkney added, “He did things the way he wanted,” but he ultimately believes O’Malley had to be the scapegoat for challenging the city and state’s corrosion treatment protocols, and blowing the whistle about the lead crisis in the first place.
As lead levels stayed above the legal action limit, public records reveal that city and state officials accused O’Malley of falsifying data and failing to report disinfection equipment breakdowns at the water plant, which eventually led to his water operating license revocation and eventual firing in May 2021.
O’MALLEY ASIDE, THE LEAD PROBLEM continued. One of the Benton Harbor houses sampled for lead contamination in early 2021 came in at 889 parts per billion (ppb)—nearly 60 times greater than the federal standard of 15 ppb, which itself is too high. Beginning in 2025, Michigan will lower the action level to 12 ppb.
According to the EPA, adults who drink lead-contaminated water are at increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, and kidney and nervous system complications. Among women, lead can accumulate in their bones and be released during pregnancy, posing prenatal complications such as premature birth and miscarriage. For infants and children, drinking lead-tainted water can cause brain and nervous system damage, and thus decreased IQ, behavioral problems, and learning disorders.
Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the EPA is required to set a health-based maximum contaminant level, and for lead, there is no acceptable level. Despite the life-threatening conditions associated with lead exposure, the EPA exempted a maximum contaminant level clause in its 1991 Lead and Copper Rule (LCR), arguing that it was unfeasible to implement at the time. And even in the LCR’s 2019 update, the EPA did not consider adding a maximum contaminant level.
Essentially, for decades the EPA has acknowledged the threats posed by lead contamination, but because of insufficient resources, the agency has been forced to cut back on enforcement against widespread noncompliance on environmental issues. Instead of updating its regulations to require lead-contaminated water systems be fixed as fast as possible, the agency requires states and localities to develop their own corrosion treatment, line replacement, and public education plan when sampling exceeds 15 ppb. The inaction perpetuates the very problems the agency is tasked with resolving.
The EPA currently has maximum contaminant levels in place for 78 other contaminants, including arsenic, asbestos, cyanide, fluoride, inorganic mercury, and more.
In a 2020 statewide audit on public water systems, Benton Harbor reported 5,877 total service lines; only 2 percent of the service lines could confirm zero traces of lead. As for the remaining lines, 51 percent of pipes were known to contain either lead or galvanized steel to lead lines. According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the remaining 47 percent of unknown pipes “should be assumed to contain lead until proven otherwise.”
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Photo
Bottled water sits outside a Benton Harbor home, after being dropped off by volunteers.
BENTON HARBOR’S WATER CRISIS had largely been ignored by the national public until last fall. State officials knew about the contamination for years, took some action, and even hosted a virtual roundtable last summer with the BHCWC and EPA. But it wasn’t until the NRDC filed a petition to the EPA on September 9 last year, demanding emergency action under the Safe Drinking Water Act in the form of funds and assistance, that national money and attention catalyzed an all-hands-on-deck effort.
The petition also sparked a political drama between Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office and the Republican-dominated state legislature, which through newly released public records reveals how the corrupt and incompetent bureaucratic dynamics of the Flint saga never ended. Instead, the compromised dynamics continued as the city of Benton Harbor found itself in a water crisis of its own.
The day before the petition went live, Whitmer announced a $20 million initiative to remove lead service lines from Benton Harbor. But Rev. Pinkney suspected that without activist pressure and the state being tipped off about the coming EPA petition, Whitmer would have never taken action. “We can’t take her word for anything,” he said. Because the state knew about the crisis for years, Pinkney suggested the upcoming election cycle likely prompted the governor to get ahead of state-level Republicans who would exploit Benton Harbor as political ammunition for their own ambitions.
Shortly thereafter, the state announced the expansion of free bottled-water services and recommended residents take an “abundance of caution” when using the city’s water. But Pinkney quickly dismissed the move as “just spinning their wheels,” and the increased bottled water as a Band-Aid solution for a bullet wound. The language used by the state, according to Pinkney, was insufficient and inadvertently minimized the health complications associated with lead ingestion. “The water is unsafe to use. It’s not about [taking] an ‘abundance of caution.’ They jeopardized this community.”
When the state started distributing their own free bottled water, Pinkney told the Prospect, they also removed the forklift BHCWC was using, disrupting the two-year-long grassroots-led bottled-water distribution effort. Pinkney described the move from the state as an effort to save face for its shortcomings and diminish his credibility in the process.
Outside advocacy groups like Freshwater Future have footed the bill for bringing bottled water to the city and have coordinated distribution with Pinkney. Outside groups have also provided additional funding to pay the crew members who distribute the packs of water three days a week, though they have also received funding from the state of Michigan.
For years, Pinkney and the rest of Benton Harbor’s residents have endured at best abject apathy from city and state officials; today, the city is facing a repeat of the chronic neglect that allowed Flint to cascade into one of the worst public-health crises in modern memory.
The aftermath of Flint pushed the state to commit to replacing Michigan’s 500,000 lead pipes over a 20-year timeline. However, in September, amidst the ongoing pressure from the NRDC petition to the EPA, Gov. Whitmer announced the original 20-year timeline would shrink to five years for Benton Harbor. Just a few weeks later in October, Whitmer announced the five-year plan would shorten to an 18-month timeline.
But days after the updated 18-month timeline announcement, the Republican-led Michigan Senate launched an investigation into Whitmer’s office, and demanded communication records from the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy dating from January 2019 to October 15, 2021.
Pinkney recalled that around this time period, several Republicans invited him to testify in Lansing and offered to personally come pick him up. But he declined because he worried that if he testified under a Republican-led investigation, his credibility would be undermined by the governor, and that the GOP wasn’t actually committed to fixing the pipes anyway. “[The Republicans] really don’t care,” Pinkney concluded.
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Photo
The city’s water tower in Benton Harbor, Michigan
Regardless of whether the Republican oversight probe was politically motivated, the records clarify how city and state officials tried to minimize the severity of the lead crisis to the residents of Benton Harbor.
Not every town in the region has suffered the same fate. Benton Harbor’s profound impoverishment reflects the long-standing consequences of deindustrialization across the Midwest—but the resulting economic disintegration has a heavy geographic and racial bias.
Just a few miles away across the St. Joseph River, Benton Harbor has a sister city named after that selfsame river. While Benton Harbor is an 85 percent Black town whose population has fallen by more than half since 1960, with a median household income of $21,916, St. Joseph is 84 percent white, its population has fallen by only about 30 percent since 1960, and its median household income is $62,374—on par with the 2019 national median of $62,843.
St. Joseph has lead pipes too, but no issues with lead in the water. But unlike Benton Harbor, Pinkney told Grist last year that St. Joseph has the resources to resolve the issue, because 45 percent of Benton Harbor residents live in poverty, compared to 7 percent in St. Joseph.
The abyss between the two cities epitomizes how extreme racial segregation begets economic inequality and subsequently creates a social order that manifests through racial discrimination in every aspect of daily life.
BACK IN THE U-HAUL TRUCK, just before we started unloading the bottled water across the city’s neighborhoods, one crew member remarked, “I’ve been drinking this water for 60 years.”
Rev. Pinkney invited me to ride in his U-Haul with what he called the “dream team,” and despite the freezing temperatures and near whiteout conditions, there was a strong sense of camaraderie among the crew. For over two hours, we drove around the city, dropping off six cases of bottled water per house, listening to ’90s and 2000s R&B music as the crew shared laughs over what they had planned for the rest of their afternoons.
Pinkney estimates 60 percent of city residents still use water from the faucet. Some of the houses we drove by had shoveled driveways, but cases of water stacked several feet high and covered in snow, suggesting they’ve opted to use the water from their faucet instead. Still, many residents appreciated the BHCWC’s efforts; at several houses where we stopped, residents stepped outside and thanked the crew members.
The bungled coordination from state regulators when the crisis began, all the way to the lousy language in recent state directives, created the distrust and indifference among residents today. The exhaustion of relying on bottled water for years has led to some residents giving up on it entirely.
Bottled-water distribution will continue indefinitely as the state plans on expediting the lead service line replacement, and in the meantime, Benton Harbor’s residents are receiving faucet water filtration systems for their homes. Currently, the EPA is conducting studies on the efficacy of at-home filters and is expected to release the data before February ends. The preliminary results from December so far look promising. For the first time since 2018, lead levels in the sampled homes fell below 15 ppb.
Still, Pinkney warns that the December results do not mean the problem is anywhere near resolved. Testing is currently being conducted on pipe water by city, state, and federal officials. However, lead levels can fluctuate based upon a number of factors, including seasonality, the passage of time, and water temperature. Once again, a permanent solution requires full pipe replacement, not just mitigating measures.
Flint’s aftermath was supposed to create a new set of rules that would never let a Flint-like crisis happen again; yet a very similar problem in Benton Harbor continues to fester to this day. On February 18, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General announced an investigation into the agency’s response to the crisis.
Toward the end of the water delivery shift, a crew member told me, “Benton Harbor’s pipes been messed up since before Flint ever happened.” Even if every lead and galvanized steel pipe is replaced by spring 2023, it’s far from any celebration of justice for the majority-Black city. The message from Benton Harbor’s residents is clear: “We need water.”
Corrections: An earlier version of this article stated that city and state officials "continued to juke the stats," and that Mike O'Malley was fired on a "pretext," accusations which were unfounded. It also failed to note that the water delivery program has been funded in part by the state of Michigan. It also wrongly stated that the water delivery program would end in April, and that MDEQ was reorganized explicitly in reaction to the Flushing Flint film. It also wrongly implied that the Michigan government had taken no action on the lead problem until 2021, and that filtered water was being tested by state officials. It also wrongly characterized O'Malley's dispute with state authorities. The Prospect regrets the errors.
