As a recently-retired lead professional in Michigan, what's shocking to me is HOW LONG IT TOOK for this to become public. Flint has made an art form out of being victims but Detroit has them beat, which means I'm shocked they let themselves be eclipsed this long. Probably because it was their petty decision to shut off Flint's city water source that started the problem and they thought they'd stay quiet for a while to keep the heat off themselves.

What drives me absolutely nuts is that it's being treated as a racial issue. Grand Rapids actually has worse water than Detroit, if I remember correctly, and way worse than Flint which is now pretty much the best water in the whole state, let alone the country. But since it's a majority-white city, it's just assumed that there is no underlying menacing agenda toward them so they don't really have a problem with their water.

Lead in the water is a big problem. That's why we run all our water through a Berkey filter.

I don't think this is actually going to make much of a difference to the kids' drinking water. The fountains are less of an issue than the water in their homes...