Since spring of 2014 the city of Flint, Michigan’s water has been contaminated with lead, and the only people who knew about it were high ranking state government officials. Most notably Governor Rick Snyder [R], and to the surprise of no one, the poisoning was swept under the rug, allowing the damage to grow worse.

Flint is a city with a population of about 102,000 people. The city doesn’t have a local government anymore because of its poor economic standing, forcing the State of Michigan to take over the city’s government.

Before the state of Michigan took control of the city, Flint got all of its water from Lake Huron. When they had control of their own local government, they decided by a 7-1 city council vote to purchase 16 million gallons of water from the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA): a clean reliable source from which many municipalities in the state of Michigan get their water.

But, the State officials decided to change Flint’s primary water source to the Flint River that runs through the city. Sounds smart, only it wasn’t.

The state decided that not changing the pipes in Flint would be more cost effective and it was worth the risk of lead poisoning to leave them all alone. The citizens of Flint didn’t even want to change their water source to the Flint River that is known for being less than sanitary.

The pipe’s in the city were old and corroding lead started seeping into the water at very alarming rates. Lead causes irreversible damage to the brain, especially in young and developing children. These children and their families unknowingly consumed this lead contaminated water for two years. But the people who did know and the people who had the power to fix it, didn’t.

In fact, they knew at the time of the switch in water sources that the pipes were old and might poison the water, but because either keeping Flint connected to the clean water sources or changing the pipes would be expensive, they just left the citizens alone with poisoned water.

Now, any number of kids who lived in that city will grow up with horrible mental deficiencies. Kids who drank this water will likely do poorly in school; their IQs are predicted to drop an average of a whopping 20 points. Lead poisoning has been linked to cancer, learning deficiencies, and behavioral disorders; none of which have a cure.

No doctor can treat it, no scientist can cure it. The damage is done. No amount of clean water sent to the city can reverse what has happened. We can’t save these kids whose only crime was being born to parents who trusted the government to do it’s job.

People use a lot of water and a city the size of Flint cannot survive on bottled water alone. it’s not enough water for too many people, but getting Flint back on clean water will take an estimated two years.

This is a complete and utter failure from the State of Michigan’s government. They took away the local government of Flint: a government that voted it’s officials in to represent their city, and replaced those homegrown and caring officials with state officials that couldn’t care less about one of the poorest communities in the state of Michigan.

Michigan has been placed in a state of emergency by President Barack Obama. Governor Snyder has asked for Flint to receive federal aid. He asked this after telling the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): a federal agency, that it had ‘no right to tell him what to do’ in regards to the water crisis. If a local government had control of their own municipality, this would have never happened. If This was Bloomfield Hills, Michigan one of the richest cities in the state, something like this would never happen.

Yet in a poor impoverished state controlled municipality, it happened, and the state’s first reaction was to cover it up because that was cheaper than protecting the lives of its citizens

Governor Snyder should resign and be prosecuted for knowingly allowing 102,000 of his citizens to be poisoned. The damage is horrific and he is heavily to blame.

The saddest part about this whole thing is that although many organizations and people have been wonderful enough to send truckloads of water, reaching the actual amount the citizens of Flint need is nearly impossible, because the amount of water they need is astronomical.

100,000 bottles of water a day seems like a large number, but that is less than 1 bottle per person, per day. Imagine how much water you use in just your morning routine; with 100,000 bottles per day, Flint residents couldn’t even complete a tenth of that ritual.

To get by, the city of Flint would need 200 bottles per person per day. In a city of 102,000, that equates to 20.4 million bottles a day, and if the problem takes as long to fix as it is estimated to, then there is no plausible way we can support that need for water.

One would hope that the media covers this crisis exhaustively. All eyes need to be on Governor Snyder and anyone else involved. They’ll call this a ‘disaster’, but it is not. Disasters can’t be prevented; this could have been. With a little more human decency and a little less greed, this would never have happened. So no, this is not a disaster; this is a governmental failure and those in charge should pay the price for it.

Every other hard-working American would lose his job if they didn’t do it properly. Governor Snyder deserves to lose his too. People need to start holding their governments responsible, and this is the perfect time to start.