The reason why flints water got contaminated was because the city was trying to do things on the cheap. They first stopped getting their water from the city of detroits supply, instead going to the flint river for its intake. Secondly, again to save money, the city council decided not to put minerals in the water supply to keep the lead from leeching out of the older pipes. They did this knowing the likely result was lead contamination. Now the cover-up and obfuscation from state
Officials was real. But the proximate cause for the contamination was the city going on the cheap and failing to take adequate precautions to safeguard their water supply. And at the end of all of this, the upshot is that flint is once again getting their supply of water from detroit, and putting minerals in the water to prevent lead leeching.
Meanwhile, I wonder how much of the bad plumbing has been replaced....