Flint residents still paying bills for contaminated water as relief workers scramble to deliver emergency supplies

FLINT, Mich. — Two Michigan state patrol cars and a Penske moving truck filled with water bottles, filters and water testing kits drive slowly down Cromwell Street Saturday afternoon, stopping every few feet as uniformed National Guard officers go from house to house with arms full of supplies.

This residential area appears to have been spared the marks of economic blight that characterize so much of Flint — dilapidated houses and boarded-up buildings. But its residents have been fully exposed to the latest crisis: a chain of bureaucratic missteps that led in April 2014 to the city being provided with improperly treated river water, which corroded the plumbing system and exposed an unknown number of people to toxic levels of lead.

SLIDESHOW – Water crisis in Flint, Michigan >>>

The caravan crawling down Cromwell was one of 55 teams of National Guard, state patrol and civilian volunteers working to deliver emergency supplies to every household. So far, the state reports that between these deliveries and the five resource sites where people can also pick up free supplies themselves, more than 121,400 cases of water, 82,600 water filters and 23,400 water testing kits have been distributed.

And while residents appreciate the effort, many say what they really want is some relief from the steep utility bills they continue to pay for the contaminated water that is making them sick.

Tina Kellogg, a 33-year-old mother of two, has been enforcing a strict bottled-water-only rule in her house since the city first switched its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River nearly two years ago.

“There was no way, even though it was being cycled, that we were drinking it,” Kellogg told Yahoo News.

And while the image of the National Guard going door to door with water might “look really good,” Kellogg said she’d much rather pay $2 for a case of 35 water bottles at Walmart than pay the $160 bill she receives every month for contaminated water they only use to shower.

“I personally don’t feel that we should be having to pay a water bill at this point in time,” she said. “I think that could be a break that they should give all citizens.”

Kellogg said she associates the Flint River with news reports of dead bodies found at the bottom and the garbage she said she’s seen floating in it. Before the switch, Kellogg and her family regularly drank and cooked with tap water, but now they only use it to bathe.

“None of us have broke out in a rash, but we do watch for that,” she said, noting that they also use the tap water to brush their teeth but are careful not to swallow — a routine she’s worked hard to impose on her 9-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son.

Kellogg also wants to know if the city will have to replace its plumbing system, and if so will homeowners like herself have to do the same? Just finding out whether her house has lead or copper pipes will require a costly assessment.

“How much money is it gonna cost each individual person to change every pipe in their house?” Kellogg asked. “That’s something that the state hasn’t even thought about.”

It’s those kinds of long-term infrastructural challenges that make the disaster relief effort in Flint unique, Red Cross spokesperson Todd James told Yahoo News at the bustling American Red Cross office in Flint Saturday afternoon.

Typically used for blood donations, the nondescript brick building was transformed last week into a volunteer reception center after President Obama declared the city’s contaminated water crisis a federal emergency and authorized FEMA to organize a disaster relief effort.

Since then, more than 100 official Red Cross volunteers from throughout the country have joined the operation in Flint, and many more families, student organizations, church groups, and others keep pouring in. On Saturday alone, James said, the reception center registered more than 200 non-Red Cross volunteers, deeming it “the single largest [Red Cross] operation in one day — in Michigan, at least.”

Those who aren’t sent out with the water supply teams are back at the center putting together more test kits for people to assess the quality of their water at home. Among them were 21-year-old Myosha Reed, a math student at Michigan’s Delta College, who drove 40 minutes from Saginaw to participate in her first relief effort as a newly minted Red Cross volunteer, and 13-year-old Brendan Johnson, who came with his mom.

Johnson, who lives outside the Flint city limits, said he feels “really lucky” that his family’s water wasn’t affected in the crisis, but many of the kids he goes to school with were not as fortunate.

“A lot of my friends come to school late, some of them have told me they take showers with bottled water,” he said. “I’ve invited some of my friends over to my house to take showers and stuff.”

During his 10 years as a Red Cross volunteer, James has helped bring disaster relief to a number of communities reeling from natural disasters, like tornado-toppled Joplin, Mo., in 2011, the parts of New York and New Jersey soaked by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and Oso, Wash., which had a deadly mudslide in 2014.

But Flint is unique among the disaster responses he's participated in.

“With a natural disaster, it’s fairly obvious what’s happened,” James said. What’s happening in Flint “is still a disaster, but you can’t see it.”

Unlike in the aftermath of a tornado or hurricane, he continued, “we’re not providing temporary shelter or food for people until they can return to their homes and things go back to normal.”

Once Flint has solved the infrastructure problems underlying this disaster, James said, there will hopefully be “a new normal.” But, he added, “I don’t think anybody knows” how long that will take.

In the meantime, he said, “we’ll be here as long as we need to be here.”