Hopes of a turnaround in Flint jeopardized by its water crisis

FLINT, Mich. -- In a city long stereotyped for despair, some began seeing reasons for hope: a smattering of just-opened restaurants, students filling new college classrooms, fields of green growing where abandoned houses once stood.

The red-brick streets of downtown Flint became lined with once-unlikely businesses such as a crepe shop and wine bar, and nearby, hundreds did the previously unthinkable: moving into new apartments at the city's core.

A new farmers market began drawing hundreds of thousands for everything from mango ginger stilton at a cheese shop to thick, fresh-cut pork loins at a butcher. New programs lured students from around the globe to the city's campuses, an ice-skating rink opened, the planetarium got a state-of-the-art upgrade, and performances such as "Blue Man Group" put Flint on their schedule.

Even some signs of blight were beginning to fall, with hundreds of abandoned homes cleared away.

"It felt different," said Kimberly Roberson, a Flint native who directs grant-making in the city for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, "until we hit lead."

A water crisis that has flooded homes with fear and toxins has taken a tandem swipe at the city's psyche, returning it to the negative headlines it was working to escape, drawing a new spotlight to poverty and other wounds it never was able to fix and bringing a renewed sense of insecurity about what the future holds for a place that's been through so much.

From its founding, Flint's fortunes were entwined with a single industry.

First it was the fur trade, which shifted to lumber, which gave way to the horse carriages, leading to its being called Vehicle City. It was a fitting moniker for its next, most important role, as a powerhouse of auto manufacturing and the original home of General Motors.

Chevrolets and Buicks and lesser-known cars rolled off Flint's production lines, making the city a magnet for workers and ancillary businesses. At its peak in the early 1970s, GM employed 80,000 people in Flint who cashed paychecks strengthened by the United Auto Workers union born in the city. About 200,000 people lived within the city limits, alongside factories, booming commerce, model schools and thriving arts.

"This was the most beautiful place on earth," said Pamela Copeland, 72, who was a teen when she arrived in Flint in its heyday.

No one says that now. The oil crisis of the 1970s and corporate cost-cutting in the 1980s and beyond led to the decimation of manufacturing jobs in the city. Its population plummeted; crime soared with unemployment.

The stately Tudors and colonials that were symbols of middle-class prosperity became run-down emblems of urban decline.

By the time filmmaker Michael Moore released his 1989 film "Roger & Me," excoriating GM's managers for the pain they caused their workers and the city, Flint's transition from boomtown to a drab, dangerous shell was sealed in the public consciousness.

Moore was born in Flint and grew up in neighboring Davison, and his father worked at GM. What he didn't know while shooting the hard times in his hometown was it was the start of the decline -- tens of thousands more jobs would be lost, the exodus from the city would be exacerbated, and whole neighborhoods would be left deserted.

"You look at that film now," Moore said, "it makes Flint look like paradise."

Under Michigan law, debt-plagued cities such as Flint are put under the control of state-appointed emergency financial managers who have latitude in decision-making. In efforts to get the city's finances in line, its water source was changed in April 2014 from a supply treated in Detroit and piped to Flint, to Flint River water treated and disseminated locally.

It wasn't long before residents began complaining of yellow and brown water from their taps, with an unpleasant taste and smell. People began seeing rashes on their skin and hair falling from their heads. Workers at a GM plant found their parts were corroding.

Megan Crane, 33, hollers at her sons, age 7 and 8, to put down the toilet seat before flushing, fearful something toxic from the water could make it into the air.

She lost 60 pounds as she began feeling nauseated by food and crippled by migraines. Her fiance was hospitalized with pneumonia. Snatches of her cat's hair fell out. It was a painful turnaround for a city she saw making progress.

"It's been setback after setback after setback. And it looks like things are starting to come back," she said. "Things were finally starting to look up for us, instead of being on everybody's top-10 worst list, and then this happens."