Michael Moore On Flint Water Crisis: ‘Do Not Send Us Bottles Of Water’

Michael Moore, the documentary filmmaker and activist who is on the ground in his hometown of Flint, Mich., has asked people looking to help in the water crisis not to send bottled water.

Michael Moore On Flint Water Crisis

The water in Flint has been contaminated for two years, during which time the citizens of the Michigan city were unknowingly drinking poisoned water. Now that the crisis has become national news, people are looking to offer a helping hand to the affected citizens. A popular effort to help Flint residents has been to send bottled water that’s safe to drink. While the donations – including the massive ones by Pearl Jam, the Detroit Lions, Diddy and Mark Wahlberg –  are appreciated, Moore says bottled water is a poor solution to the problem.

“Flint has 102,000 residents, each in need of an average of 50 gallons of water a day for cooking, bathing, washing clothes, doing the dishes, and drinking (I’m not counting toilet flushes, watering plants or washing the car),” Moore wrote on his website. “But 100,000 bottles of water is enough for just one bottle per person – in other words, just enough to cover brushing one’s teeth for one day. You would have to send 200 bottles a day, per person, to cover what the average American (we are Americans in Flint) needs each day.”

“That’s 102,000 citizens times 200 bottles of water – which equals 20.4 million 16oz. bottles of water per day, every day, for the next year or two until this problem is fixed (oh, and we’ll need to find a landfill in Flint big enough for all those hundreds of millions of plastic water bottles, thus degrading the local environment even further),” Moore added. “Anybody want to pony up for that? Because THAT is the reality.”

How can people help? According to Moore, there are five things that need to happen:

1. Demand the removal and arrest of Rick Snyder, the Governor of Michigan.

2. Make the State of Michigan pay for the disaster that the State of Michigan created.

3. The Federal Government must then be placed in charge.

4. Evacuate any and all Flint residents who want to leave now.

5. For those who choose to stay in Flint, FEMA must create a temporary water system in each home.

Moore also included a link to a petition calling for the Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder‘s arrest.

Due to the poisoned water in Flint, thousands of residents have suffered considerable harmful effects. Babies, toddlers and children are the worst affected, suffering irreversible brain damage.

“They are ruined for life, and someone needs to tell you the truth about that,” Moore wrote. “No check you write, no truckloads of Fiji Water or Poland Spring, will bring their innocence or their health back to normal. It’s done.”