Flint Has to Pay $14-Million Up Front to Stay on Detroit Water

The Great Lakes Water Authority wants a lot of money up front to continue supplying Flint's water. Does this sound familiar? It should, because this is the same kind of tough negotiations that prompted Snyder's Emergency Managers to consider, and ultimately green light, using the Flint River for our main water source.

The Flint Water Crisis has been a confusing mess to follow from the jump. Hell, most people that live here still don't have their facts straight. And the people from nearby cities? Forget it. A good number of them think that we're somehow making them victims. With that in mind, I'm going to streamline this story as much as possible. The easier this reads, the less confused everyone will be. So here's the deal:

Flint will be switching their water source to the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), which will pull water from Lake Huron. However, Flint's facilities will not be ready to properly treat that water until summer of 2017. Since October, we have been getting our water from the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA), who pulls water from Lake Huron and treats it in Detroit (hence the nickname "Detroit water").

Flint's KWA hook-up is taking a little longer than planned, as previous estimates said the city would be ready this summer. Obviously, Flint needs to extend their contract with the GLWA to continue receiving "Detroit water" in the interim. Unfortunately, the GLWA is demanding that Flint pay in advance, and wants the first of two $6,365,700 payments by July 13th, and the second in October. There must be interest or some other charges included as well, as MLive estimates the total amount at $14 million.

The problem is that Flint doesn't have that kind of money to put up. According to City Councilman Scott Kincaide, they're about $3 million short when all is said and done. He fears that the water rates, which are already the highest in the country, may be raised to cover the deficit. That is unacceptable. Especially when you consider that the water's quality is still highly questionable, and considered completely unusable by many.

I get it. The relationship between the GLWA and Flint is not great. The "water war" is how this whole mess turned into a full-on crisis, and they're probably still upset that we'll be leaving the GLWA for the KWA. It's somewhat understandable, but this seems like a really low-class tactic to play this kind of hardball with the city after all of its water problems.

Editor's Note: I love Detroit. The city and the people, so don't take this the wrong way, Detroiters -- please don't respond to this article with the "we're not paying Flint's water bills anymore," crap. It was BS when you read it last time, and it's still BS. That's not how it works. The media played you... Let's just move on. We should all be working together, even if loudmouth radio stations and hack journalists are trying to make it a Detroit Vs. Flint thing. It's not.

DID YOU KNOW LIFETIME IS MAKING A FLINT WATER CRISIS MOVIE?