Grosse Pointe HS Student May Have Solved the Flint Water Crisis [VIDEO]

Crooked and incompetent politicians couldn't get it done with 2.5 years and hundreds of millions of dollars, but this kid might've cracked the Flint Water Crisis with nothing more than his love of chemistry.

The water crisis has never gone away here in Flint, but the national news coverage of it certainly did. Despite what people outside of Genesee County think -- the water crisis is still very much affecting the people of Flint. Until the state's recent closure of the water distribution sites, the crisis had all but vanished from the public eye.

The issue has been so swept under the rug that the people of Flint are now trying to convince the state government (again) that the water is still not safe, and the free water distribution sites are a necessity. Some will not feel safe using the water until all the pipes have been replaced, and many will never trust anything flowing from their tap again.

While the local "leadership" continues to endlessly squabble and move slowly, often times in the wrong direction, on solving even the simplest of problems, there is a bit of hope. An 18-year-old Grosse Pointe North High School student named Michal Ruprecht is not only sympathetic to the plight of those in Flint -- he's actually trying to fix the problem.

Michal, using his love of chemistry, is working with a team of college students to create a way to remove harmful elements from water. Ruprecht explains their efforts much better than I could, so I'll just use his words:

"We eventually created a Ligand, which is a molecule that binds to other molecules and it basically has the potential of removing harmful substances from water. So how we like to think about it is like an arm claw. So our Ligand comes in and it kind of grabs the harmful substance out."

Michal has been awarded a travel grant in order to present his idea nationally, which will hopefully lead to his team bringing a solution to Flint. "That's really our end term goal -- to go back to Flint and actually help those people and do more community outreach there."

Flint's crisis going national did shine a light on the dangerous issue of water safety, and many experts believe that many other communities will be forced to deal with this in the not-so-distant future. Hopefully, this bright young man and his team's work can prevent something like this from happening elsewhere.