Water contamination in Benton Harbor

For four years, the people of Benton Harbor have been poisoned with contaminated water containing dangerous levels of lead that exceeded state and national laws, as well as bacteria such as E. coli.

Those responsible for the water supply in this city knew about the dangerous levels of lead, E. coli, and other bacteria in Benton Harbor pipes as early as 2018, but failed to warn residents of the severity until 2021. Benton Harbor is the only city in Michigan that has had six straight monitoring periods with levels of lead so high that water systems are required by law to take action. Despite that, the problem continued to the detriment of the health and safety of this community.

Private engineering companies, Elhorn Engineering and F&V Operations and Resource Management, Inc., also failed to follow the federal and state statutes concerning anti-corrosion measures intended to prevent lead from seeping from service pipes into the tap water and did not fulfill their obligations to notify the Benton Harbor community.

No amount of lead is safe

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) agree that there is no amount of lead that is safe for people to consume, and the goal of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act is for there to be zero lead in drinking water. Water systems are required to take action if lead levels in tap water exceed 15 parts per billion (ppb), and testing has shown levels in Benton Harbor’s water to be up to 60 times higher than that.

As a result of this preventable injustice, the residents of Benton Harbor have been poisoned by their water supply and are experiencing damaging health effects, including high blood pressure, anemia, hypertension, heart disease, kidney impairment, hearing loss, immune system dysfunction, and toxicity to reproductive organs. The impact of lead poisoning is particularly devastating on children. Even low levels of exposure in children have been shown to lead to serious mental, cognitive, and behavioral developmental delays.

The effects of environmental racism

It is nothing short of an environmental justice failure that this community – 86% of whom are Black and almost half of whom live in poverty – have been poisoned for years by water they thought was safe. Michigan state and local government officials should have learned from the Flint water crisis. Instead, they ignored members of this deprived community as they suffered lasting injuries and violated their constitutional rights. 

Taking action to obtain justice

We are a group of attorneys who are partnering with local community leaders to seek justice on behalf of this community. Part of what we are seeking through this lawsuit is monetary damages for the harm that has been caused, particularly for children, including medical monitoring for those individuals subjected to lead poisoning so they can be tested for harm going forward. We are seeking justice on behalf of the Benton Harbor residents so that the responsible parties such as state and local government officials are held accountable, the right to clean, safe water is restored, and a health disaster like this can never happen again in Benton Harbor or any other community. Click here to take action now.