US pushes for better tap water but must win over wary public – By Michael Phillis (AP News) / January 30, 2022
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Angela Stamps won’t drink water from her faucet, showers less and no longer takes the baths she once found relaxing. She cooks with tap water but sometimes skips rinsing her produce.
Even though the amount of lead in Flint, Michigan’s tap water has been well below a key state threshold for several years, she hasn’t been able to stop worrying since going through the trauma of the city’s lead crisis.
“I just don’t trust it,” she said.
As the Biden administration looks to spend billions of dollars to address inequalities in water quality and access, officials must try to overcome persistent public distrust of tap water. Experts say it will be especially difficult to overcome in Black and Hispanic communities, where suspicion can be entrenched because of past experiences of being misled by public officials and high-profile lead crises in cities with large Black populations, including Flint and Newark, New Jersey.
