A Chicago firefighter is pledging to collect 1,500 cases of bottled water to donate to Flint, Michigan, which has been hard hit by a water crisis the past two years.
According to DNAInfo, Firefighter Eric Washington was inspired to take action by his own memories of growing up on Chicago’s South Side, which, like Flint, is a predominantly black community that was too often deprived of essential resources.
Washington plans to drive a truck packed with clean water from Chicago to Flint and drop the cases off to Flint’s First Trinity Missionary Baptist Church.
According to a report from MLive, the crisis originated in April 2014 when the source of Flint’s municipal water was switched to the Flint River. This led to contamination of the city’s drinking water, with research showing increased levels of lead in children in the community after the switch.
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