It’s been a pretty good year for FLEX High School student Markeysa Peterson – even with a pandemic going on. She’s on her way to graduating, she got a job at the new Flint Community Water Lab…and she was quoted in People magazine!
When the city of Flint, Michigan switched its water supply from the Detroit River to the Flint River, it took officials more than a year to admit there was E. coli and lead in the water. Now, a group of local high school and college students is hoping to restore trust in the water system among their neighbors through the new McKenzie Patrice Croom Flint Community Lab, also known as the Flint Community Water Lab. For the next three years, they will work alongside chemists from the University of Michigan to test the water in more than 20,000 Flint homes and share the results.
Excerpt from People:
Markeysa Peterson, 17, tells PEOPLE she joined the lab to help people struggling in the wake of the crisis. Her nephew Curtis was diagnosed with autism due to lead contamination.
“We have to go through the everyday struggle of teaching him how to develop and function,” she says. “The crisis has made me a bit mentally distraught — everybody in Flint is struggling because we don’t have the attention or support that we deserve.”