Flint, Michigan is in a measurably better place than it was during the peak of its water crisis, but the city is still dealing with serious long-term consequences. The water now meets federal safety standards and has for nearly a decade. About 98% of the city’s lead service lines have been replaced. Yet the health toll on children exposed during the crisis is becoming clearer with time, the population continues to shrink, and many residents still don’t fully trust what comes out of their taps.
The Water Is Safe, but Work Remains
Flint’s tap water has been in compliance with federal lead testing standards for 10 consecutive years. Nearly 11,000 lead service lines identified under the original settlement agreement were replaced by July 2025, covering roughly 98% of residential lead lines in the city. About 500 lines still need replacement, mostly belonging to residents who initially opted out or lines discovered during a citywide inventory completed in late 2024.
The city also completed a secondary water source project, blending water from the Great Lakes Water Authority with supply from the Genesee County Drain Commissioner. Follow-up testing wrapped up in May 2023 and confirmed the backup supply meets quality standards. Michigan has also tightened its own rules: as of January 2025, the state’s lead action level dropped from 15 parts per billion to 12, stricter than the federal standard.
Despite these improvements, trust is slow to return. Surveys of Flint residents have found that more than half reported spending extra money on bottled water and over a third purchased water filters, even after the city declared the water safe. For many people in Flint, the numbers on a compliance report don’t erase what happened.
Children Are Paying the Highest Price
The most sobering part of Flint’s story is what’s happening to the kids who were exposed to lead-contaminated water during critical years of brain development. The Flint Registry, which tracks the health of over 21,000 people affected by the crisis, paints a troubling picture. As of early 2024, about 15% of children in the registry had been diagnosed with anxiety and 10% with depression. Nationally, those rates for kids of similar ages are 9.4% and 4.4%, respectively.
Almost half of parents enrolled in the registry reported that their children were living with behavioral problems as of 2022, including attention issues, aggression, hyperactivity, and difficulty adapting. Seventeen percent of Flint children in the registry have a learning disability. Fifteen percent have a speech or language disorder. Fourteen percent have a developmental delay. Six percent have been diagnosed with autism. More than 20% are on special education or early intervention plans.
The academic data tracks with these health outcomes. Math scores dropped for third through eighth graders across Flint following the crisis, and the number of students needing special education services rose by 8%. Asthma rates are also elevated, another condition linked to lead exposure. These children will need support for years, possibly decades, and the full scope of the damage may not be visible for a generation.
A Shrinking City Trying to Rebuild
Flint’s population has been declining for decades, and the water crisis accelerated that trend. The city had 102,434 residents in the 2010 census. By 2020, that number had fallen to 81,252. Between 2020 and mid-2024, the population dropped another 1.9%. Only about 54.5% of residents 16 and older are in the labor force, well below the national average.
There are, however, concrete signs of investment. A five-story mixed-use development called the YMCA Living project is under construction on a long-vacant downtown lot. It will include 50 apartments, a medical rehabilitation facility, office space, and a full-service YMCA with a lap pool, basketball court, exercise studios, and after-school programming. The project received state funding support in early 2023.
On a larger scale, the Advanced Manufacturing District of Genesee County is a 1,000-acre site positioned to attract industrial investment. In May 2024, the Michigan Strategic Fund approved $250 million from the Strategic Site Readiness Program for land acquisition and infrastructure development at the site, on top of an additional $9.2 million approved the prior month. The state also designated Flint as home to one of Michigan’s Small Business Support Hubs, part of a $73 million statewide program announced in late 2023 to help entrepreneurs access resources and funding.
These are real dollars flowing into the area, but transforming a 1,000-acre manufacturing site into a functioning employment hub takes years. Flint’s economic recovery is a long game.
The Settlement Hasn’t Made People Whole
A major legal settlement was reached to compensate Flint residents, and tens of thousands of claims have been submitted. The review and processing of those claims is ongoing. For many residents, the financial resolution has been painfully slow. The crisis touched virtually every household in the city, and the bureaucratic reality of processing that volume of claims means that some families are still waiting for compensation years after the settlement was announced.
Beyond the legal process, the emotional and psychological toll persists. Residents describe lasting anger and a sense of betrayal by the institutions that were supposed to protect them. Marcell Simmons, a clean water activist in Flint, told Harvard’s school of public health that he was “a whole lot sharper prior to the water crisis” and that a decade later, the rage hasn’t faded. Parents describe being on edge watching their children for signs of developmental problems, unsure which struggles are normal childhood challenges and which trace back to lead.
Where Things Stand Overall
Flint in 2025 is a city with cleaner water, new construction downtown, and hundreds of millions in state investment on the horizon. It is also a city that lost a fifth of its population in 14 years, where children have anxiety and depression diagnoses at rates far above the national average, and where residents still buy bottled water because the government broke their trust. The pipes are largely fixed. The people are not. Recovery is real, but it is partial and uneven, and for the youngest residents of Flint, the consequences of the crisis are still unfolding.