Water in Flint, Michigan, has gotten so bad, one local tavern has taken to giving away free drinks for donations made in clean, drinkable H20.
That’s right — the White Horse Tavern is offering free booze or virgin beverages for plain old water.
The water drive comes about in response to lead levels in children nearly doubling city-wide in the last year since the city began pulling its drinking water from the Flint River. You can listen to an NPR report on the matter, below:
The White Horse Tavern’s drive will benefit children specifically at Durant Tuuri Mott Elementary, much like other businesses and organization around town are doing for other schools.
The White Horse writes on its Facebook page:
“Let’s bring clean water to Flint Schools!
“Starting today through Friday (Oct 2) – Bring in a case of water between 4 and 7pm, receive your favorite drink on the house*! All donations will be delivered to Durant Tuuri Mott Elementary School. Thank you for your support!
“*Qualifying beverages include beer bottles, draft beer, wine, liquor (single pour) and all non-alcoholic beverages.”
White Horse Tavern owner Chris Poulos said his daughter came up with the idea after noticing a number of other water drives being sponsored around town. According to MLive:
“Water donations have also been coming into Flint schools from several other groups, including more than 4,000 bottles of water from the 1st Congregational United Church of Christ in Kalamazoo and 84 cases from the Burton and Mt. Morris Township Home Depot stores.”
Poulos’ daughter put up the water drive post on Facebook and set the wheels in motion. He said, “I hope to be able to deliver them 20, 25 cases next week.”
Though no limit on free drinks is stated in the Facebook post, Poulos stated in order to remain a “responsible business owner,” drinks would likely be limited to two per person. He plans to drop off the donated water by Oct. 6.
NPR’s report states Flint failed to reach a short-term agreement with the city of Detroit over water, then jumped ship in April of 2014 and signed a new agreement with a new water system that will pull water from Lake Huron, only that system isn’t scheduled to be ready until sometime in 2016, so the city, trusting in the state’s repetitive assurance that Flint has “nothing to worry about,” took the shortcut of pulling water from the nearby Flint River in the meantime.
And now local bars are giving away free booze just so Flint’s children can drink clean, lead-free water in school.
That’s pure Michigan.
Featured image by Michigan Municipal League available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
