The New York Times article, “As Flint Fought to Be Heard, Virginia Tech Team Sounded Alarm,” compared Virginia Tech’s discoveries with Flint’s tap water to an “alarm.” The research team at Virginia Tech initially began investigating Flint’s problems after a professor, Marc Edwards, received a complaint from an associate that lives there. The Flint resident complained about the dirty tap water coming from the sinks and the city’s lack of action. Shocked to hear this, the professor and his team sent out several test kits to examine water samples. The team’s finding were shocking to say the least, they found hazardous levels of lead and other harmful findings. Now armed with this information they sounded the “alarms” metaphorically by publishing the data and spreading the word. This metaphor is important because it helps us understand how much it took for the City of Flint to actually step up and recognize the problem it had under it’s nose. It’s very shocking that the city refused to take action and stop its residents from getting lead poisoning until this issue become known nationwide. Although it’s taking major steps in working with Virginia Tech University to try and fix the water problem, clearly Flint’s municipality needs some reform, since it takes a University to sound the “alarms” for it to fix serious issues.
ENG 2150: Writing II
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