Flint woman living 'horrendous' reality of buying all her water

FLINT, Mich. (WJRT) - No amount of apologies or reassurances over the past decade have convinced Carol Sewell that the water coming out of her faucet is safe.

She's still living the crisis with lead in her home and completely lost trust in her city's water.

"Nothing has changed in the last 10 years," Sewell said. "We're still doing the same old stuff."

Every two weeks, she goes to the grocery store to purchase water. She brings home nine full gallons on each trip.

"Can't use the water and I can't do anything about it," Sewell said.

She uses bottled water for everything -- cooking meals, cleaning and bathing.

"You have to take gallons of water, put it in a pan, heat it up on the stove and you have to wash fast enough so the doggone water doesn't get cold," Sewell said of her bathing process.

All of this is because Sewell still doesn't trust Flint's water 10 years after the city switched its water source to the Flint River on April 25, 2014.

The more corrosive river water wasn't treated properly and ate away the protective lining inside pipes. That allowed lead particles to flake off and enter the water supply in thousands of residences, causing the Flint water crisis.

Sewell still has lead inside of her water heater and she can't afford to get it replaced while she is purchasing water to survive.

"We have less money to pay our bills and less money to get the things that we need to get done and we have to go without," she said.

At the same time, she continues paying her water bill for water she doesn't believe she can even use.

"What they've done is horrendous and they've left us in a catch-22, where we can't do anything about it, and we really don't matter," Sewell said.

Simmering under the day-to-day pain is a lack of trust that will stay with Sewell and her family forever.

"No one in Flint should have to experience this at all because this totally was not our fault," she said. "We did not want this water. We did not ask for it. But yet, we're forced to deal with the situation that we have no control over and nobody cares."