Elon Musk donates $480K to help solve Flint water crisis
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has kept his promise to help install filtration systems in Flint, Michigan, schools to address the city’s drinking water crisis.
Musk made a $480,350 donation to Flint Community Schools, enabling the installation of ultraviolet water filtration systems at 12 schools as well as an administrative building, the district said in a tweet. The devices will be installed by January 2019, MLive reported.
“The new water filtration systems will be instrumental in helping our students return to the normalcy of what should be a fundamental right: having access to safe, clean water from water fountains in their school,” Flint Community Schools Superintendent Derrick Lopez said in a statement to MLive.
The city of Flint has dealt with a water crisis since at least 2014, when officials detected dangerous levels of lead in the local water supply. The state of Michigan ended shipments of free bottled water to Flint after studies showed water quality had returned to normal, though not all local residents accepted the results.
Musk first vowed to help combat the Flint crisis in a tweet last July, writing that he would “fund fixing the water in any house in Flint that has water contamination above FDA levels.”
Flint Community Schools took to Twitter to thank Musk for his donation.
“You’re most welcome. Hope to do more to help in the future,” Musk wrote.
Musk’s donation was made public after a string of bad publicity for the Tesla CEO. Musk recently reached a settlement with federal officials that required him to pay a $20 million fine and step down as Tesla’s chairman after he was charged with misleading investors about having “funding secured” to take the company private.