Some cities are struggling to maintain their drinking water systems.
However, it all comes down to money.
The most well-known drinking water crisis in Michigan was Flint. Government officials made some bad decisions and children were poisoned.
"Flint was a financial crisis long before it was a water crisis, and those two things are intricately connected."
That’s Stephanie Leiser, a lecturer at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. She says a government attempt to save money caused the water crisis.
New federal money is coming to Michigan to fix things like water infrastructure. But cities have been patching together their systems a long time.
“The backlog is so big, the deferred maintenance is so large that I doubt it's going to make a huge difference.”
Leiser and other experts say the real difference will come when the feds, state, and towns find a way to fix the funding problem long term.