Elon Musk is taking on the Flint water crisis and has pledged to get clean water to every house in Flint, Michigan that does not currently have it. Best of all, he did it via Twitter.
Wednesday afternoon, Twitter user @DylanSheaMusic, who currently has roughly 530 followers, tweeted at Musk saying, “Hey @elonmusk I heard a bunch of people saying there’s NO WAY you could help get clean water to Flint, Michigan. Said you wouldn’t be capable idk.”
Musk apparently took the tweet as a challenge, responding a few minutes later saying, “Please consider this a commitment that I will fund fixing the water in any house in Flint that has water contamination above FDA levels. No kidding.”
Please consider this a commitment that I will fund fixing the water in any house in Flint that has water contamination above FDA levels. No kidding.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2018
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO went on to say that for now, people can reply to his tweet with ppm and pub test results, and if they exceed FDA levels he will send someone to install a water filter. Musk also said he will create an email address ([email protected]) that will begin working Thursday, because he’s currently traveling in China.
Musk says that most houses in Flint have safe water, but they’ve lost faith in government test results and there are still homes that are outliers. He says that he will “organize a weekend in Flint to add filters to those houses.”
The government has claimed that the drinking water in Flint is currently safe to drink; however, many residents have claimed that is not the case.
In April testing put Flint in the 90th percentile at 4 ppb of lead, which is below the federal action level of 15 ppb, according to the state.
The offer to clean Flint’s water come a week after Musk sent SpaceX and Boring Company engineers to Thailand where they created a “kid-sized submarine” in an attempt to assist rescuers in saving 12 kids and their soccer coach who were trapped in a flooded cave. The sub wasn’t quite what was needed for the task, and the team escaped the cave anyway.
Last year Musk sent Tesla batteries to Puerto Rico after the island was left without power after Hurricane Maria.