Jaden Smith’s foundation and a local church are joining forces to bring cleaner water to Flint, Michigan.
The 20-year-old’s JUST goods foundation and First Trinity Missionary Baptist Church have jointly announced that they will be deploying a mobile water filtration that they designed and engineered together.
The Water Box, as the new system is called, reduces lead and other potential contaminants. Its introduction to the city comes as bottled water donations to Flint continue to decline. Flint that has struggled to recover from a state-led water crisis due to the contamination of its primary water source, a crisis that burst into national headlines in April 2014.
Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced last April that
the state would stop providing free water bottles to residents of Flint because the city’s water quality had “tested below action levels of the federal Lead and Copper Rule for nearly two years.”
But that is far from the case.
“We’re continuing to address our water issues and changing the lead and galvanized pipes and getting lead out of Flint,” Flint Mayor Karen Weaver told
ESSENCE last month.
First Trinity and JUST will host a private launch of the Water Box on Saturday, March 2.
