Flint Schools Get New Drinking Fountains 4 Years After Elon Musk's Promise

A Michigan school district has drinking fountains available to students and faculty once again after four years of going without.

What Happened: Flint Community Schools showed off new drinking fountains this week, with help from Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk.

Kevelin Jones, the superintendent of Flint Community Schools, took the first sip from a drinking fountain inside a Flint school in four years on Monday.

The school district unveiled new hydration stations with a ceremony at the Southwestern Classical Academy school.

“Our scholars have not been able to drink out of our water fountains. And at this point, we have clean water coming out of our water fountains,” Jones said.

The water fountains are connected to a series of filtration systems and carbon filters that remove contamination.

Related Link: 5 Things You Might Not Know About Elon Musk 

How It Happened: Musk donated $480,000 to the Flint school district in 2018 to help take on the Flint Water Crisis. The water stations have been perfected over the year to make sure they remove bacteria and lead.

The Flint Water Crisis caught Musk’s attention and led to him to say he would provide funding to fix any house with contaminated water in Flint. Musk also pledged to help the school district with working water fountains.

In November 2021 users on Reddit highlighted that Flint still did not have clean drinking water in schools despite Musk becoming the richest man in the world.

After four years of testing and a sizable donation, Musk’s promise has been kept.

The Musk Foundation was invited, but was unable to attend the ceremony.

“They could not be here today, but they wanted to make sure that they got pictures and really be able to hear about this awesome day,” Jones said.