NEW YORK — Walmart and several major corporations are banding together to give 6.5 million bottles of water to students in Flint, Michigan.
Walmart along with Pepsi Coca-Cola and Nestle will provide Flint’s 10,000 students with clean water throughout 2016, Walmart said Tuesday.
Flint’s tap water was recently found to be contaminated by lead, and the city entered disaster mode this month as state and federal officials struggled to provide clean water for residents.
The bottles donated by Walmart, Coke, Pepsi and Nestle will be delivered through the city’s schools.
“It’s hard to go door to door [delivering supplies],” Dan Bartlett, Walmart’s vice president of corporate affairs, told CNNMoney. “So we said, ‘Where are places that children gather?’ And it started to galvanize around schools.”
He said the companies can tap into the delivery network that already supplies bottled water to Flint schools.
Walmart employs nearly 1,000 people in the city. None of the 154 U.S. stores Walmart has slated for closure are located in Flint.
Funding to help supply Flint with clean water has flooded in from other sources including crowd funding campaigns and celebrities.
