You can’t drink the water in Flint, but you still have to pay for it!!

Residents are demanding relief from bills for poisoned water — but they worry about losing their houses if they don’t pay.

FLINT, Mich. — Takeisha Major and her two sons moved into their home on Agree Avenue in East Flint, Mich., on Nov. 1, 2015. By Dec. 11, Major had already received two bills from the city of Flint for water and sewer fees totaling $655.64. She refuses to pay.

“I will not pay to be poisoned,” the 28-year-old Flint native said at her kitchen table Monday evening. “It’s not just me; my children have to live here. I will not pay for my kids to have lead in their blood.”

Less than a month before Major and her boys, ages 2 and 9, moved to their new house, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder ordered Flint to rejoin the Detroit water system, where the city had long gotten its water from before it switched in April 2014 to the Flint River. For more than a year, Flint residents complained about the smell and color of the water, about skin rashes and hair loss.

Several water-boil advisories were issued following positive tests for coliform bacteria (indicating contamination from sewage) and trihalomethanes, which pose a cancer risk. Finally, after the release of two reports in September 2015 showing elevated lead levels in the blood of Flint residents, particularly children, Snyder acknowledged there was a problem with the water.

But by then the damage had been done. The improperly treated river water had corroded the city’s lead pipes, likely leaching the toxic metal into any water that might now pass through them.

This month Snyder declared a state of emergency and activated Michigan’s National Guard to distribute bottles of water, filters and test kits to Flint residents. On Jan. 16, President Obama answered the governor’s call to do the same.

Despite all this, Flint residents continue to receive monthly water bills from the city.

And these aren’t your average water bills. Well before the water was contaminated, Flint residents had been paying some of the highest water rates in the country. The average family pays the city of Flint upward of $150 for water every month. It was a financial burden that, for many, had become too much to bear even for clean water. According to Flint attorney Val Washington, who successfully sued the city last August for illegally hiking the price of water 35 percent between Sept. 16, 2011, and Aug.17, 2015, the city placed 21,000 liens against residents’ homes for delinquent water bills.