With water purifying plants and distribution systems largely destroyed, officials have built 24 temporary water tanks.
Without Detroit, Flint would need a temporary water source until the new regional system came online.
In the meantime the Red Cross was carrying out temporary water trucking, collecting water in trucks, chlorinating it and transporting it to villages.
The plan has become a hot issue again in rural communities because the price for "temporary" water – annual rather than permanent water allocations – is soaring.
But visitors to the Games will not see the full sweep of the Hadid design because it is dwarfed by the temporary "water wings".
Next to the similarly ugly, temporary water polo venue it is not quite the dramatic "gateway" to the Park envisaged, though that will be rectified when the "wings" come off afterwards and are replaced by glass walls.
And nothing for Zaha Hadid's Aquatics Centre – also understandable given its troubled history of redesigns, budget increases, temporary "water wings" imposed on it, and the fact that, er, it still isn't finished.
Outside, on the far side of the bridge that once welcomed millions of giddy ticket-holders, you can peer into the husk of the temporary water polo arena, hollowed out until only the steel exoskeleton remains.
The city of Farmington, New Mexico, which received the first of the plume on Saturday morning, has now turned from bright orange to brown, and community leaders announced Sunday that a temporary water supply for residents would last 90 days.
The Hudson-Fulton Celebration took place in the fall of 1909, with a naval procession led by replicas of the Clermont and Hudson's ship the Half Moon to a temporary water gate, really just two great columns, at the foot of 110th Street.
One of Joyce's first decisions will be whether he accepts a recommendation in a recent review to ditch the requirement that any money earned by the commonwealth from water trading be spent on more buybacks, and whether he accepts demands for the commonwealth to be able to sell "excess" water to irrigators, increasing supply and reducing temporary water prices.
