In an announcement January 16 on her Twitter page, singer Cher said thousands of bottles of water secured through working with Icelandic Glacial will be heading to the city of Flint.
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Barack Obama has declared a state of emergency in Flint, Michigan, where a lead-poisoning crisis has left residents without safe drinking water for the past two years.
A financially struggling city, Flint was under control of a state-appointed emergency manager when it switched its source of tap water from Detroit’s system to the nearby Flint River in April 2014 to save money.
In today’s statement FEMA said it can provide assistance in the form of water, water filters, water filter cartridges, water test kits, and other necessary related items for a period of no more than 90 days.
The president also offered to find other available federal assistance, according to the news release. “But aid under that designation tends to be far less and far more limited, allowing, for instance, for debris removal and emergency measures, not the kind of permanent work Snyder is seeking to have done replacing water lines with lead in them”.
The New York Times also reports that Michigan’s attorney general opened an investigation into the lead contamination on Friday to see if any laws were broken amidst the crisis.
On Thursday, House Democratic Leader Tim Greimel said Snyder should resign if he was aware of the dangers posed by Flint’s water and failed to respond appropriately.
Protesters calling for Governor Snyder’s resignation and urging president Obama to visit Flint when he is in Detroit for next week’s auto show.
The FEMA fact sheet stipulates that, “Should the state request federal disaster assistance, FEMA will review the request and make a recommendation to the president, who will make the final determination on any disaster aid to be provided to the state”. But in August, researchers from Virginia Tech performed in-home testing and found elevated levels of lead in the drinking water.
However, the corrosive water was not treated properly, which led to metal leaching from old pipes.
That omission is believed to be responsible for water that tasted, smelled and looked bad to many residents.
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Federal prosecutors are already probing the debacle and the state’s health department has just started investigating whether an increase of Legionnaires’ disease cases – seven of them fatal – could be linked to the water.
