Flint’s mayor says she expects Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s request to President Barack Obama for an emergency and major disaster declaration amid the city’s water crisis to result in more help for the city.
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Gov. Rick Snyder late Tuesday activated the National Guard, and some members were expected to arrive as soon as Wednesday. Exposure to lead can cause behavior problems and learning disabilities in children.
Snyder last week declared a state of emergency in Flint and has since ramped up aid efforts. However, almost two years ago while in a state of financial emergency, in order to save money, the city decided that it would change its water supply to the notoriously filthy Flint River in order to save money while waiting for a state project to get Flint water from Lake Huron that was expected to take about two years.
The city realized savings of about $4 million annually by using the Flint River, according to The Associated Press. Aaron Dunigan waves to cars as volunteers hand out water at the Joy Tabernacle Church on Monday, Jan. 11, 2016, in Flint, Mich. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder pledged Monday that officials would make contact…
Later in the tour, he added: “The goal is to get to every household in Flint in terms of if they’ve had an opportunity to get a water filter and a blood test”.
Snyder also on Tuesday asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate responses to the Flint crisis by other federal agencies.
Wilmore summed up their attitude as: “If you’re poor, we don’t give a shit”.
On the Detroit Public Schools, which have had to shut down dozens of schools over the last week because of teacher sick-outs, Snyder said: “It’s really unfortunate because it’s coming at the expense of kids”.
A series of public decisions, driven by misguided management practices and ideological principles that backfired, converged during the past 20 months to poison the city’s drinking water and cause one of the most severe public health threats in the U.S. The extent of the risk to Flint’s residents is not clear. Art Van Furniture delivery trucks will transport the collected water to Flint weekly as long as the need exists. City officials failed to treat the water with anti-corrosives that would have cost $100 a day. By facilitating the delivery of the filters, Snyder’s office was not so much acknowledging a problem as trying to pacify Overton and others, who had been “raising so much hell” about the water, Overton said.
First, the city issued several boil water advisories in the summer of 2014. Residents immediately began complaining that the faucet water was brown, unsafe to drink and smelled bad.
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“We stand ready to support the state with additional technical staff, if requested”, FEMA spokesman Mark Peterson said in an email earlier Tuesday.
