As several hundred protestors gathered outside the state capitol, Tuesday, they were calling for Governor Rick Snyder to resign after the Flint water crisis. “I will spare no resource to effectively and permanently solve this crisis and ensure you have the quality of life you deserve”.
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I’m sorry, most of all, that I let you down. The emails are expected to be published on the governor’s website sometime Wednesday morning, and will represent all emails sent out or received by the governor in regards to Flint’s water in 2014 and 2015, with only certain personal information possibly redacted.
In his annual State of the State speech, the embattled governor said federal, state and local leaders had failed Flint residents.
“You deserve better. You deserve accountability”. You deserve to know that the buck stops here, with me.
Flint resumed using Detroit water, which comes from Lake Huron, in October. The governor, who previously apologized for regulatory failures and for an underwhelming initial response, rejected calls for his resignation.
Snyder has declared an emergency in the city and deployed the National Guard to help distribute drinking water there. He plans to make a bigger request in his February budget proposal.
He promised to seek $28 million in state funds for Flint residents to provide more bottled water, health care for children in the city, and improvements to the city’s troubled infrastructure. That money will also be spent to cover the bills for testing children not only for lead, but the developmental disabilities and behavioral problems lead poisoning can cause.
The money request is the latest action taken by Snyder to address the ongoing crisis in Flint pertaining to the switch from the Detroit Water and Sewerage System in 2014 to drawing water from the Flint River. As a result, lead leached from pipes and fixtures into the drinking water. But Marc Edwards, an environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech who investigated high lead levels in Flint, tells The Associated Press it was “very likely”.
“There’s real danger that the injury is going to be permanent and lifelong in them”, Dr. Philip Landrigan, Dean of Global Health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, told CBS News. That’s why 500 more residents joined a class action lawsuit yesterday seeking damages.
The fiasco has bruised Snyder, a former venture capitalist and computer executive who took office in 2011 billing himself as a practical decision-maker and a “tough nerd”.
“No citizen of this great state should endure this kind of catastrophe”.
Protestors blamed the state appointed emergency manager Darnell Earley for making the decision to switch.
“Our first priority is to make sure the water in Flint is safe, but we also must look at what the agency could have done differently”, the agency said in a statement. Snyder said he had commissioned new studies to help figure out how to improve schools.
Flint isn’t the only crisis Snyder is dealing with at the moment.
“The time to act is now and avoid court intervention that could cost all of us much more and be much more detrimental”, he said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies are already involved in the response in Flint, HHS said.
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“He’s not going to be anyone that anybody trusts”, Hier said.
