In 2014, Flint changed its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River in order to save money. On January 13, state health officials said that that an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease caused 10 people to die and 77 others to become ill.
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“We’ve created this complex, no responsibility regulatory system, where the federal government, the state government, a regional government, local and county governments are all pointing fingers at one another”. The damage to the lives of Flint residents, and to their trust in government, is beyond measure.
Snyder requested $96 million in disaster relief, but Obama extended $5 million in federal emergency aid and followed Thursday with an $80 million allocation to the state of MI for federal drinking water construction aid and loans.
Rick Snyder has hired the national public relations firm Mercury LLC, where the spouse of Snyder’s new chief of staff is a senior vice president, to help with communications during the Flint water crisis. That manager approved a plan in 2013 to begin drawing drinking water from the Flint River, and the city began doing so the next year.
On Tuesday, Snyder struck a different tone with his State of the State address, apologizing to the people of Flint and saying, “I will fix it”.
Meanwhile, state officials made a decision to restore some of Weaver’s powers as the mayor of Flint, including allowing her to hire and fire city administrators and department heads with the approval of Michigan Treasurer Nick Khouri. The environmental agency’s director and communications director resigned last month.
Water from the river, known locally as a dumping ground, was more corrosive, causing more lead to leach from Flint’s aging water pipes than the Detroit water the city previously used.
The EPA, which said this week that it would take over lead sampling in the city, said Friday that the Flint treatment plant has greatly increased the level of phosphate “in order to more quickly coat the insides of the city’s pipes”. Released emails show that state officials failed to heed the concerns of EPA officials and researchers over corrosion controls, proper testing and adherence to the federal Lead and Copper Rule, which regulates the amounts of lead and copper in drinking water in the United States. Flint, a poorer, majority African-American city of 100,000 is about an hour north of Detroit. The water crisis may well result in a burden for the city’s schools as well as its health system.
When asked Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” whether the Flint disaster was a case of environmental racism, Snyder said: “Absolutely not”.
The Times has also drawn attention to the comments of filmmaker Michael Moore, a longtime apologist for the Obama administration, who has called the disaster “Governor Snyder’s [Hurricane] Katrina”.
Flint residents complained loudly and often about the water quality immediately after the switch but were repeatedly told it was safe.
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Mayor Karen Weaver’s figure appears to reflect an analysis included in a Q&A published by the city’s Water Advisory Committee last March, before the city knew it had a lead problem.
