La’Monte and Nate Williams say they have been following the lead contamination crisis in the city’s drinking water and are collecting money from family and friends to purchase water for residents.
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The crisis has been blamed on a failure of government at all levels.
WRDW noted that when looking for a certified lab, the nearest one can be found by calling the Safe Drinking Water Hotline at 800-426-4791. Lead pipes, that contributed to the poisoning of tap water in Flint, are a legacy of an era before scientists realized the severe long-term health consequences of lead exposure, yet they still carry water directly into older homes every day. In the United States, most people have all those things and more unless, of course, they have the misfortune to live in Flint, Mich. The public water supply there has been tainted since the switch to Flint River instead of Lake Huron for its water source.
But still, the water was contaminated at that point and had been for many months before.
Gov. Rick Snyder experienced some blowback on earlier statements that he and his administration made, suggesting the Flint’s elected leaders helped cause the crisis with the 2013 approval of a plan to purchase water from the Karegnondi Water Authority.
“It’s so important for people to get educated about their own water”, Brian Oram, a professional geologist and licensed soil scientist, told LifeZette.”It’s the obligation of the city or town you reside in to address any of your water concerns, but most likely you will get pushback, as it’s a bureaucracy, even if it’s a small one”. The river had a reputation for nastiness, and after the April 2014 switch, residents complained their water looked, smelled and tasted amusing.
Their responses to the crisis, the EPA said, were “inadequate to protect public health”. Snyder will outline a 2017 budget proposal in February, which is sure to include substantial funding for Flint.
Marc Edwards, an expert on municipal water quality that led the Virginia Tech study, said that the situation essentially amounts to a cover-up.
The event organizer, Karanja Cook, said he is collecting cases of bottled water, baby wipes and water filters that he will personally take to Flint this Friday. “He’s going to the challenge, and he’s fired people and accepted responsibility to fix this”, Bush said on CNN’s State of the Union. It’s very appalling. These emergency managers put us in this predicament, and they need to pay to get us out. I have never seen this level of arrogance and incompetence.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted January 21-22 among US adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult USA population.
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