An EPA spokeswoman said that the agency recently advised water authorities in Flint and also MI at large to “remove instructions for pre-stagnation flushing from their instructions to samplers”. The EPA’s regional director stepped down in late January.
Advertisement
Michigan’s top environmental regulator says the state should have required the city of Flint to treat its water for corrosion after elevated lead levels were first discovered in the city’s water a year ago.
Flint’s drinking water became contaminated with lead in April 2014 after the city, while under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, temporarily switched its source from Lake Huron water treated by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to water from the Flint River, treated at the Flint water treatment plant. Lead exposure can cause learning disabilities and other behavioral problems in children.
The Associated Press article, “Would Flint have suffered a water crisis if it were wealthier, whiter?” appearing in the Gazette on January 22, attempts to frame the Flint water crisis along racial lines as blame is nearly exclusively assigned to the Republican governor of MI.
The agency will be part of a multi-agency team, including the US Postal Inspection Service and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Criminal Investigation Division.
But Earley’s attorney said the subpoena was not issued in time for his client to testify, according to CNN.
An FBI spokeswoman said the agency was determining whether federal laws were broken, but declined further comment.
The city of Flint is now dealing with a “man-made” disaster after a decision to switch from the Detroit water system to the polluted Flint River left local residents with brown, foul-smelling water.
Democratic lawmakers, who oppose the emergency manager law that gives the state broad financial powers in municipalities and school districts, had called for Earley’s resignation because of the rolling teacher sick-outs over complaints about the district’s decaying facilities and wrecked finances – forcing dozens of Detroit schools to close intermittently in recent months – and for Earley’s 16-month stint as the emergency manager in Flint.
“As emergency manager, Earley has showen a willful and deliberate indifference to our schools’ increasingly unsafe and unhealthy conditions, and a blatant disrespect of teachers, school employees, parents and the student of this city”, says Ivy Bailey, interim president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers. Flint reveals that there is a much deeper contamination poisoning our country’s political morals: Namely, an insidious right-wing belief that poor people (particularly people of color who’re poor) are underserving moochers whose misfortunes can be ignored – even when their misfortunes stem directly from the discriminatory practices of slippery elites like Snyder, who’re showing that they’re not fit to hold public office.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said aid to Flint must not add to US budget deficits for “what is a local and state problem”. Also on Tuesday, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy was meeting with officials and community leaders in Flint.
“Flint residents will not have to pay for water they can not drink”, Snyder said.
Advertisement
With the intent of saving money for the economically depressed town of about 100,000, government officials opted to switch the water supply from the Detroit system to a new pipeline consortium under construction.
