The news comes hours apart from a state House committee okaying $30 million meant to help Flint residents pay their high water bills. In April 2014, a state-appointed emergency manager switched the city’s water supply from the Detroit Water Plant to the Flint River as a cost-saving measure.
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Residents of Flint, Michigan, paid the nation’s highest water rates for water that was contaminated with lead, according to a report released Tuesday by Food & Water Watch.
The national uproar over lead poisoning in Flint, Mich., has drawn renewed attention to a children’s health crisis that has plagued Pennsylvania and New Jersey for decades. Flint is under a state of emergency because corrosive water was allowed to leach lead from pipes into the supply.
An artist says he’s used lead-infused paint to create a portrait of Gov. Rick Snyder amid Flint’s crisis with lead-tainted water.
On Wednesday, city officials in Flint debated how quickly to replace lead pipes in the city after officials announced different approaches to solving the city’s drinking water crisis.
“My understanding is that the EPA was aware as early as February of previous year that corrosion controls that would have prevented lead from leaching from the pipes were not being implemented, that there were serious concerns about raised levels of lead, in fact, above the enforcement action level of the EPA”, Moolenaar said.
Weaver said she welcomed the governor’s interest in working with the city to coordinate removal of the first 30 lead service lines, but noted that much more needs to be done by Snyder and others to secure full funding for her plan.
The survey also shows that water systems are publicly owned and operated in the 10 most affordable cities for water of the 500 systems surveyed.
On Wednesday, Michigan, Governor Rick Snyder said, engineers have been given one month to find the underground lead water pipes of Flint.
42 percent of the people in Flint live below the poverty level.
Additionally, the bill would require the EPA to develop a communication plan to ensure that information regarding lead levels is effectively communicated between itself, states, water utilities and water consumers.
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Meanwhile, Michael Pitt, also an attorney litigating these cases, believes their solid legal argument – that Snyder and several state officials violated the due process rights of Flint residents – makes the immunity issue moot. Water testing found Legionella bacteria in at least one Flint hospital. “The clearing away of the city’s so-called bad debt was critical to getting regional officials to come back to the table with the proposed regional authority and found the Great Lakes Water Authority”.
