President Obama came to Flint, Michigan as the drinking water crisis continues in the city.
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Barack Obama was in Flint, Michigan, to assure the residents that the water is safe to drink so long as it is filtered.
WASHINGTON – (RealEstateRama) – President Obama is on-the-ground in Flint, Michigan, where he’s taking account of the ongoing water crisis that has affected almost 100,000 residents. “I will not rest and I will make sure the leaders at every level of government don’t rest until every drop of water that flows to your homes is safe to drink, to cook with, to bathe in”.
President Obama was joined on stage by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder who was almost booed off the stage.
“I do not believe that anybody consciously wanted to hurt the people in Flint, and this is not the place to sort every screw-up that resulted in contaminated water”, Obama said.
In the meantime, Obama encouraged citizens to help flush the system by turning on their water for 5 minutes each day as part of an initiative the city has dubbed “Flush for Flint”.
Dozens of letters and people have gone to Washington D.C. amid the Flint water crisis, but Wednesday, President Obama came to Flint.
In addition to the charges against state officials, a group of Flint residents filed a complaint against the Environmental Protection Agency claiming it was negligent in its response to the crisis. “I might have ingested some lead paint when I was two or three years old, because at the time, people didn’t know it”, he said, pointing out that numerous children who ate the paint turned out to be fine.
Last month, lawyers representing residents of Flint filed a $220.2 million damages claim alleging that negligence, on the part of the US Environmental Protection Agency, had contributed to risky lead levels in the city’s water.
But he also said Glasgow tried to get assistance and get questions answered.
Since Flint has a black majority population, now a United Nations official believes that fact played into the idea of switching the water supplier.
“We have underinvested in some of our basic infrastructure that we rely on for our public health”, Obama said last week.
Obama will also hear from Flint residents before he addresses a crowd of about 1,000 people at a high school.
Earlier, Snyder was loudly booed and heckled as he apologized to the large crowd and vowed to fix the water problem in Flint.
An independent inquiry instigated by Snyder determined that the state government was mostly to blame for the problem, and the governor issued an apology.
In his conversation earlier in the day, the president said it was expressed to him that parents are anxious their kids would be shackled with a health disadvantage for the rest of their lives.
“I am one of the children that is affected by this water, and I’ve been doing my best to march in protest and speak out for all the kids that live here in Flint”, Copeny wrote last week.
The problem occurred after the city switched its water source about two years ago to cut costs. John Philo, legal director at the Jane Sugar Law Center, said the state hasn’t taken control of several financially troubled cities in more rural and white areas. However, doctors reported last September that the blood of children contained high levels of lead.
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According to a warrant request obtained by the Detroit Free Press, Glasgow talked on the phone with Busch and Prysby after tests showed Flint’s drinking water had excessive lead during the summer of 2015 and the Department of Environmental Quality officials “insisted” that Glasgow alter a July 2015 report and exclude two test sites.
