USA health officials, the Governor and Flint officials are now urgently warning residents to get their water tested or test it themselves, because the filters they have been handing out to homeowners may not be getting the job done.
Advertisement
Rick Snyder did the right thing last week when he accepted responsibility for the Flint water crisis in his annual State of the State speech: “I’m sorry I let you down”. There also is funding to hire outside experts to assess whether Flint’s water system infrastructure must be replaced or repaired. Reports surfacing Friday suggest that up to 250 residents outside Flint have been affected by the lead-contaminated water. The Filters have a ceiling of about 150 parts per billion for lead.
State Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, D-Flint, issued a statement praising the federal response to the water crisis. How many people in the city who have been using the tap water, even with filters, is unclear. FOX59 teamed up with local partners to put on a water for Flint campaign to assist those people living without clean drinking water.
“It’s time to stand up and recognize that things could have been done differently”, Snyder said before signing the aid legislation. Another state spokesman had said earlier it was provided continuously in the building. In Chagrin Falls, the Ohio EPA, an arm of the Kasich administration, first found signs of lead pollution in water fountains at an elementary school with older, corroded pipes way back in August, but only this week did officials shut off the water and begin providing students and teachers with bottled water. Residents were told not to drink the water and a public health emergency was declared by the Genesee County Health Department in October, and Flint’s mayor declared a state of emergency in December.
The 274 pages cover 2014 and 2015, including an 18-month period during which the city switched its water source to the Flint River while under state financial management until it reconnected to Detroit’s system because of lead contamination blamed on state regulatory failures. A lifetime resident of Flint, like Isbell, Louis says she is fed up with bottled water – the constant pickups, and the uncertainty every time she turns on the faucet. He also learned of health risks associated with long-term exposure to the disinfectant byproducts but was told that state regulators were working with the city to address it.
The notices, however, described Flint’s water as safe to drink.
Highlighting the hypocrisy on environmental policy are politicians like Republican White House hopeful John Kasich, the governor of OH, who was asked about the crisis in Flint during a nationally televised debate on Thursday night.
He said high levels of lead in blood can affect brain development in children and cause kidney problems and high blood pressure in adults. They were never created to handle major contaminations.
Advertisement
In fact, they never did, and in any event, had all the power taken from them under the emergency manager rule. Many believe that the state was deliberately ignoring the basic needs of the city because sixty percent of the residents are black.
