The campaign that raises the most money to supply clean drinking water to Flint, Michigan, residents between Friday, Jan. 22 and Friday, Jan. 29 will receive an additional $10,000 from GoFundMe. Here is some of the best reporting we’ve seen on the failures that led up to Flint’s water crisis. Flint could have elected then to sign a new contract with the the Detroit water system (indeed, Flint eventually reconnected to Detroit water after the situation in the city became a full-fledged, hair-on-fire crisis).
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The controversial approach to water testing is so widespread that it occurs in “every major United States city east of the Mississippi” according to an anonymous source with extensive knowledge of the lead and copper regulations.
Tomczyk said that the community has been very responsive in light of ABC’s broadcast, noting that by Wednesday night, she had people wanting to help with translation and people wanting to help deliver water.
“They were more concerned about the politics than the public health emergency”.
“The department people, the heads, were not being given the right information by the quote-unquote experts, and I use that word with great trial and tribulation because they were considered experts in terms of their background, these are career civil servants that had strong science, medical backgrounds in terms of their research”, Snyder said. “They work for me, so I accept that responsibility”.
The documents in question were obtained via FOIA by Dr. Yanna Lambrinidou, who sat on the Environment Protection Agency taskforce that recently proposed revisions on the federal rules for lead.
“In many cases, utilities and customers will have to work collaboratively to remove lead service lines”, LaFrance added in his comments.
On January 5, the government declared a federal state of emergency in Flint because of risky levels of lead in the public’s water supply.
During the MSNBC interview, Snyder rejected a charge by critics that his administration would have responded more quickly to Flint’s water problems dating back to April 2014 if the city predominately African-American and low-income city were rich and white. “The move changed the overall lead level results to acceptable from unacceptable”, the Free Press reported. A General Motors engine plant in Flint found that the city’s water corroded parts, and stopped using it, and a hospital saw that the water was damaging its instruments.
The city last fall resumed buying Detroit water, drawn from Lake Huron, and experts said they believe lead levels are already dropping with the addition of phosphate, which helps form an interior coating on the pipes to prevent lead leaching. However, the new pipeline wasn’t finished yet, leading the city to temporarily get water from the Flint River, which hadn’t been used to supply municipal water since the 1960s.
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After becoming aware of the polluted tap water four months ago, Lucia said she’s been forced to buy bottled water because she scared of going to a distribution center.
