The committee invited three officials – Miguel Del Toral, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) water official, former EPA regional head Susan Hedman and former Flint emergency manager Darnell Earley – to testify before the oversight panel on Wednesday.
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“We’re calling on the U.S. Marshals to hunt him down and serve him that subpoena”, Chaffetz said at the start of the hearing. Gary Peters a baby bottle full of contaminated water after a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on February 3, 2016. We play highlights from the hearing, including Flint resident LeeAnne Walters, who was one of the first to sound the alarm about lead contamination in the water. The plaintiffs in the case (PDF) say they contracted the type of bacterial pneumonia shortly after being treated at McLaren Flint between 2014 and 2015, when Flint changed its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River, which is now understood to be contaminated with unsafe levels of lead.
“We know what happened here”, Fieger said in a statement.
The latest data indicates water filters appear to be working in Flint, federal officials said Thursday, citing recent EPA tests. All of them have been affected and exposed to the unsafe drinking water of Flint.
Officials haven’t said whether criminal or civil charges might follow the investigation. He said the governor was looking at a variety of ways to address health concerns in Flint. Unfortunately, a prior Congressional hearing this week did not include top state officials, including emergency financial managers appointed by you to run the city of Flint. So a household that pays $150 a month could get a $46 monthly credit, or about $1,100 for 24 months of having water that has had a host of problems, not just lead-related.
He described the situation in Flint – the misguided switch, the sloppy testing, the slow government response – as “part “1984” and part ‘Enemy of the State'”.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Wednesday that federal agencies have made “substantial progress” in responding to Snyder’s requests.
In Washington, Senators Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow, Democrats from MI, pushed for $600 million in aid – mostly in federal funds – to help Flint replace pipes and provide health care.
“The increase of the illnesses closely corresponds with the timeframe of the switch to the Flint River water”. Most recently, emails showed the state trucked in bottled drinking water for its own staff while residents were still being told the tainted water was safe for them to drink.
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In his opening remarks, committee chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz introduced several documents suggesting that EPA officials had not acted quickly enough in Flint in the face of numerous warnings, some of them from inside the agency.
