The state’s Department of Environmental Quality failed to enforce safe drinking water regulations, the Department of Health and Human Services failed to ensure public safety, and a succession of four state-appointed emergency managers botched a series of decisions that could not be vetted by elected officials in Flint.
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“Many of the recommendations made in this report are already being implemented, both within my own office and in various state departments”.
When the switch was made, the DEQ failed to require the addition of needed corrosion-control chemicals as part of the treatment process, and the corrosive Flint River water ate into pipes, joints and fixtures, causing lead to leach into the water flowing into Flint homes and businesses. “[She said] she first learned of the city’s lack of corrosion control on June 30, 2015, roughly 14 months after the city’s drinking water source was switched from the Detroit water system to the Flint River”, Michigan Live reported.
“Given the demographics of Flint, the implications for environmental injustice can not be ignored or dismissed”.
The governor appointed the five-member task force in October, saying it would conduct an independent review of what led to the lead poisoning of Flint’s drinking water and “offer recommendations for future guidelines to protect the health and safety of all state residents”.
It concluded that primary responsibility for the crisis in Flint, Mich., lies with a state environmental agency called the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality-though it said others are also to blame.
“Flint water customers were needlessly and tragically exposed to toxic levels of lead and other hazards through the mismanagement of their drinking water supply”, investigators said.
“When this task force came together I asked them to be completely unbiased in determining how the Flint water crisis occurred”, Snyder said.
The report also slams the state’s emergency manager law, something which has been a hallmark of the Snyder administration.
The Congressman names the continued economic and government services cuts for Flint’s failure to continue to sustain itself.
And while the federal EPA may indeed have been too slow to step in, the report makes it quite clear that the “other parties” to blame are primarily state appointees, and, though it doesn’t explicitly say so, an out-of-touch governor himself.
Snyder, who appointed the task force in October, joined task force members at Mott Community College in Flint Wednesday morning for the report’s release. But Flint deserves more than an apology – responsibility is making it right for the people of Flint. Many Flint residents have accused the governor of failing to take their claims seriously. It is factually wrong, but since the Mayor and Flint City Council, all of whom are Democrats, are responsible for Flint leaving their county consortium that pumped out of Lake Huron and started to pump the water supply from the Flint river, the reason why he did it is understandable.
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Three months later, police still don’t know who broke in.
