Flint switched back to Detroit’s system in October previous year.
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Notably missing was Gina McCarthy, the head of the Obama administration’s EPA, who on March 17 was called upon to testify before a Congressional hearing on Flint.
In December, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Director Dan Wyant resigned after the task force laid most of the blame for the city’s water crisis at the feet of his agency. A state-employed nurse reportedly dismissively told a Flint mother whose son was diagnosed with an elevated blood lead level: “It is just a few IQ points”.
“One of the things I’ve always talked about is, whether it’s good news or bad news, we’ve got to be honest with people and let them know what’s going on”, Weaver said. He blamed career bureaucrats in Washington and in his state but also repeatedly apologized for his role in the crisis, which occurred when the city, under state financial management, switched the water supply to the Flint River in 2014 to save money.
The panel, appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder to review the disaster, said what happened in Flint is “a story of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction, and environmental injustice”.
Congressman Dan Kildee attended the meeting not to discuss the future of sustainable water so much as to discuss the current crisis in Flint. A federal state of emergency has been declared in Flint due to risky levels of contamination in the water supply.
On Tuesday, Earley fielded hours of withering questioning from members of both parties-but especially Democrats- for the decisions that led to the slow poisoning of Flint’s residents by drinking water that was contaminated with lead and harmful bacteria.
Since April, 2014, Flint, Michigan has been experiencing a health crisis after switching its water supply from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the Flint River.
Support the city of Flint to identify and prioritize replacement of lead service lines and other infrastructure to ensure Flint’s water system is suitable for drinking and everyday use. The EPA effectively has condoned “cheating” on the agency’s Lead and Copper Rule to the detriment of the public, Edwards said. “Officials say the person was not a county resident but was being treated at a local hospital when he or she developed symptoms of the disease”.
MI residents learned about the outbreak Jan 13, 2016, when the state governor told them that he learned about it a couple of days before.
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State Senator Jim Ananich (D-Flint) says he also wants to hear from former Flint emergency managers and from Governor Rick Snyder. “A total of 26 people, or 30%, had no known exposure to a Flint hospital in the two weeks prior to illness, nor were their homes on the Flint water system”. We trust these people that we put in chargeand they don’t know what they are doing and it sometimes seems that they couldn’t care less about innocent people.
