“The Flint population has faced struggles over the years”, says Wildman, who is a Flint native and still lives in Genesee County. Even after Governor Snyder announced that Flint would switch back to Detroit’s water system, the damage was permanent.
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The report, which tested surface water and fish for PFCs in 13 sites around the state, was not created to evaluate drinking water, Jennifer Eisner, a public information officer for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, told the Intercept. State Treasurer Nick Khouri says that five thousand of the 29,000 residential water customers in Flint are delinquent on their bills.
A 2014 Pennsylvania Department of Health annual report revealed that children in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area have higher lead concentrations in their blood than children in Flint, Michigan.
One problem Franz sees with the way things are being handled in Flint is the lack of involvement between the city managers and community members. “It is clear he knew that Flint’s water was poisoned for at least a year and shipped in bottled water for state employees, all while ignoring the concerns of Flint’s anxious, mostly poor and Black, residents”.
The state and federal governments have committed over $100 million in relief funding, but it remains uncertain when Flint residents will once again have potable water.
Weaver has asked for $55 million for her lead pipe replacement plan. “The grant can be used to help replace water pipes…”, Snyder said today.
Snyder said that means the city will be able to start removing priority lead service lines within the next 30 days, although Flint Mayor Karen Weaver’s Fast Start plan calls for some lines to be replaced starting next week. The water leached lead from old home plumbing. This week, Snyder proposed additional spending for the future nutritional and educational needs of the roughly 9,000 Flint kids younger than 6.
This is the time for the federal government to take action and provide the funding that our community water systems desperately need, but the Obama administration has failed to do so.
Released Feb. 17, the report said Section 1414 of the Safe Drinking Water Act authorizes the EPA to notify the state and the public water system when it learns of a drinking water violation, and to allow the water utility to come into compliance.
EPA officials said the agency worked within the framework of the law to “repeatedly and urgently communicate” steps that the state of MI and city of Flint needed to take to properly treat Flint’s water.
An EPA spokeswoman said Thursday that the agency’s ability to oversee the situation in Flint was limited by “resistance and failures at the state and local levels to work with EPA in a forthright, transparent and proactive manner”.
“He was just that type of a person that he always wanted a challenge”, said Sheila Bentley, who graduated with Edwards in 1982.
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Flint residents were paying about US$500 per year more for water than the average USA family, and authorities still hadn’t owned up to the fact that it was corrosive, toxic water flowing through the pipes that was costing them such a heavy price. In earlier committee meetings and in the Senate, Democrats offered amendments to double the figure to $60 million. But the proposal couldn’t get sufficient support in the Republican-controlled Legislature.
