Samuel Smith is happy to receive a case of bottled water and a new water filter at his home on Mallery St.in Flint, Mich., as volunteers accompanied by Michigan State Police and Gennessee County Sheriff’s Deputies bring residents water filters and bottled water on Tuesday Jan 12, 2016.
Advertisement
Throughout the crisis, Gov. Snyder appeared indifferent while state officials defended the emergency manager’s actions and repeatedly rejected claims that there was anything wrong with Flint’s water.
Snyder, a Republican, has a current approval rating of 38 percent, though that number is not down significantly from polls taken before the crisis became a major story in the latter part of 2015.
Rick Snyder activated the state’s National Guard to help with drinking-water distribution in the city of Flint’s escalating crisis.
The governor also asked for support from FEMA, which appointed a disaster recovery coordinator to help.
Stay on topic – This helps keep the thread focused on the discussion at hand.
For more than a year, water drawn from the Flint River leached lead from old lines into homes after the city switched its drinking water.
“I think anytime that you don’t have clean, fresh drinking water for you or your family, it is definitely a crisis”, Michigan State Police Lt. David Kaiser said. Maurice Rice organizes cases of water at the Joy Tabernacle Church on Monday, Jan. 11, 2016, in Flint, Mich. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder pledged Monday that officials would make contact with every househo…
Testing conducted by state and local researchers past year found that the proportion of infants and children with above-average levels of lead in their blood has almost doubled since the switch was made.
More than 30 Guardsmen will be in place by Friday in Flint, which has 99,000 people.
He’s asking people to report potential scams to police, including people trying to sell filters they got for free. Lead exposure can impair both mental and physical development in children, sometimes causing “profound and permanent adverse health effects”, according to the World Health Organization.
A task force set up by the governor and the state auditor general have blamed the state’s Department of Environmental Quality for not mandating that the city treat the water for corrosive elements and for downplaying residents’ concerns. The agency’s director stepped down last month.
Advertisement
Despite Snyder activating the National Guard, Congressman Dan Kildee, a Flint Democrat, renewed his earlier calls for a request for federal financial aid for Flint, “due to the lack of a sufficient response from the state”. “Flint residents are the victims in this crisis and they deserve a more urgent response equal to the gravity of this crisis”.
