The investigation could focus on whether environmental laws were broken or if there was official misconduct in the process that left Flint’s drinking water contaminated.
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“The people of Flint can not trust the state of MI to fix this man-made disaster and that is why court oversight is critically needed”.
Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, a Democrat from Flint, criticized Schuette for taking months too long to investigate, but said Tuesday that he would “give him the benefit of the doubt until I see otherwise”.
“One of the things that has incited many protests around the world in recent years is a growing dissatisfaction that government aren’t providing the services people need”, Sara Burke, a senior policy analyst with Friedrich-Ebert Foundation, wrote in an email to the Detroit News.
If water from the Flint River was corroding machinery, imagine what it was doing to human bodies, including the smallest and most vulnerable.
Just days after Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette announced an ostensibly independent investigation into the Flint water crisis, Michigan state Rep. Jim Townsend is calling for a truly independent and bipartisan effort that exists outside of the myriad conflicts of interest between Schuette’s office and Governor Rick Snyder’s. House Republican spokesman Gideon D’Assandro acknowledges “mistakes were made in Flint” but says there are no cities under emergency management for the first time in 15 years. “Career civil servants who not only did not do their job, but couldn’t even fake like they cared about the Flint population. This investigation is about beginning the road back, to rebuild, regain and restore trust in government”, Schuette said in his statement.
Michigan Lt. Governor Brian Calley addressed the water crisis in Flint with WWJ.
Arena said he would enter the investigation “with no predispositions, no preoccupations”, as the only details to which he was privy came from the media.
“We’re not going to guess”. Here are the people who’ve played a key role in the crisis.
The Michigan city of Flint is under a public health emergency that has led to local, state and federal emergency declarations because its drinking water is tainted with lead.
Edwards will serve on Snyder’s 17-person panel, along with Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician who confirmed a sharp increase in the number of children showing elevated levels of lead in their bloodstreams after the city switched its water supply to the Flint River in April 2014.
The suit is filed by the Concerned Pastors for Social Action, Flint resident and water activist Melissa Mays, the Michigan ACLU and the Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.
Much of the blame for the emergency has been put on the state Department of Environmental Quality because staff told Flint water officials not to treat it for corrosion until after two six-month monitoring periods. On Thursday, the feds said both the city and state were to blame.
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Their responses to the crisis, the EPA said, were “inadequate to protect public health”. The water contained corrosive elements that caused lead in the pipes to leech into the water.
