“As a result, Flint is now facing a total water bill of up to $1.5 billion and needs a host of different public, private and civic leaders to act to accelerate infrastructure improvements”, Brookins said.
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On March 13, 2015, Harvey Hollins, a top adviser to Gov. Rick Snyder – who oversees the Office of Urban and Metropolitan Planning Initiatives – received an email from Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) spokesperson Brad Wurfel. Durno said they have sampled more than 20 homes where high results were recorded by the MDEQ. Flint is 57 percent black, and 42 percent of its residents live in poverty.
Why did then-emergency manager Ed Kurtz and his team, after meeting with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality in December 2012, decide not to use the Flint River as the city’s permanent water source, even though it was identified as the most cheap source for the financially struggling city? The impoverished city was under state management at the time. Corrosion from the water caused lead to leach from pipes.
One of Chantel Jackson’s grandsons has since tested positive for lead in his blood.
In response to the horrific events that have taken place in Flint the residents are outraged and are calling for the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, to resign from office or be arrested. Snyder and state legislators have enacted $37 million in emergency Flint funding for the current fiscal year.
“I have told Governor Snyder that Flint residents should not have to pay for water they did not and are not using”, Flint’s Mayor Karen Weaver told reporters last week. Democrats blame the Republican governor and some Republicans have targeted the EPA for failing to intervene sooner.
In a letter to more than 46,000 state employees Friday, Snyder said “what happened in Flint can never be allowed to happen again anywhere in our state”.
Snyder has also called for commissions to further investigate infrastructure problems in MI.
Flint residents had been complaining about their water all along, saying it was discolored and caused rashes, but Wurfel told Hollins the lower-ranking official who’d raised the Legionnaires’ issue was out of line. The memo was not formally delivered to state environmental officials until November – after the state had begun taking actions to address the lead problem, Creagh said.
Earley’s attorney said the subpoena was served too late in the day for him to get to Washington, D.C.
Republicans also argued that state and local governments need to help pay to fix the problem and that if the federal government were to get involved it should do so as part of the annual appropriations process – where the spending can be carefully scrutinized – and not as part of an unrelated energy bill.
Because Legionnaries’ disease is not transferred person to person, efforts to fight it are focused on determining sources of infection and notifying doctors so they have the option of doing a special test, Wells said. And so I want to make this proposal to the Legislature’.
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Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said discussions on ways to help Flint were continuing. Michigan’s two Democrat senators, Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, have floated a $600 million proposal before Congress only to be topped by Rep. Candice Miller, the Michigan Republican who has asked for a cool billion dollars in emergency funds for the beleaguered city.
