Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Director Keith Creagh wrote Friday in a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy that the state “is committed to working” with her department and Flint to deal with the city’s lead-contamination problem. Flint’s mayor has floated a shockingly high price to fix the city’s lead-contamination problem, saying it could millions to replace… As my colleague Raven Rakia has pointed out, lead exposure, which causes an array of health problems and is especially bad for children, is completely preventable.
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Asked if the public health crisis was a case of so-called environmental racism, Snyder said “absolutely not”.
On January 5, the government declared a federal state of emergency in Flint because of unsafe levels of lead in the public’s water supply.
Utility operators say what happened in Flint – a largely poor and predominantly black city of about 100,000 people that was once an automobile manufacturing powerhouse – is unlikely to be repeated, pointing to a series of mistakes at every level of government.
The Flint Water Advisory Task Force says its recommendations are more detailed and comprehensive than what the EPA ordered.
They’re now more than 1,000 miles away from Flint, but the water worries are near to Holmes’ heart.
The city last fall resumed buying Detroit water, drawn from Lake Huron, and experts said they believe lead levels are already dropping with the addition of phosphate, which helps form an interior coating on the pipes to prevent lead leaching.
Trouble can start when a utility makes a change in its treatment process or taps into a new water source without accounting for how that will affect its lead pipes, said Daniel Giammar, a lead and water researcher at Washington University in St. Louis.
There was no immediate word from Snyder’s office on the scope of Mercury’s duties or who is paying the firm, which has offices from NY to London, but none in MI.
Gov. Rick Snyder announced the actions Friday. I’ll tell you what: “If the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there would’ve been action”. He said state and local leaders were misled by career civil servants regarded as scientific experts on the subject.
“You’ve got to take care of your kids because one day, you’re not going be around, and they’re still going to be affected by this”, she said.
Downtown Flint, Mich., is shown along the Flint River, Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016.
Flint residents complained loudly and often about the water quality immediately after the switch but were repeatedly told it was safe.
Undocumented immigrants in Flint, Michigan, say they are too afraid to go to water distribution centers, and many say they were even unaware that there was a water crisis.
“There are a number of indications that concerns of Flint’s elected leaders and faith and community leaders were being dismissed as political posturing instead of taken seriously as efforts to address very real problems”, said Walling, who is white and was first elected mayor in 2009.
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He has yet to test his children for lead poisoning.
