president appoints the director of the epa ,he can also fire her
Water Crisis in Flint, Michigan: April 25, 2014 - TBD; 5 Michigan Health Officials Charged
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
That doesn't make Obama her "boss." The word "boss" should not be used when describing the duties of the executive branch.
The president appoints someone to the position that meets the qualifications and shares the vision that they have for the department. From there, Congress must accept the nomination.
Government agencies submit their budgets to the White House. The White House approves or disapproves, or sets limits on the amount of funding requested. Congress votes on what is acceptable and writes the check.
Checks and balances my friend. The administrator only deals with monitoring risk/issues at a high level, messaging, and high level agenda setting. The only way folks can even TRY to pin this on Obama is if you accuse him of not using some vague executive decision or waiting too long to declare a state of emergency; that requires escalation along the chain of command. A chain of command, btw, which includes the DEQ, flint government, michigan state government, and the governor himself
There is a chain of command that transfers state responsibilities to federal responsibilities in these situations. There are also specific protocols that must be taken when shifting responsibilities between departments and up the chain of command. It's there for a reason.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/26/b...to-profit-on-water-looks-half-empty.html?_r=0
must read if you think "we're all in this together."
must read if you think "we're all in this together."
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
This Is What Happens To Humans When They Are Exposed To Too Much Lead
BY ADRIENNE VARKIANI
JAN 21, 2016 8:00 AM
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/PAUL SANCYA
Genetha Campbell carries free water being distributed at the Lincoln Park United Methodist Church in Flint, Mich, February 3, 2015.
In his State of the State address Tuesday night, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder apologized for his handling of the Flint water crisis, which has left tens of thousands of residents without drinkable water. “To you, the people of Flint, I say tonight as I have before, I’m sorry and I will fix it,” Snyder said near the beginning of his speech. “Government failed you at the federal, state and local level.”
But an apology doesn’t change the health effects that Flint residents are seeing as a result of the elevated levels of lead in their water — effects they may continue to see far into the future.
The change in the city’s water supply has already been recognized as a possible source for a recentoutbreak of Legionnaire’s disease, which claimed the lives of ten people between June 2014 and November 2015.
Here are some of the other long-lasting effects that lead exposure may have on Flint residents:
Harm to Children’s Development
Four percent of the children in Flint have greater than five micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood (ug/dL) in their bloodstreams, which is considered unsafe under current guidelines.
Infants and children exposed to lead may suffer in various ways, including delayed puberty, speech impairment, high blood pressure, hearing loss, decreased muscle and bone growth, kidney damage, and a weakened immune system. Breastfed infants are also at risk if there is lead in their mother’s bloodstreams.
Equally important, lead also affects children’s brains and nervous systems. Those exposed to lead at a young age may suffer from a coma, convulsions, or even death. Children who survive serious lead poisoning may be left with mental retardation and changes in behavior, like a shortened attention span or increased antisocial behavior.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), lead exposure contributes to about 600,000 new cases of children with intellectual disabilities every year. A recent study of children aged six to 17 also found that lead exposure increases symptoms in some people with ADHD. Even low exposure to lead as a child could cause lower IQ well into adulthood — and this may beirreversible. One study of the relationship between children’s blood lead concentration and their test performance found that for every 1 ug/dL increase in blood lead concentration, there was a 0.7 point decrease in mean arithmetic scores, an approximately one point decrease in mean reading scores, a 0.5 point decrease in mean nonverbal reasoning scores, and a 0.5 point decrease in mean short-term scores.
Reproductive Problems
For women, greater lead exposure may lead to a higher likelihood of miscarriage and stillbirth. The body stores lead in the teeth and bones over time, and when a woman is pregnant, that lead may be released into her bloodstream, putting fetuses at risk. Washington, D.C. had a similar water crisis from 2000 to 2004, and stillbirths in the city peaked in 2001, when lead levels in the water were at their highest.
Men exposed to lead, meanwhile, may have lower sperm counts, increased abnormal sperm, and erectile dysfunction.
Greater Risk Of Developing Cancer
While the link between lead exposure and cancer still needs to be further analyzed, there have been some studies showing a correlation between the two. In particular, those exposed to lead may be at higher risk for lung and stomach cancers. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) have all determined that lead probably causes cancer.
Digestive & Cardiovascular Issues
Lead exposure can have a variety of short-term digestive effects, like loss of appetite, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, indigestion, and stomach cramps. Adults and children exposed to lead may also be at risk of more serious long-term problems, like high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
Compromised Nervous Systems
Exposure to lead can affect the nervous system of both adults and children, interrupting how the brain interacts with the rest of the body. Those affected may suffer from muscle weakness, loss of sensation, lack of coordination, and pain, tingling and numbness in the limbs. Lead exposure may also reduce nervous system performance, and it may cause weakness in fingers, wrists, and ankles.
Kidney Damage
Lead exposure can cause long-term kidney damage in both adults and children. Inflammation of the kidneys and abnormal kidney function have occurred after short-term exposure in adults with blood lead levels of 40 ug/dL or more. Adults and children with blood lead levels of 60 ug/dL may also suffer from long-term kidney damage severe enough to cause death.
This Is What Happens To Humans When They Are Exposed To Too Much Lead
BY ADRIENNE VARKIANI
JAN 21, 2016 8:00 AM
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/PAUL SANCYA
Genetha Campbell carries free water being distributed at the Lincoln Park United Methodist Church in Flint, Mich, February 3, 2015.
In his State of the State address Tuesday night, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder apologized for his handling of the Flint water crisis, which has left tens of thousands of residents without drinkable water. “To you, the people of Flint, I say tonight as I have before, I’m sorry and I will fix it,” Snyder said near the beginning of his speech. “Government failed you at the federal, state and local level.”
But an apology doesn’t change the health effects that Flint residents are seeing as a result of the elevated levels of lead in their water — effects they may continue to see far into the future.
The change in the city’s water supply has already been recognized as a possible source for a recentoutbreak of Legionnaire’s disease, which claimed the lives of ten people between June 2014 and November 2015.
Here are some of the other long-lasting effects that lead exposure may have on Flint residents:
Harm to Children’s Development
Four percent of the children in Flint have greater than five micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood (ug/dL) in their bloodstreams, which is considered unsafe under current guidelines.
Infants and children exposed to lead may suffer in various ways, including delayed puberty, speech impairment, high blood pressure, hearing loss, decreased muscle and bone growth, kidney damage, and a weakened immune system. Breastfed infants are also at risk if there is lead in their mother’s bloodstreams.
Equally important, lead also affects children’s brains and nervous systems. Those exposed to lead at a young age may suffer from a coma, convulsions, or even death. Children who survive serious lead poisoning may be left with mental retardation and changes in behavior, like a shortened attention span or increased antisocial behavior.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), lead exposure contributes to about 600,000 new cases of children with intellectual disabilities every year. A recent study of children aged six to 17 also found that lead exposure increases symptoms in some people with ADHD. Even low exposure to lead as a child could cause lower IQ well into adulthood — and this may beirreversible. One study of the relationship between children’s blood lead concentration and their test performance found that for every 1 ug/dL increase in blood lead concentration, there was a 0.7 point decrease in mean arithmetic scores, an approximately one point decrease in mean reading scores, a 0.5 point decrease in mean nonverbal reasoning scores, and a 0.5 point decrease in mean short-term scores.
Reproductive Problems
For women, greater lead exposure may lead to a higher likelihood of miscarriage and stillbirth. The body stores lead in the teeth and bones over time, and when a woman is pregnant, that lead may be released into her bloodstream, putting fetuses at risk. Washington, D.C. had a similar water crisis from 2000 to 2004, and stillbirths in the city peaked in 2001, when lead levels in the water were at their highest.
Men exposed to lead, meanwhile, may have lower sperm counts, increased abnormal sperm, and erectile dysfunction.
Greater Risk Of Developing Cancer
While the link between lead exposure and cancer still needs to be further analyzed, there have been some studies showing a correlation between the two. In particular, those exposed to lead may be at higher risk for lung and stomach cancers. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) have all determined that lead probably causes cancer.
Digestive & Cardiovascular Issues
Lead exposure can have a variety of short-term digestive effects, like loss of appetite, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, indigestion, and stomach cramps. Adults and children exposed to lead may also be at risk of more serious long-term problems, like high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
Compromised Nervous Systems
Exposure to lead can affect the nervous system of both adults and children, interrupting how the brain interacts with the rest of the body. Those affected may suffer from muscle weakness, loss of sensation, lack of coordination, and pain, tingling and numbness in the limbs. Lead exposure may also reduce nervous system performance, and it may cause weakness in fingers, wrists, and ankles.
Kidney Damage
Lead exposure can cause long-term kidney damage in both adults and children. Inflammation of the kidneys and abnormal kidney function have occurred after short-term exposure in adults with blood lead levels of 40 ug/dL or more. Adults and children with blood lead levels of 60 ug/dL may also suffer from long-term kidney damage severe enough to cause death.
This Is What Happens To Humans When They Are Exposed To Too Much Lead
ExodusNirvana
Change is inevitable...
Flint can't catch a break man wow...
EPA official resigns over Flint water crisis
The regional Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief responsible for Michigan is resigning amid charges that she did not do enough to prevent the Flint, Mich., drinking water crisis.
Susan Hedman, regional administrator for the EPA’s Chicago-based region 5, submitted her resignation Thursday, effective Feb. 1, the EPA said.
“EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has accepted given Susan’s strong interest in ensuring that EPA region 5’s focus remains solely on the restoration of Flint’s drinking water,” an EPA spokeswoman said late Thursday.
Hedman told The Detroit News last week that her office knew in April 2015 that Flint’s action to switch its water supply could cause increased pipe corrosion and spiked lead levels.
She did not notify the public or take similar action, instead only pushing Michigan officials to fix the problems, the News said.
Later last year, incidents of lead poisoning among children increased substantially, leading to the crisis.
Dan Wyant, director of Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality, resigned in December for his role in the problems.
Emails released Wednesday showed that the staff of Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and the environmental agency spent months last year pointing fingers at local and federal offices for the lead problem as they downplayed concerns.
The EPA also sent a letter to Snyder Thursday officially declaring that Flint is violating federal drinking water rules and must work quickly to fix them.
McCarthy said the EPA “is deeply concerned by continuing delays and lack of transparency and has determined that the actions required by the order … are essential to ensuring the safe operation of Flint’s drinking water system and the protection of public health.”
The state must tell the EPA within a day how it intends to comply, and the agency will implement a sampling system to ensure compliance.
McCarthy spoke with Snyder about the crisis Thursday and also sent an agency-wide memo instructing staff how to tell their superiors about potential public health problems.
President Obama declared a state of emergency for Flint on Saturday and dispatched EPA, Health and Human Services and Federal Emergency Management Agency employees to help the state.
EPA official resigns over Flint water crisis
The regional Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief responsible for Michigan is resigning amid charges that she did not do enough to prevent the Flint, Mich., drinking water crisis.
Susan Hedman, regional administrator for the EPA’s Chicago-based region 5, submitted her resignation Thursday, effective Feb. 1, the EPA said.
“EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has accepted given Susan’s strong interest in ensuring that EPA region 5’s focus remains solely on the restoration of Flint’s drinking water,” an EPA spokeswoman said late Thursday.
Hedman told The Detroit News last week that her office knew in April 2015 that Flint’s action to switch its water supply could cause increased pipe corrosion and spiked lead levels.
She did not notify the public or take similar action, instead only pushing Michigan officials to fix the problems, the News said.
Later last year, incidents of lead poisoning among children increased substantially, leading to the crisis.
Dan Wyant, director of Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality, resigned in December for his role in the problems.
Emails released Wednesday showed that the staff of Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and the environmental agency spent months last year pointing fingers at local and federal offices for the lead problem as they downplayed concerns.
The EPA also sent a letter to Snyder Thursday officially declaring that Flint is violating federal drinking water rules and must work quickly to fix them.
McCarthy said the EPA “is deeply concerned by continuing delays and lack of transparency and has determined that the actions required by the order … are essential to ensuring the safe operation of Flint’s drinking water system and the protection of public health.”
The state must tell the EPA within a day how it intends to comply, and the agency will implement a sampling system to ensure compliance.
McCarthy spoke with Snyder about the crisis Thursday and also sent an agency-wide memo instructing staff how to tell their superiors about potential public health problems.
President Obama declared a state of emergency for Flint on Saturday and dispatched EPA, Health and Human Services and Federal Emergency Management Agency employees to help the state.
EPA official resigns over Flint water crisis
Flint water crisis is classic case of environmental racism
By now, it is clear the tragedy in Flint, Mich. was completely preventable. In order to save money in the short term, the city decided to switch its water supply. As a result, thousands of Flint residents were exposed to lead and the clean-up, litigation and health costs will far outweigh any savings the city saw.
The demographics of the community raise issues of whether the community is suffering from the impact of environmental racism. The population of Flint is majority African-American and 40 percent of its residents live below the poverty line. In fact, despite the governor's protest, Flint is a classic case of environmental racism — and it isn't the first time the city has suffered this fate.
Environmental racism is the deliberate placing of hazardous waste and polluting industries near communities of color. In 1987, a comprehensive report found that race was the No. 1 factor in the siting of commercial hazardous waste facilities. A follow-up study 20 years later found racial disparities in hazardous waste siting were even greater than previously reported. The updated study found people of color made up the majority of those living less than two miles from hazardous waste facilities.
For decades, the residents of Flint have borne a disproportionate environmental burden, so much so that they have brought administrative complaints alleging that the amount of pollution residents faced violated their civil rights. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), like every federal agency, must abide by Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and ensure recipients of federal aid do not discriminate on the basis of race, color or national origin. Title VI violations can occur if state environmental agencies, for example, permit hazardous and/or polluting industries disproportionately in communities of color. If a community feels Title VI has been violated, they can file an administrative complaint with the EPA's Office of Civil Rights.
Flint has a long history of advocates fighting against environmental racism. In 1997, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality granted an air permit to the Select Steel "mini-mill" to operate in Flint, even though the mill would send up to 100 tons of lead and other hazardous pollutants into the city's air every year. Residents were already dealing with pollution from the nearby Genesee Power Station when the Select Steel permit was granted. Advocates in Flint had filed administrative complaints with the EPA for Title VI violations against the Genesee Power Station in 1994. The EPA never responded and the power station started operating in 1995.
Flint residents didn't fare any better with the Select Steel case. The EPA found that Select Steel's permit did not violate Title VI and ruled that environmental regulations trumped civil rights protections, even though the two have separate standards. The ruling contradicted the Department of Justice's interpretation that civil rights laws are independent and compliance should be evaluated with anti-discrimination requirements. In the end, the mini-mill was never built but the EPA's ruling created a precedent that still stands.
The fact that the EPA issued a decision, in and of itself, is rare. The vast majority of administrative complaints received by the EPA are either rejected or dismissed. An in-depth investigation last year by the Center for Public Integrity found that in nearly 300 complaints filed by communities of color, the EPA has never once made a formal finding of a civil-rights violation. On average, it takes the EPA's Office of Civil Rights 350 days to decide just on whether to investigate a case — so long that investigators dismissed nine cases as moot. The EPA's own review of its Office of Civil Rights was highly critical and found poor performance, unqualified staff and a lack of prioritization.
The current environmental crisis in Flint was caused by failure at many levels of government, including the EPA's Office of Civil Rights. Any solution must include an overhaul and new mandate for Title VI complaints. It's time for the EPA to step up and enforce its duty to protect communities of color.
Cha is a fellow at Cornell University's Worker Institute.
Flint water crisis is classic case of environmental racism
By now, it is clear the tragedy in Flint, Mich. was completely preventable. In order to save money in the short term, the city decided to switch its water supply. As a result, thousands of Flint residents were exposed to lead and the clean-up, litigation and health costs will far outweigh any savings the city saw.
The demographics of the community raise issues of whether the community is suffering from the impact of environmental racism. The population of Flint is majority African-American and 40 percent of its residents live below the poverty line. In fact, despite the governor's protest, Flint is a classic case of environmental racism — and it isn't the first time the city has suffered this fate.
Environmental racism is the deliberate placing of hazardous waste and polluting industries near communities of color. In 1987, a comprehensive report found that race was the No. 1 factor in the siting of commercial hazardous waste facilities. A follow-up study 20 years later found racial disparities in hazardous waste siting were even greater than previously reported. The updated study found people of color made up the majority of those living less than two miles from hazardous waste facilities.
For decades, the residents of Flint have borne a disproportionate environmental burden, so much so that they have brought administrative complaints alleging that the amount of pollution residents faced violated their civil rights. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), like every federal agency, must abide by Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and ensure recipients of federal aid do not discriminate on the basis of race, color or national origin. Title VI violations can occur if state environmental agencies, for example, permit hazardous and/or polluting industries disproportionately in communities of color. If a community feels Title VI has been violated, they can file an administrative complaint with the EPA's Office of Civil Rights.
Flint has a long history of advocates fighting against environmental racism. In 1997, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality granted an air permit to the Select Steel "mini-mill" to operate in Flint, even though the mill would send up to 100 tons of lead and other hazardous pollutants into the city's air every year. Residents were already dealing with pollution from the nearby Genesee Power Station when the Select Steel permit was granted. Advocates in Flint had filed administrative complaints with the EPA for Title VI violations against the Genesee Power Station in 1994. The EPA never responded and the power station started operating in 1995.
Flint residents didn't fare any better with the Select Steel case. The EPA found that Select Steel's permit did not violate Title VI and ruled that environmental regulations trumped civil rights protections, even though the two have separate standards. The ruling contradicted the Department of Justice's interpretation that civil rights laws are independent and compliance should be evaluated with anti-discrimination requirements. In the end, the mini-mill was never built but the EPA's ruling created a precedent that still stands.
The fact that the EPA issued a decision, in and of itself, is rare. The vast majority of administrative complaints received by the EPA are either rejected or dismissed. An in-depth investigation last year by the Center for Public Integrity found that in nearly 300 complaints filed by communities of color, the EPA has never once made a formal finding of a civil-rights violation. On average, it takes the EPA's Office of Civil Rights 350 days to decide just on whether to investigate a case — so long that investigators dismissed nine cases as moot. The EPA's own review of its Office of Civil Rights was highly critical and found poor performance, unqualified staff and a lack of prioritization.
The current environmental crisis in Flint was caused by failure at many levels of government, including the EPA's Office of Civil Rights. Any solution must include an overhaul and new mandate for Title VI complaints. It's time for the EPA to step up and enforce its duty to protect communities of color.
Cha is a fellow at Cornell University's Worker Institute.
Flint water crisis is classic case of environmental racism
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
@tru_m.a.c in here dropping knowledge 
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Flint Ignored A Memo On How To Make Water Cheaper. Now Its Residents Are Paying The Price.
BY BRYCE COVERT
JAN 27, 2016 10:13 AM
CREDIT: BRYCE COVERT
FLINT, MICHIGAN — Stephanie and Joseph Morales are upstanding members of the Unitarian Universalist church and the parents of nine young children. But they haven’t paid their water bills for nearly two years.
The Flint residents, whose children range from ages three to 17, stopped drinking their tap water pretty much immediately after the city switched the source from Detroit to the Flint River in April 2014, causing widespread contamination from lead and other chemicals. The taste was off, and there was a day when they drew a bath and all the water came out brown. “We noticed right away,” Joseph said.
That prompted them to start buying and using bottled water to drink and cook with. But it was a costly undertaking — they started shelling out somewhere between $50 and $100 a month to get enough for their family. “We tried making sure that we got it on sale whenever we could,” Stephanie said.
That extra cost came on top of the steep bills they were already paying for the tap water they couldn’t use — somewhere in the $120 to $140 range a month. So they stopped responding to the bills last summer. “I found it ridiculous to pay,” Joseph said. “I’m trying to find the money to buy bottled water… so you know what, I’m not going to pay my water bill. If they want to come and shut it off, okay, we’ll just deal with it.”
“It’s also about paying for poison,” Stephanie added.
Stephanie and Joseph Morales, in the back, with other members of the Universalist Unitarian church
CREDIT: BRYCE COVERT
The Morales’s bills are about in line with an analysis from 2014 finding that residents pay $140 a month on average, far higher than other surrounding areas and about eight times higher than the national average.
Those rates were already a burden for many residents, leading many low-income families — Flint’s poverty rate is above 40 percent — to stop paying altogether and prompting lawsuits over shutoff notices. But now that people know the water was unsafe to drink going back potentially as far as spring of 2014, they’re wondering why they should have to keep paying such exorbitant bills for water they can’t even use.
That problem — nonpayment of water bills — will only serve to starve the city of the revenue it could very much use to help cover the enormous cost of ripping out the city’s entire water system, which many believe has been irreparably compromised, and replacing it with new pipes.
Expensive Poison
The city had warning of this burgeoning financial crisis as early as the spring of 2015, when it requested a memo on how to make water rates more affordable from Fisher, Sheehan & Colton, a consulting group that developed a model to calculate the gap between home energy bills and how much a family could actually afford to pay. Had the city followed the advice of that memo, it could at least have avoided the financial pileup, if not the lead contamination crisis.
There are a number of cities across the country that need to be replacing old pipelines, including Flint. But that costs money, and money can be tight. The problem is even worse, though, in places where water bills are impossibly high.
“Cities like Flint become financially constrained, who then don’t make the investments that they should to assure clean water,” said Roger Colton of Fisher, Sheehan & Colton, who wrote the memo to the city about how to make rates affordable. “One of the reasons they don’t have the money is because their customers can’t afford to pay their rates.”
Colton’s analysis found that bills are unaffordable — consuming more than 2 percent of a household’s income, the common threshold that experts use — for most household sizes and even for many income levels in the city. “Water in Flint is indeed unaffordable, pretty universally,” he said.
CREDIT: DYLAN PETROHILOS
Unaffordable water bills hurt revenue collection in two ways: first, a customer who can’t afford a $140 bill knows that putting a smaller amount toward it won’t keep him from getting his service shut off anyway, so he doesn’t pay anything and uses that money for other necessities like food or medicine. But that means the city isn’t collecting the smaller amount he might otherwise be able to pay. Then collection costs go up when the city has to chase down a larger number of delinquent households, eating into those same reserves.
Colton’s suggestions fit into three categories: institute a water affordability plan that would cap bills at a percentage of income for qualifying households, get rid of late fees or at least tie them to the actual cost of the bill, and reform the deferred payment plans so that they’re more affordable and customers aren’t getting charged a past due amount.
“If somebody is behind because they can’t afford to pay, it makes no sense whatsoever to respond to that by increasing their bill,” he said.
“In order to get the money to run the system you have to bill those costs to customers,” he added. “But in order to collect those bills, you have to make those bills affordable. If you break the loop, then the whole thing falls apart.” More affordable bills, and therefore more revenue for the city, might not have been enough to cover the upkeep of the pipes and avoid the crisis to begin with, but it could have been a start. It could also have meant that the city didn’t need to think about saving money, the given reason for switching the water source in the first place.
The city did not respond to a request for comment as to why it never acted on the recommendations in his memo. “They said thanks, and I never heard back from them,” he said.
A Human Right
State lawmakers are now pushing ahead with solutions to both the contamination crisis as well as water affordability, which hasn’t been limited to Flint — Detroit has been rocked by waves of shutoffs that have deprived many low-income households of water. A package of 11 bills introduced in the state House in November and December would address a wide range of issues, including ensuring that bills are affordable for low-income residents, instituting shutoff protections for categories of protected people, as well as stricter guidelines for the Department of Environmental Quality and other water authorities for compliance with the Environmental Protection Agency. “Safe, affordable, clean, accessible water should be a human right,” said Rep. Stephanie Chang (D), one of the lawmakers who worked on the package. “That is what the bills aim to do.”
She noted that most of the bills have bipartisan cosponsorship. Now they wait to be scheduled for a committee hearing.
The billing issue has also caught the attention of Michigan leadership. On Monday, state Attorney General Bill Schuette called it an “outrage” that Flint residents are being billed for contaminated water, saying, “If you can’t drink the bad water you shouldn’t pay for it.” He said his office is looking into what it might take to provide financial relief.
The issue has also been rolled into the legal action brought against the city and state in the wake of the crisis. The largest class action lawsuit brought so far alleges that plaintiffs have suffered “irreparable harm” from being threatened with shutoff notices when they didn’t pay bills for “toxic and harmful water,” and in many instances water was in fact disconnected.
“The shutoffs seem to be the line at which we thought it was going way too far,” explained Kathryn Bruner James, an attorney with Goodman & Hurwitz, P.C. who is representing the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit.
While shutoff notices were halted until this past November due to a lawsuit over a rapid and potentially unconstitutional rate increase the city enacted, they began going back out after the winter holidays. “It’s my understanding that at least 1,500 or 1,800 shutoff notices went out last week, if not more,” James said. The attorneys will also consider potential harm caused by the high water bills and seek compensation and reimbursement for all of these issues.
And there’s another financial challenge that’s come to light as the attorneys speak with the more than 1,300 people who have called about the lawsuit: home damage wrought by the corrosive water. Families have had to rip out and replace pipelines. Meanwhile, property values are likely declining given the intense national scrutiny on the disaster.
“The property damage has been fairly significant,” James said. “Some people, through lead leaching into their pipes and other corrosive qualities of the Flint water, have actually permanently damaged their plumbing in their homes, had to get new hot water tanks, and all kinds of other problems.”
‘This Is Breaking Us’
Melissa Mays, who is the lead plaintiff in the class action lawsuit, hasn’t just experienced what she says is a number of health problems related to drinking Flint tap water: seizures, autoimmune disorders, kidney stones, even changing hair color. She’s also experienced the financial aspects of the crisis. She says she and her husband have had to buy three hot water heaters over the last 14 months, spending $500 each time — one because it was filled with sediment from the water, another that caught fire because of all the chemicals.
Meanwhile, she’s still paying water bills that come in at $200 to $300 a month — sometimes reaching as high as $500 — even though she stopped drinking the water in September of 2014 and has more recently stopped even letting her kids shower in it. “Our bill is $200 a month minimum for water we’re not using,” she said. But, she adds, “You have to [pay] because if not they’ll shut off your water, cap your sewer, condemn your home, and take it and take your kids.” The state child protective services includes a lack of running water as a sign of physical neglect, although it says it wouldn’t remove children from a home just for that reason.
If you’re cooking and cleaning and drinking with a 24-pack with 11 people…it’s nearly impossible
Mays is also spending a huge amount of money on bottled water — $200 to $300 a month — given that she, her husband, her three sons, and her three pets use it to drink, cook, and bathe. The National Guard has been helping to distribute free water, but the family hadn’t gotten a drop-off until Friday. Mays doesn’t want to take any from needy families who go to fire stations to collect it. “I’m not going to take it from somebody who can’t afford to buy it, so I’ll just suck it up,” she said.
Still, the financial strain has been immense. “All the damage, plus the medical care, my husband has two jobs, I’m now on sick leave from mine,” she said. “This is breaking us.”
Stephanie and Joseph Morales are also still paying for bottled water, particularly as they say many water stations check IDs and only give out a 24-pack of water bottles per household, regardless of the size. “If you’re cooking and cleaning and drinking with a 24-pack with 11 people…it’s nearly impossible,” Stephanie said.
As of last week they hadn’t received another shutoff notice since they resumed. But they won’t pay their bills, and they also feel they should be reimbursed for the bills they did pay while contaminated water was flowing through their pipes.
“They knew this was poison,” Stephanie said. “Anywhere else, a grocery store, a restaurant, you buy knowingly poisoned food, you can sue them you can get your money back, and you can get a refund. You can’t do that with the water.”
Flint Ignored A Memo On How To Make Water Cheaper. Now Its Residents Are Paying The Price.
BY BRYCE COVERT
JAN 27, 2016 10:13 AM
CREDIT: BRYCE COVERT
FLINT, MICHIGAN — Stephanie and Joseph Morales are upstanding members of the Unitarian Universalist church and the parents of nine young children. But they haven’t paid their water bills for nearly two years.
The Flint residents, whose children range from ages three to 17, stopped drinking their tap water pretty much immediately after the city switched the source from Detroit to the Flint River in April 2014, causing widespread contamination from lead and other chemicals. The taste was off, and there was a day when they drew a bath and all the water came out brown. “We noticed right away,” Joseph said.
That prompted them to start buying and using bottled water to drink and cook with. But it was a costly undertaking — they started shelling out somewhere between $50 and $100 a month to get enough for their family. “We tried making sure that we got it on sale whenever we could,” Stephanie said.
That extra cost came on top of the steep bills they were already paying for the tap water they couldn’t use — somewhere in the $120 to $140 range a month. So they stopped responding to the bills last summer. “I found it ridiculous to pay,” Joseph said. “I’m trying to find the money to buy bottled water… so you know what, I’m not going to pay my water bill. If they want to come and shut it off, okay, we’ll just deal with it.”
“It’s also about paying for poison,” Stephanie added.
Stephanie and Joseph Morales, in the back, with other members of the Universalist Unitarian church
CREDIT: BRYCE COVERT
The Morales’s bills are about in line with an analysis from 2014 finding that residents pay $140 a month on average, far higher than other surrounding areas and about eight times higher than the national average.
Those rates were already a burden for many residents, leading many low-income families — Flint’s poverty rate is above 40 percent — to stop paying altogether and prompting lawsuits over shutoff notices. But now that people know the water was unsafe to drink going back potentially as far as spring of 2014, they’re wondering why they should have to keep paying such exorbitant bills for water they can’t even use.
That problem — nonpayment of water bills — will only serve to starve the city of the revenue it could very much use to help cover the enormous cost of ripping out the city’s entire water system, which many believe has been irreparably compromised, and replacing it with new pipes.
Expensive Poison
The city had warning of this burgeoning financial crisis as early as the spring of 2015, when it requested a memo on how to make water rates more affordable from Fisher, Sheehan & Colton, a consulting group that developed a model to calculate the gap between home energy bills and how much a family could actually afford to pay. Had the city followed the advice of that memo, it could at least have avoided the financial pileup, if not the lead contamination crisis.
There are a number of cities across the country that need to be replacing old pipelines, including Flint. But that costs money, and money can be tight. The problem is even worse, though, in places where water bills are impossibly high.
“Cities like Flint become financially constrained, who then don’t make the investments that they should to assure clean water,” said Roger Colton of Fisher, Sheehan & Colton, who wrote the memo to the city about how to make rates affordable. “One of the reasons they don’t have the money is because their customers can’t afford to pay their rates.”
Colton’s analysis found that bills are unaffordable — consuming more than 2 percent of a household’s income, the common threshold that experts use — for most household sizes and even for many income levels in the city. “Water in Flint is indeed unaffordable, pretty universally,” he said.
CREDIT: DYLAN PETROHILOS
Unaffordable water bills hurt revenue collection in two ways: first, a customer who can’t afford a $140 bill knows that putting a smaller amount toward it won’t keep him from getting his service shut off anyway, so he doesn’t pay anything and uses that money for other necessities like food or medicine. But that means the city isn’t collecting the smaller amount he might otherwise be able to pay. Then collection costs go up when the city has to chase down a larger number of delinquent households, eating into those same reserves.
Colton’s suggestions fit into three categories: institute a water affordability plan that would cap bills at a percentage of income for qualifying households, get rid of late fees or at least tie them to the actual cost of the bill, and reform the deferred payment plans so that they’re more affordable and customers aren’t getting charged a past due amount.
“If somebody is behind because they can’t afford to pay, it makes no sense whatsoever to respond to that by increasing their bill,” he said.
“In order to get the money to run the system you have to bill those costs to customers,” he added. “But in order to collect those bills, you have to make those bills affordable. If you break the loop, then the whole thing falls apart.” More affordable bills, and therefore more revenue for the city, might not have been enough to cover the upkeep of the pipes and avoid the crisis to begin with, but it could have been a start. It could also have meant that the city didn’t need to think about saving money, the given reason for switching the water source in the first place.
The city did not respond to a request for comment as to why it never acted on the recommendations in his memo. “They said thanks, and I never heard back from them,” he said.
A Human Right
State lawmakers are now pushing ahead with solutions to both the contamination crisis as well as water affordability, which hasn’t been limited to Flint — Detroit has been rocked by waves of shutoffs that have deprived many low-income households of water. A package of 11 bills introduced in the state House in November and December would address a wide range of issues, including ensuring that bills are affordable for low-income residents, instituting shutoff protections for categories of protected people, as well as stricter guidelines for the Department of Environmental Quality and other water authorities for compliance with the Environmental Protection Agency. “Safe, affordable, clean, accessible water should be a human right,” said Rep. Stephanie Chang (D), one of the lawmakers who worked on the package. “That is what the bills aim to do.”
She noted that most of the bills have bipartisan cosponsorship. Now they wait to be scheduled for a committee hearing.
The billing issue has also caught the attention of Michigan leadership. On Monday, state Attorney General Bill Schuette called it an “outrage” that Flint residents are being billed for contaminated water, saying, “If you can’t drink the bad water you shouldn’t pay for it.” He said his office is looking into what it might take to provide financial relief.
The issue has also been rolled into the legal action brought against the city and state in the wake of the crisis. The largest class action lawsuit brought so far alleges that plaintiffs have suffered “irreparable harm” from being threatened with shutoff notices when they didn’t pay bills for “toxic and harmful water,” and in many instances water was in fact disconnected.
“The shutoffs seem to be the line at which we thought it was going way too far,” explained Kathryn Bruner James, an attorney with Goodman & Hurwitz, P.C. who is representing the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit.
While shutoff notices were halted until this past November due to a lawsuit over a rapid and potentially unconstitutional rate increase the city enacted, they began going back out after the winter holidays. “It’s my understanding that at least 1,500 or 1,800 shutoff notices went out last week, if not more,” James said. The attorneys will also consider potential harm caused by the high water bills and seek compensation and reimbursement for all of these issues.
And there’s another financial challenge that’s come to light as the attorneys speak with the more than 1,300 people who have called about the lawsuit: home damage wrought by the corrosive water. Families have had to rip out and replace pipelines. Meanwhile, property values are likely declining given the intense national scrutiny on the disaster.
“The property damage has been fairly significant,” James said. “Some people, through lead leaching into their pipes and other corrosive qualities of the Flint water, have actually permanently damaged their plumbing in their homes, had to get new hot water tanks, and all kinds of other problems.”
‘This Is Breaking Us’
Melissa Mays, who is the lead plaintiff in the class action lawsuit, hasn’t just experienced what she says is a number of health problems related to drinking Flint tap water: seizures, autoimmune disorders, kidney stones, even changing hair color. She’s also experienced the financial aspects of the crisis. She says she and her husband have had to buy three hot water heaters over the last 14 months, spending $500 each time — one because it was filled with sediment from the water, another that caught fire because of all the chemicals.
Meanwhile, she’s still paying water bills that come in at $200 to $300 a month — sometimes reaching as high as $500 — even though she stopped drinking the water in September of 2014 and has more recently stopped even letting her kids shower in it. “Our bill is $200 a month minimum for water we’re not using,” she said. But, she adds, “You have to [pay] because if not they’ll shut off your water, cap your sewer, condemn your home, and take it and take your kids.” The state child protective services includes a lack of running water as a sign of physical neglect, although it says it wouldn’t remove children from a home just for that reason.
If you’re cooking and cleaning and drinking with a 24-pack with 11 people…it’s nearly impossible
Mays is also spending a huge amount of money on bottled water — $200 to $300 a month — given that she, her husband, her three sons, and her three pets use it to drink, cook, and bathe. The National Guard has been helping to distribute free water, but the family hadn’t gotten a drop-off until Friday. Mays doesn’t want to take any from needy families who go to fire stations to collect it. “I’m not going to take it from somebody who can’t afford to buy it, so I’ll just suck it up,” she said.
Still, the financial strain has been immense. “All the damage, plus the medical care, my husband has two jobs, I’m now on sick leave from mine,” she said. “This is breaking us.”
Stephanie and Joseph Morales are also still paying for bottled water, particularly as they say many water stations check IDs and only give out a 24-pack of water bottles per household, regardless of the size. “If you’re cooking and cleaning and drinking with a 24-pack with 11 people…it’s nearly impossible,” Stephanie said.
As of last week they hadn’t received another shutoff notice since they resumed. But they won’t pay their bills, and they also feel they should be reimbursed for the bills they did pay while contaminated water was flowing through their pipes.
“They knew this was poison,” Stephanie said. “Anywhere else, a grocery store, a restaurant, you buy knowingly poisoned food, you can sue them you can get your money back, and you can get a refund. You can’t do that with the water.”
Flint Ignored A Memo On How To Make Water Cheaper. Now Its Residents Are Paying The Price.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Flint Residents Call For End To Outrageous Bills For Water They Can’t Even Use
BY BRYCE COVERT
JAN 28, 2016 12:05 PM
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/CARLOS OSORIO
Melissa Mays, a Flint resident who is demanding an end to bills for contaminated water
Flint residents — who have been struggling with elevated levels of lead in their drinking water ever since the city switched its water source from Detroit to the Flint River in early 2014 — are calling for a moratorium on water bills and the prevention of shutoffs for people who don’t pay.
On Thursday, the advocacy groups Food & Water Watch and Water You Fighting For will deliver petitions with nearly 20,000 signatures to Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, the city administrator, the city chief financial officer, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, and Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette with their demands.
Pat Palmiter is one of the residents struggling both with the contamination issue and the high bills she can’t afford to pay. In December, the estimated bill for her and her husband, both retirees on a fixed income, came to $267.38 — a shock, given that the highest bill they had received before that was about $150, in line with the city’s average. They don’t have the means to pay it since they rely on Social Security and her husband’s pension as their only sources of income. “You can’t afford to be paying money like that,” she said. “There’s no way.”
And it’s not like the couple has been using much water anyway. For over a year they’ve relied on filters and bottled water. They still have to shower in it, though, and she says the water dries out their skin, which is particularly tough for her husband, who has diabetes and already suffers from skin issues.
Palmiter’s hoping that an actual reading of their meter, rather than an estimate, will bring a lower bill. But if that doesn’t happen, she says, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t pay it all in one payment, for sure.” She was told by the water department that her account is past due although there’s no shutoff notice on it — yet.
Flint’s high water bills — some of the highest in the country — were what first got Food & Water Watch, a group focused on access to water, involved in the issue last March, according to Senior Organizer Lynna Kaucheck. “It wasn’t so much about the safety of the water at that point, it was the cost,” she said.
But then the group eventually learned about the health issues Flint residents were reporting after drinking and cooking with the tap water. “We were like, ‘We have to get involved,'” she said. The group sent nearly 27,000 signatures to the mayor and city administrator at the end of August demanding a switch back to Detroit water.
Now the group is joining with Melissa Mays, a Flint resident who’s long been vocal about the city’s water issues, and her group Water You Fighting For to tackle the billing issue. “If you were subscribing to any service and getting poor service or it wasn’t what you anticipated, you’d stop paying for that,” Kaucheck said. “When it comes to water, something so essential to life…they really should not be forced to pay for something they can’t use.”
There is also a lack of clarity about whether residents face having their water shut off if they can’t or won’t pay their bills. After the city imposed a rapid 35 percent increase in rates in 2011, a judge ruled in August of last year that the increase violated a city law requiring utility hikes to be implemented gradually and halted all shutoffs imposed on any late bills under that rate increase, wiping the slate clean up until September. But once some bills became past due under the reduced rate structure, shutoff notices began going back out in the beginning of December. And many bills are still over $100 a month.
Some people are still reporting shutoff notices, while others say the city has stopped sending them. And no one quite knows whether Flint will follow through and actually disconnect service.
Others are taking action against the city for charging such high rates for water that’s been contaminated for nearly two years. Brenda Williams, an attorney, has filed a class action lawsuit against the city, state, emergency managers, and previous head of the Flint water department Howard Croft demanding that residents be reimbursed for their water bills going back to when the source of the water was first switched. “The complaint is from a contractual standpoint, that you contract with the city to receive water services, quality water,” she said. “When you go to the store and you buy something, you purchase a good or service. If you don’t get the proper goods or goods are defective, you take it back and get a return on your money. In this case, we’re paying for defective water.”
There are a number of other class action lawsuits over the crisis. A different one is also addressing the billing issues, seeking reimbursement for the harm caused by shutoff notices, as well as for the water bills and for the financial damage caused by the water in people’s homes.
Mayor Karen Weaver has already said residents of her city shouldn’t be paying for the contaminated water. And Snyder has set aside $3 million in his budget to go toward relief for residents paying water bills, although it has yet to be determined whether that money will be turned into refunds, forgiveness for past bills, or a reduction of rates in the future. The state House also passed a spending package with $3 million to help the city’s water fund stay solvent despite unpaid bills.
The two groups delivering petitions on Thursday also have an eye to the future, not just an interest in fixing what happened in the past.
A memo the city commissioned in April of 2015 found that water bills are unaffordable across most household sizes, income levels, and usage rates. That same memo laid out a plan to make bills more affordable, which would also bring in more revenue to the water department as residents paid more of their bills and the city spent less on collections, but it was never implemented. “It’s really important moving forward that it’s a system that’s affordable for everybody,” Kaucheck said, suggesting an affordability plan based on income.
Given everything else, the financial toll is just one more piece families are struggling with. “It’s stressful, they have enough to worry about with trying to find safe water, making sure kids are receiving the medical treatment that they need,” Kaucheck said. “We don’t need a long, draw-out plan about how we’re going to do this. It just needs to happen.”
Flint Residents Call For End To Outrageous Bills For Water They Can’t Even Use
BY BRYCE COVERT
JAN 28, 2016 12:05 PM
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/CARLOS OSORIO
Melissa Mays, a Flint resident who is demanding an end to bills for contaminated water
Flint residents — who have been struggling with elevated levels of lead in their drinking water ever since the city switched its water source from Detroit to the Flint River in early 2014 — are calling for a moratorium on water bills and the prevention of shutoffs for people who don’t pay.
On Thursday, the advocacy groups Food & Water Watch and Water You Fighting For will deliver petitions with nearly 20,000 signatures to Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, the city administrator, the city chief financial officer, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, and Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette with their demands.
Pat Palmiter is one of the residents struggling both with the contamination issue and the high bills she can’t afford to pay. In December, the estimated bill for her and her husband, both retirees on a fixed income, came to $267.38 — a shock, given that the highest bill they had received before that was about $150, in line with the city’s average. They don’t have the means to pay it since they rely on Social Security and her husband’s pension as their only sources of income. “You can’t afford to be paying money like that,” she said. “There’s no way.”
And it’s not like the couple has been using much water anyway. For over a year they’ve relied on filters and bottled water. They still have to shower in it, though, and she says the water dries out their skin, which is particularly tough for her husband, who has diabetes and already suffers from skin issues.
Palmiter’s hoping that an actual reading of their meter, rather than an estimate, will bring a lower bill. But if that doesn’t happen, she says, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t pay it all in one payment, for sure.” She was told by the water department that her account is past due although there’s no shutoff notice on it — yet.
Flint’s high water bills — some of the highest in the country — were what first got Food & Water Watch, a group focused on access to water, involved in the issue last March, according to Senior Organizer Lynna Kaucheck. “It wasn’t so much about the safety of the water at that point, it was the cost,” she said.
But then the group eventually learned about the health issues Flint residents were reporting after drinking and cooking with the tap water. “We were like, ‘We have to get involved,'” she said. The group sent nearly 27,000 signatures to the mayor and city administrator at the end of August demanding a switch back to Detroit water.
Now the group is joining with Melissa Mays, a Flint resident who’s long been vocal about the city’s water issues, and her group Water You Fighting For to tackle the billing issue. “If you were subscribing to any service and getting poor service or it wasn’t what you anticipated, you’d stop paying for that,” Kaucheck said. “When it comes to water, something so essential to life…they really should not be forced to pay for something they can’t use.”
There is also a lack of clarity about whether residents face having their water shut off if they can’t or won’t pay their bills. After the city imposed a rapid 35 percent increase in rates in 2011, a judge ruled in August of last year that the increase violated a city law requiring utility hikes to be implemented gradually and halted all shutoffs imposed on any late bills under that rate increase, wiping the slate clean up until September. But once some bills became past due under the reduced rate structure, shutoff notices began going back out in the beginning of December. And many bills are still over $100 a month.
Some people are still reporting shutoff notices, while others say the city has stopped sending them. And no one quite knows whether Flint will follow through and actually disconnect service.
Others are taking action against the city for charging such high rates for water that’s been contaminated for nearly two years. Brenda Williams, an attorney, has filed a class action lawsuit against the city, state, emergency managers, and previous head of the Flint water department Howard Croft demanding that residents be reimbursed for their water bills going back to when the source of the water was first switched. “The complaint is from a contractual standpoint, that you contract with the city to receive water services, quality water,” she said. “When you go to the store and you buy something, you purchase a good or service. If you don’t get the proper goods or goods are defective, you take it back and get a return on your money. In this case, we’re paying for defective water.”
There are a number of other class action lawsuits over the crisis. A different one is also addressing the billing issues, seeking reimbursement for the harm caused by shutoff notices, as well as for the water bills and for the financial damage caused by the water in people’s homes.
Mayor Karen Weaver has already said residents of her city shouldn’t be paying for the contaminated water. And Snyder has set aside $3 million in his budget to go toward relief for residents paying water bills, although it has yet to be determined whether that money will be turned into refunds, forgiveness for past bills, or a reduction of rates in the future. The state House also passed a spending package with $3 million to help the city’s water fund stay solvent despite unpaid bills.
The two groups delivering petitions on Thursday also have an eye to the future, not just an interest in fixing what happened in the past.
A memo the city commissioned in April of 2015 found that water bills are unaffordable across most household sizes, income levels, and usage rates. That same memo laid out a plan to make bills more affordable, which would also bring in more revenue to the water department as residents paid more of their bills and the city spent less on collections, but it was never implemented. “It’s really important moving forward that it’s a system that’s affordable for everybody,” Kaucheck said, suggesting an affordability plan based on income.
Given everything else, the financial toll is just one more piece families are struggling with. “It’s stressful, they have enough to worry about with trying to find safe water, making sure kids are receiving the medical treatment that they need,” Kaucheck said. “We don’t need a long, draw-out plan about how we’re going to do this. It just needs to happen.”
Flint Residents Call For End To Outrageous Bills For Water They Can’t Even Use
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Michigan Officials Quietly Gave Bottled Water To State Employees Months Before Flint Residents
BY BRYCE COVERT
JAN 28, 2016 3:30 PM
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/DARRON CUMMINGS
John Whitaker, executive director of Midwest Food Bank, carries a case of water that was donated to Flint residents on January 27
The Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget decided to haul water coolers into the Flint state building in January of 2015 out of concern over the city’s water quality, a year before bottled water was being made available to residents, according to documents obtained by Progress Michigan.
Flint switched its water source from Detroit to the Flint River in April 2014, which is now known to have caused lead to leach into the city’s tap water. After two boil advisories were issued in August and September of 2014, the city sent residents a notice that the level of trihalomethanes (TTHMs), which can cause liver and kidney problems, had exceed federal limits, although they were told that it was still fine to use the water and no corrective actions needed to be taken.
But concerns raised over water quality were enough for officials in the state’s capitol of Lansing to decide to give state employees the option to drink bottled water from coolers, rather than from water fountains. Coolers were placed next to the fountains on each occupied floor, according to the documents, and were to be provided “as long as the public water does not meet treatment requirements.”
CREDIT: PROGRESS MICHIGAN
For residents, however, it took researchers uncovering elevated levels of lead in children’s bloodstreams for a lead advisory to finally be issued in September of 2015. Residents were told not to drink the water and a public health emergency was declared by the Genesee County Health Department in October, and Flint’s mayor declared a state of emergency in December. The National Guard was activated in January of this year to distribute water from five fire stations — a full year after water was brought in for state employees out of concern over water quality.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), whose administration some have said made the decision to switch to the Flint River, has claimed he didn’t know about the water problems until recently. But the plan to use that source was evaluated and rejected by the city’s emergency manager in 2012, according to a deposition. And while the purported reason for making the change in the first place was to save money while another pipeline was being built, leaked emails show that the city could have stayed with Detroit’s water and saved the same amount of money anyway.
Michigan Officials Quietly Gave Bottled Water To State Employees Months Before Flint Residents
@tru_m.a.c @Mephistopheles @Serious @The Real @BarNone
BY BRYCE COVERT
JAN 28, 2016 3:30 PM
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/DARRON CUMMINGS
John Whitaker, executive director of Midwest Food Bank, carries a case of water that was donated to Flint residents on January 27
The Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget decided to haul water coolers into the Flint state building in January of 2015 out of concern over the city’s water quality, a year before bottled water was being made available to residents, according to documents obtained by Progress Michigan.
Flint switched its water source from Detroit to the Flint River in April 2014, which is now known to have caused lead to leach into the city’s tap water. After two boil advisories were issued in August and September of 2014, the city sent residents a notice that the level of trihalomethanes (TTHMs), which can cause liver and kidney problems, had exceed federal limits, although they were told that it was still fine to use the water and no corrective actions needed to be taken.
But concerns raised over water quality were enough for officials in the state’s capitol of Lansing to decide to give state employees the option to drink bottled water from coolers, rather than from water fountains. Coolers were placed next to the fountains on each occupied floor, according to the documents, and were to be provided “as long as the public water does not meet treatment requirements.”
CREDIT: PROGRESS MICHIGAN
For residents, however, it took researchers uncovering elevated levels of lead in children’s bloodstreams for a lead advisory to finally be issued in September of 2015. Residents were told not to drink the water and a public health emergency was declared by the Genesee County Health Department in October, and Flint’s mayor declared a state of emergency in December. The National Guard was activated in January of this year to distribute water from five fire stations — a full year after water was brought in for state employees out of concern over water quality.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), whose administration some have said made the decision to switch to the Flint River, has claimed he didn’t know about the water problems until recently. But the plan to use that source was evaluated and rejected by the city’s emergency manager in 2012, according to a deposition. And while the purported reason for making the change in the first place was to save money while another pipeline was being built, leaked emails show that the city could have stayed with Detroit’s water and saved the same amount of money anyway.
Michigan Officials Quietly Gave Bottled Water To State Employees Months Before Flint Residents
@tru_m.a.c @Mephistopheles @Serious @The Real @BarNone