Water Crisis in Flint, Michigan: April 25, 2014 - TBD; 5 Michigan Health Officials Charged

[Regular_P]

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

This is fukking despicable.

 

[88m3]

This is fukking despicable.

damning

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

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.

Yo. I fukk with you. For real. Beautiful post.

 

[Red Shield]

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

and still no one will probably go to jail over this shyt

 

[88m3]

A Federal Criminal Investigation in Flint
The FBI and other U.S. government organizations are looking into lead poisoning in the Michigan city.

Carlos Osorio / AP

The poisoning of Flint’s population with lead is a human tragedy, and a story about the failure of government to protect its citizens. But is it a crime, too?

The FBI might be looking into that question, the Detroit Free Press reports Tuesday. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit said almost a month ago it was working on an investigation of the man-made disaster, but it wouldn’t say whether that inquiry was criminal or civil. It now appears the answer is criminal, as officials told the Freep the team includes the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the EPA’s Office of Inspector General Criminal Investigation Division.


Who Poisoned Flint?

The obvious, and unanswered, question now is who might be prosecuted and for what crimes. There’s plenty of blame to go around: City and state officials knew about problems with the water for months before taking action, downplaying the risks or simply saying they were someone else’s problem. The director of the state Department of Environmental Quality has been fired. EPA also failed to stop the disaster, saying it was the state’s responsibility; the regional director for the agency has resigned in the wake of that revelation.

The federal task force isn’t the only group investigating Flint. Governor Rick Snyder has appointed a task force, and state Attorney General Bill Schuette has also launched an investigation. The U.S. House Oversight Committee is holding hearings as well.


Much of the scrutiny, and fury, centers on the role of Darnell Earley, who was Flint’s emergency manager when it began drawing its drinking water from the Flint River. The city had elected to stop using Detroit’s water system, but Detroit terminated Flint’s contract before a replacement pipeline was built, leading Flint to use the river. But the Flint River’s water, which has a higher chloride content than the water from Lake Huron that Detroit uses, corroded Flint’s aging lead pipes, bringing the metal into the water supply—a problem that continues even after Flint went back to the Detroit system.

Earley was appointed by Snyder under Michigan’s much-maligned emergency-manager law, which grants the state the ability to bring in administrators to run troubled cities. Earley was called by the House Oversight Committee, but has apparently declined to testify. After leaving Flint, he became emergency manager of the Detroit Public Schools, and controversy has dogged him in that job, too—and he will step down from the job February 29. As the Freep reports, the Flint disaster is just one factor:

Earley has faced growing criticism in recent months both for what happened Flint and the problems within DPS such as crowded classrooms, dilapidated schools and a growing debt. Teachers have staged several sick-outs in recent weeks to protest the mold, water damage and rodent problems in some of the city's older schools, saying Earley had ignored their complaints.


A Federal Criminal Investigation in Flint

 

[tru_m.a.c]

10 Things They Won't Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy. But I Will


1. While the Children in Flint Were Given Poisoned Water to Drink, General Motors Was Given a Special Hookup to the Clean Water.


A few months after Gov. Snyder removed Flint from the clean fresh water we had been drinking for decades, the brass from General Motors went to him and complained that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. The governor was appalled to hear that GM property was being damaged, so he jumped through a number of hoops and quietly spent $440,000 to hook GM back up to the Lake Huron water, while keeping the rest of Flint on the Flint River water.

Which means that while the children in Flint were drinking lead-filled water, there was one -- and only one -- address in Flint that got clean water: the GM factory.



2. For Just $100 a Day, This Crisis Could've Been Prevented.


Federal law requires that water systems which are sent through lead pipes must contain an additive that seals the lead into the pipe and prevents it from leaching into the water. Someone at the beginning suggested to the governor that they add this anti-corrosive element to the water coming out of the Flint River.

"How much would that cost?" came the question. "$100 a day for three months," was the answer.

I guess that was too much, so, in order to save $9,000, the state government said f*** it -- and as a result the state may now end up having to pay upwards of $1.5 billion to fix the mess.



3. There's More Than the Lead in Flint's Water.


In addition to exposing every child in the city of Flint to lead poisoning on a daily basis, there appears to be a number of other diseases we may be hearing about in the months ahead. The number of cases in Flint of Legionnaires Disease has increased tenfold since the switch to the river water.

Eighty-seven people have come down with it, and at least 10 have died. In the five years before the river water, not a single person in Flint had died of Legionnaires Disease. Doctors are now discovering that another half-dozen toxins are being found in the blood of Flint's citizens, causing concern that there are other health catastrophes which may soon come to light.



4. People's Homes in Flint Are Now Worth Nothing Because They Cant Be Sold.


Would you buy a house in Flint right now? Who would? So every homeowner in Flint is stuck with a house that's now worth nothing. That's a total home value of $2.4 billion down the economic drain. People in Flint, one of the poorest cities in the U.S., don't have much to their name, and for many their only asset is their home.

So, in addition to being poisoned, they have now a net worth of zero. (And as for employment, who is going to move jobs or start a company in Flint under these conditions? No one.) Has Flint's future just been flushed down that river?



5. While They Were Being Poisoned, They Were Also Being Bombed.


Here's a story which has received little or no coverage outside of Flint. During these two years of water contamination, residents in Flint have had to contend with a decision made by the Pentagon to use Flint for target practice. Literally. Actual unannounced military exercises- - complete with live ammo and explosives -- were conducted last year inside the city of Flint. The army decided to practice urban warfare on Flint, making use of the thousands of abandoned homes which they could drop bombs on.

Streets with dilapidated homes had rocket-propelled grenades fired upon them. For weeks, an undisclosed number of army troops pretended Flint was Baghdad or Damascus and basically had at it. It sounded as if the city was under attack from an invading army or from terrorists. People were shocked this could be going on in their neighborhoods.

Wait -- did I say "people?" I meant, Flint people. As with the governor, it was OK to abuse a community that held no political power or money to fight back. BOOM!



6. The Wife of the Governor's Chief of Staff Is a Spokeswoman for Nestle, Michigan's Largest Owner of Private Water Reserves.


As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein: "Follow the money." Snyder's chief of staff throughout the two years of Flint's poisoning, Dennis Muchmore, was intimately involved in all the decisions regarding Flint. His wife is Deb Muchmore, who just happens to be the spokesperson in Michigan for the Nestle Company -- the largest owner of private water sources in the State of Michigan.

Nestle has been repeatedly sued in northern Michigan for the 200 gallons of fresh water per minute it sucks from out of the ground and bottles for sale as their Ice Mountain brand of bottled spring water. The Muchmores have a personal interest in seeing to it that Nestles grabs as much of Michigan's clean water was possible -- especially when cities like Flint in the future are going to need that Ice Mountain.



7. In Michigan, from Flint water, to Crime and Murder, to GM Ignition Switches, It's a Culture of Death.


It's not just the water that was recklessly used to put people's lives in jeopardy. There are many things that happen in Flint that would give one the impression that there is a low value placed on human life. Flint has one of the worst murder and crime rates in the country. Just for context, if New York City had the same murder rate as Flint, Michigan, the number of people murdered last year in New York would have been almost 4,000 people -- instead of the actual 340 who were killed in NYC in 2015. But it's not just street crime that makes one wonder about what is going on in Michigan.

Last year, it was revealed that, once again, one of Detroit's automakers had put profit ahead of people's lives. General Motors learned that it had installed faulty ignition switches in many of its cars. Instead of simply fixing the problem, mid-management staff covered it up from the public.

The auto industry has a history of weighing the costs of whether it's cheaper to spend the money to fix the defect in millions of cars or to simply pay off a bunch of lawsuits filed by the victims surviving family members. Does a cynical, arrogant culture like this make it easy for a former corporate CEO, now Governor, turn a blind eye to the lead that is discovered in a municipality's drinking water?



8. Don't Call It "Detroit Water" -- It's the Largest Source of Fresh Drinking Water in the World.


The media keeps saying Flint was using "Detroit's water." It is only filtered and treated at the Detroit Water Plant. The water itself comes from Lake Huron, the third largest body of fresh water in the world. It is a glacial lake formed over 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age and it is still fed by pure underground springs. Flint is geographically the last place on Earth where one should be drinking poisoned water.



9. ALL the Children Have Been Exposed, As Have All the Adults, Including Me.


That's just a fact. If you have been in Flint anytime from April 2014 to today, and you've drank the water, eaten food cooked with it, washed your clothes in it, taken a shower, brushed your teeth or eaten vegetables from someone's garden, you've been exposed to and ingested its toxins. When the media says "9,000 children under 6 have been exposed," that means ALL the children have been exposed because the total number of people under the age of 6 in Flint is... 9,000!

The media should just say, "all." When they say "47 children have tested positive", that's just those who've drank the water in the last week or so. Lead enters the body and does it's damage to the brain immediately. It doesn't stay in the blood stream for longer than a few days and you can't detect it after a month. So when you hear "47 children", that's just those with an exposure in the last 48 hours. It's really everyone.



10. This Was Done, Like So Many Things These Days, So the Rich Could Get a Big Tax Break.


When Governor Snyder took office in 2011, one of the first things he did was to get a multi-billion dollar tax break passed by the Republican legislature for the wealthy and for corporations. But with less tax revenues, that meant he had to start cutting costs.

So, many things -- schools, pensions, welfare, safe drinking water -- were slashed. Then he invoked an executive privilege to take over cities (all of them majority black) by firing the mayors and city councils whom the local people had elected, and installing his cronies to act as "dictators" over these cities.

Their mission? Cut services to save money so he could give the rich even more breaks. That's where the idea of switching Flint to river water came from. To save $15 million! It was easy. Suspend democracy. Cut taxes for the rich. Make the poor drink toxic river water. And everybody's happy.

Except those who were poisoned in the process. All 102,000 of them. In the richest country in the world.

10 Things They Won't Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy. But I Will

 

[Red Shield]

5. While They Were Being Poisoned, They Were Also Being Bombed.


Here's a story which has received little or no coverage outside of Flint. During these two years of water contamination, residents in Flint have had to contend with a decision made by the Pentagon to use Flint for target practice. Literally. Actual unannounced military exercises- - complete with live ammo and explosives -- were conducted last year inside the city of Flint. The army decided to practice urban warfare on Flint, making use of the thousands of abandoned homes which they could drop bombs on.

Streets with dilapidated homes had rocket-propelled grenades fired upon them. For weeks, an undisclosed number of army troops pretended Flint was Baghdad or Damascus and basically had at it. It sounded as if the city was under attack from an invading army or from terrorists. People were shocked this could be going on in their neighborhoods.

Wait -- did I say "people?" I meant, Flint people. As with the governor, it was OK to abuse a community that held no political power or money to fight back. BOOM!

which poster was talking about this shyt being a black op again?

 

[88m3]

APNewsBreak: Officials warned of water, Legionnaires' link
By DAVID EGGERT and ED WHITE

Feb. 4, 2016 2:14 PM EST





2 photos

• 

FILE - In this Dec. 11, 2012 file photo, Gov. Rick Snyder speaks in Lansing, Mich. When Snyder... Read more



LANSING, Mich. (AP) — High-ranking officials in Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's administration were aware of a surge in Legionnaires' disease potentially linked to Flint's water long before the governor reported the increase to the public last month, internal emails show.

When he disclosed the spike in Legionnaires' cases on Jan. 13, Snyder said he had learned about it just a couple of days earlier. But emails obtained by the liberal group Progress Michigan through public-records requests and shared with The Associated Press show Snyder's own office was aware of the outbreak since last March. At the time, others in the administration were scrambling to respond to suggestions that bacteria in the city's new water source, the Flint River, could be the culprit.

The outbreak was also well known within state agencies, according to emails obtained separately by the AP and other news organizations. Together, the emails offer more evidence that some state officials were dismissive of county health authorities who raised concerns about the safety of the community's drinking water.


"The increase of the illnesses closely corresponds with the timeframe of the switch to the Flint River water. The majority of the cases reside or have an association with the city," Jim Henry, Genesee County's environmental health supervisor, wrote March 10 to Flint leaders, the city's state-appointed emergency financial manager and the state Department of Environmental Quality, known as the DEQ.


"This situation has been explicitly explained to MDEQ and many of the city's officials," Henry said in the email that was forwarded by the DEQ to a Snyder aide three days later. "I want to make sure in writing that there are no misunderstandings regarding this significant and urgent public health issue."

Legionnaires' disease is a pneumonia caused by bacteria in the lungs. People get sick if they inhale mist or vapor from contaminated water systems, hot tubs or cooling systems.

There were at least 87 cases across Genesee County during a 17-month period, including nine deaths, but the public was never told about the increase when it was happening — even after an initial wave of more than 40 cases was known by early 2015.

The back and forth behind the scenes occurred while residents were complaining about poor water quality, even before lead contamination became an extraordinary health emergency roughly six months later.

The emails reveal tension between the county health department, which was on the front line of the Legionnaires' outbreak, and the city and state about how to investigate the disease. The emails also show some angst in the Snyder administration over the controversy.

Brad Wurfel, who was DEQ spokesman at the time, informed Snyder's director of urban initiatives, Harvey Hollins, about a "significant uptick" in Legionnaires' cases but said it was "beyond irresponsible" for Henry to link the disease to the river without an adequate investigation. He copied then-DEQ director Dan Wyant on the email.

Wurfel noted that the county had re-submitted an open-records request to the city for water testing results and other information because of what Henry called the city's "lack of cooperation."

Wurfel said it would be "highly unlikely" to find Legionella bacteria around the water treatment plant. However, he acknowledged the accusation about a link to the river was "serious" and said all agencies should come together "asap to share what information we have and develop a response/screening strategy before the weather gets warm again."

Both Wyant and Wurfel resigned on Dec. 29.

Snyder spokesman Dave Murray, citing the large executive office staff, said this week that the Republican governor only learned about the Legionnaires' outbreak days before he publicly disclosed it — despite Hollins being flagged 10 months earlier. Snyder's former chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, has said neither he nor Snyder knew but they should have been told earlier.

"Important information flow isn't always forthcoming," he said in mid-January on WKAR-TV's "Off The Record" show.

Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan, said the emails expose "another glaring example of Gov. Snyder saying one thing and emails really revealing something different." The group, which has asked Snyder to release staff emails that are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, is still reviewing thousands of pages of state emails related to Flint's water.

On March 12, Stephen Busch, a DEQ district supervisor, wrote back to Henry and challenged his assertion that the DEQ had declined to meet since being initially informed in October 2014 about a rise in Legionnaires' cases. Busch said the department never was asked for a meeting, but he agreed a multi-agency partnership would be beneficial moving forward.

"Conclusions that legionella is coming from the public water system without the presentation of any substantiating evidence from your epidemiologic investigation appears premature and prejudice (sic) toward that end," Busch wrote.

Janet Stout is a Pittsburgh microbiologist and expert on Legionnaires' disease who has researched links between Legionella bacteria and public water supplies. She believes the Flint River caused an increase in Genesee County Legionnaires' cases.

"The county was alerting and alarmed and seeking cooperation and help from outside agencies," Stout told the AP. "What I read tells me they did not get much help for various reasons."

The state Department of Health and Human Services had already begun assisting the county in the fall of 2014, and the Legionnaires' investigation had become "very intensive" in early 2015, said Dr. Eden Wells, Michigan's chief medical executive.

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.

About half of the cases had an "association" with a Flint hospital in the two weeks prior to their illness, Wells said. McLaren Hospital spent more than $300,000 on a water treatment system, banned showers and also turned to bottled water for patients.

The state said it cannot conclude that the Legionnaires' surge is related to the water switch, nor can it rule it out, in part because of too few case specimens from patients.

The first wave of 45 cases was commonly known within the state health department, Wells said, but the agency did not take the information to the governor until confirming a second wave of 42 cases and analyzing them together.

APNewsBreak: Officials warned of water, Legionnaires' link

 

[smitty22]

This is fukking despicable.

The more that comes out on this story the more pissed i get. Nobody will be held accountable either

 

[88m3]

The first hearing on the Flint water crisis was heated and emotional. Here are 6 key moments.

The first hearing on the Flint water crisis was heated and emotional. Here are 6 key moments.


@Liu Kang could this get upped?

 

[tmonster]

Nobody will be held accountable either

that's my concern

 

[88m3]

Flint Water Crisis Creates Stigma, Uncertainty in Real Estate Market

 

[Regular_P]

The first hearing on the Flint water crisis was heated and emotional. Here are 6 key moments.

The first hearing on the Flint water crisis was heated and emotional. Here are 6 key moments.


@Liu Kang could this get upped?

There was plenty of outrage in Wednesday's hearing to go around, but few do it as passionately as Cummings, the longtime top Democrat on the committee.

He asked Keith Creagh, the interim director of Michigan's beleaguered state environmental department, whether the state would consider paying residents' water bills, because the water is still not safe to drink. Flint residents had been protesting their water bills, tearing them up and burning them in front of city call recently.

"Why would they be paying for water that they cannot even use that is poisoning them?" Cummings asked, yelling so loudly his voice echoed across the room. "That's not American. As Mr. Chairman said, this is not a third-world country. Are they paying those bills? Are you going to relieve them of that?"

Creagh replied calmly: "Everyone deserves safe water, and that's the expectation." He said Snyder announced $30 million to help with some of those bills.

Some of those bills? Is this fukking guy serious? :playoffs:

 

[Liu Kang]

[...]
@Liu Kang could this get upped?

Done.

 

[ORDER_66]

Elijah Cummings....

Cac saw the wrath of god...