If Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder thought he’d calm fears and win over residents when he addressed the water crisis in Flint, he was wrong.
“I want Gov. Snyder to solve the problem and basically get up out of office,” longtime Flint resident Tomeko Hornaday told CNN, echoing the sentiments of many of the governor’s critics.
“We shouldn’t have to be going through this; we shouldn’t have to do this,” she said. “This is an embarrassment to the city of Flint, first of all, and an embarrassment to our government and to our residents.”
In his State of the State speech Tuesday night, Snyder vowed to do everything in his power to solve the crisis of toxic lead contamination in the city’s tap water, starting by asking legislators for $28 million to fund a series of immediate actions.
The Michigan House of Representatives approved the $28 million in emergency funding on Wednesday.
In 2011, the state took over control in Flint after a budget emergency, and state officials later decided to switch over the city’s water system from Lake Huron to the Flint River temporarily to save money.
Snyder issued a heartfelt apology Tuesday night: “You deserve better. You deserve accountability. You deserve to know that the buck stops here with me. Most of all, you deserve to know the truth.
“No citizen of this great state should endure this kind of catastrophe,” he said. “Government failed you — federal, state and local leaders — by breaking the trust you placed in us.”
But Flint resident Patty Warner suggested there’s little faith that public officials will fix this failure, given their track record.
“No one trusts anyone in Flint or Lansing,” Warner told CNN. “Unfortunately, we’ve lost public trust.”
Senator: ‘There’s no way to justify any of this’
In addition, Snyder is under fire for what’s happening in Detroit, which the state of Michigan also took control of due to budget woes. Nearly all schools there shut down Wednesday after teachers, angry about what they call horrific conditions and subpar funding, staged a mass sickout.
Flint has drawn even more attention because of the potentially calamitous health risks, enormous costs to fix the problem and allegations state officials are responsible for the water crisis and took too long to step up.
And Snyder’s address this week failed to convince his critics beyond Flint and Lansing.
“There’s no way to justify any of this,” said U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan. “Every single decision was made by the governor and this state government. … The state government has the legal and moral responsibility.”
The state should spend more to fix Flint’s problems, she said, especially at a time when it boasts a budget surplus of $500 million.
Flint Mayor Karen Weaver has said the costs to undo the damage, both to infrastructure and residents’ health, could be between $1 billion and $1.5 billion.
She told CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper that the suggested $28 million was simply not enough.
“It’s a two-fold kind of situation. We have an infrastructure crisis, but we have a public health crisis in the city of Flint right now,” Weaver said. “We still can’t drink our water.”
Democratic U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee called the figure Snyder proposed “a fraction of the money city residents have (already) paid for poisoned water that they cannot drink.” And Stabenow said it would barely make a dent in paying for new water pipes that are needed to replace damaged ones.
“There’s not a major commitment to make sure dollars go to fix this quickly,” the senator told CNN’s “New Day” on Wednesday. “And I continue to be stunned as we look at the slow walking of the state.”
The Environmental Protection Agency is now looking at Michigan’s entire drinking water program and how the Safe Drinking Water Act was implemented there. Its findings could add to the state’s total price tag to address potential water woes.
These investigations follow the EPA’s criticism about what it calls state and local authorities missteps in Flint.
The agency said in a statement, “What happened in Flint should not have happened.”
Speaking in Detroit on Wednesday, President Barack Obama described the crisis in Flint as a “terrible tragedy.”
“I know that if I was a parent up there, I would be beside myself that my kids’ health could be at risk,” he said. “It is a reminder of why you can’t shortchange basic services that we provide to our people.”
Lead poisoning a major concern
The problems began in April 2014 when the state decided to switch Flint’s water source temporarily to the Flint River as a cost-saving measure until a new supply line to Lake Huron was ready.
The Flint River had a reputation for nastiness when the state made the move. A 2011 study found that water from the Flint River could be considered potable if treated with an anti-corrosion agent — a measure that would have cost the state about $100 a day.
After the switch, residents complained their water looked, smelled and tasted funny.
Virginia Tech researchers found the water was highly corrosive. A class-action lawsuit filed last year alleges the state Department of Environmental Quality didn’t treat the water for corrosion, in accordance with federal law, and because so many service lines in Flint are made of lead, the noxious element leached into the water of the city’s homes.
Officials initially brushed off concerns, insisting the water was safe. But the tide turned in October, with the city moving back to Lake Huron for water.
By then, the damage was already done.
Cleaning up the tap water and upgrading infrastructure aren’t the only big costs that loom. In addition to investigations by the EPA, local U.S. attorney’s office and Michigan’s attorney general’s office, at least three lawsuits have been filed. Those suits seek individual damages for Flint residents — about 500 and counting — who have complained of health issues and worry about future ailments.
Snyder announced last week that the number of Legionnaires’ disease cases in Genesee County spiked in the last two years, though another state official noted that not all those sickened drank Flint water.
Another big concern is lead poisoning. It can severely affect mental and physical development, especially in children for whom the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes there’s “no safe blood lead level.”
“Once the lead is in your body, it never leaves,” Stabenow said. “It’s horrible.”
Rhonda Kelso, a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits, called the situation “unconscionable.”
“You really don’t want to think about it; you want to block it out of your mind,” she told CNN.
Following the paper trail
During the discovery process, lawyers said, attorneys and their clients should receive emails and other documents from government officials, including Snyder, that could shed light on a critical yet heretofore unanswered question: How the heck did this occur?
Pitt said Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services knew about elevated blood lead levels as far back as September 2014 “and sat on this information for 10 months.”
“At a certain point, I think they were ashamed, embarrassed and humiliated,” the lawyer told CNN’s “New Day” on Wednesday. “They were not responding in a proper way, and when they were confronted, they still denied it.”
Beyond whatever the official investigations find out, Pitt said that citizens taking action in the courts will lead to answers.
“It is pernicious,” he said. “And the lawsuits are going to get to the whys (that) these individuals did it.”
On Wednesday, Gov. Snyder released his emails regarding Flint from 2014 and 2015, as promised.
The ordeal has cast a cloud over Flint, a blue-collar city of about 100,000 that’s been through tough times before — but nothing like this.
“We take things for granted,” said Ken Van Wagoner, owner of Flint’s Good Beans Cafe coffee shop. “We’re always sure until someone tells you things aren’t right.”
