Flint, Michigan accused of ignoring lead-contaminated water to save $$
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The Racist Roots Of Flint's Water Crisis
"This is a big part of American history. No one wants to talk about it, but the chickens have come to roost.”
02/03/2016 08:02 am ET | Updated 9 minutes ago
·
WASHINGTON -- The contaminated water disaster flowing through one of Michigan’s poorest, blackest cities is tainted by poverty and racism.
Since April 2014, residents of Flint, a city that is almost 57 percent black and incredibly poor, have been drinking and bathing in water that contains enough lead to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of “toxic waste.”
No single person shoulders the blame for this situation, but thanks to widespread mismanagement a largely black and brown community now faces the disproportionate effects of systemic neglect. And to many, Flint’s water crisis fits into a historical trend of environmental racism in the U.S., which for decades has allowed polluters to prey on communities of color, in part because of weak environmental regulations.
“There’s a philosophy of government that has been writing these places off -- places like Flint get written off,” Flint's Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) told The Huffington Post. “And, to me, even though those people making those decisions might not see it this way, it’s hard for me to accept the fact that race is not the most significant factor.”
At the first democratic presidential debate of the year, Hillary Clinton issued a rallying cry for Flint's predicament, saying that the crisis would have been handled differently if it happened in a “white suburb outside of Detroit.”
While state offices and presidential candidates have rushed to criticize Michigan's handling of the Flint water crisis, the legacy of environmental injustice and racism in the once-thriving city stretches far beyond lead pipes and discolored tap water.
Five-year-old Morgan Walker is among the children aged six and younger to get free lead screenings in a Molina Healthcare-sponsored initiative since a state of emergency was declared in January for Flint over the water crisis.
In 1966, Flint’s automotive industry was booming. Buick City, a 235-acre factory that produced Buicks for General Motors, churned out thick clouds of smoke, which floated over Flint’s poverty-stricken, predominantly black North End neighborhood.
At a state Civil Rights Commission hearing on the environmental impact of the plant, which opened in 1904, North End resident Aliene Butler testified to the horrid conditions residents faced.
“The houses in this district are eaten up by a very heavy deposit, something like rust," she said. "You can imagine what we go through down there breathing when this exists on just material things."
Butler, a throat cancer survivor who lost her husband to the same illness, had highlighted one way de facto segregation leads to environmental injustice.
That same year, Buick City dumped 2.2 million gallons of waste per day into the Flint River. The year before, the eight GM plants around Flint had dumped about 26.5 million gallons of industrial waste into the river each day.
The city used the Flint River for its water supply until 1967, when it began buying water from Detroit and treating it with an anti-corrosive agent. A December 1966 EPA study showed that the water quality in Flint was poor decades before people were talking about lead pipes and poisoning.
It’s both a class and race issue. When you have companies there, they dump everything into the water and into poor communities.
Carl S. Taylor, a sociology professor at Michigan State University who built a national reputation as an ethnographer of poor communities, said the pattern had been there for some time.
"It’s both a class and race issue. When you have companies there, they dump everything into the water and into poor communities,” he told HuffPost. “You can’t go dump it into affluent communities. They wouldn’t tolerate it on their land.”
Poisoning a community's water supply was particularly common, Taylor said.
“Those large rivers, during the industrial age, particularly manufacturing, it’s not unusual to see that damage that’s done to the land or to dump them on poor communities,” he added.
Buick City didn’t close until 1999.
In December 1992, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality approved a permit to build Genesee Power Station, an $80 million incinerator slated for construction beside a poor black community on the city’s north side.
The incinerator opened for business in 1995 and sits to the east of an elementary school. The plant would release lead, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and other chemical compounds into the air, all products of burning wood covered in lead-based paint. In 1994, several community members filed administrative complaints with the EPA, citing Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which occurs when state environmental agencies allow polluting industries disproportionately in communities of color. They maintained that the plant would be a danger to public health in a community already exposed to large amounts of pollution.
While the permit for the incinerator requires overall lead emissions to be at least 100 times less than the national allowable limit, Michigan’s DEQ did not gauge the amount of lead already present in the community. Nor did it study the potential environmental and health impact.
Community complaints piled up at the EPA, creating a severe backlog. As of last year, the agency still had not responded.
The National Guard has tested water samples from residents in an effort to curb the crisis.
Environmental racism happens nationwide, but Paul Mohai, a professor who founded the University of Michigan's environmental justice program, said Flint is unique.
“It’s been a lot harder to say, ‘Oh, your lead poisoning is due to your bad diet, or too much second-hand smoke’ or anything like that,” Mohai said. “Some of these other environmental justice conflicts ... when people raise lifestyle choices or lack of access to health care, [those alternate explanations] seem plausible. But in this case I think it’s harder to discount the source of the problem.”
And the national media attention is bringing Flint an onslaught of support.
Michigan’s lawmakers and political figures have seized on the opportunity to speak out about other issues that disproportionately plague Flint's majority-black population. Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.), a ranking member of the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on the Interior, called for a congressional hearing on the high concentrations of lead in Flint’s water supply.
On Wednesday, witnesses including EPA and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality representatives, attend, but State Gov. Rick Snyder (R) andDarnell Earley, the former Emergency Manager who oversaw the city's switch to the Flint river in 2014, won’t be present.
Lawrence said it was Congress’ responsibility to address a “man-made disaster created by the poor policy decisions of elected and career government officials.”
“I want to get the facts, then I want legislation or policy to ensure we are closing those loopholes that obviously the Flint community fell through,” Lawrence told HuffPost. “As a member of Congress, I’m enraged. My thing is not to point fingers but to find out what happened and where did we fail so that we will never do it again. We [should] never have this conversation about children being developmentally impacted because of poisoning of the water that they drink.”
Flint's water crisis is finally in the national spotlight. Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI), center, flanked by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), discusses helping affected families, during a news conference on Capitol Hill, Jan. 28.
Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said in a January conference call that what’s happening in her city demands more than momentary support at the height of the crisis. Flint needs federal and state assistance, Weaver said, and for people to be held accountable for what’s happening.
Weaver’s comments support Taylor’s theories about Flint. The emergency in “Auto City” will last long after the city’s faulty lead pipes are gutted and water supply reinvigorated.
“It’s not just about black lives mattering here. Poor people’s lives don’t matter [in Flint],” Taylor said. “Flint didn't just get bad. The water just made everyone notice. Everyone is acting surprised, but it’s real simple. This is a big part of American history. No one wants to talk about it, but the chickens have come to roost.”
The state showed Flint the cold shoulder argues Virgil Bernero, the mayor of nearby Lansing, Michigan, who ran against Snyder in 2010. Snyder’s administration rated the city’s officials useless and incompetent, Bernero said. They wanted to make the decisions for the city, which led to the lack of reaction when the water crisis was taking shape.
“The response was muted. The state response was sluggish and irresponsible. That does have something to do with the people being voiceless,” Bernero told HuffPost. “When those voices started saying, ‘This water is discolored, it doesn’t smell right, I’ve got a rash, my kid isn’t responding properly,’ those voices were not heard. And that does have something to do with being poor and a minority, frankly.”
Researchers at Virginia Tech discovered in 2015 that the Flint River is 19 times more corrosive than Lake Huron. A November 2015 class-action lawsuit describes how Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality wasn’t treating the new water source with an anti-corrosive agent causing the water to get more and more discolored.
Adding that agent would cost $100 a day, according to CNN, and 90 percent of the problems with Flint’s water could have been avoided. Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech corrosion expert who helped expose the high lead levels, in Flint’s water, told HuffPost that not implementing corrosion control was not an honest mistake.
Edwards’ presentation on his research results, obtained by HuffPost, shows that if Flint had maintained corrosion control from the moment the city switched water sources, the lead poisoning would never have happened.
The decisions to delay assistance to Flint painted the city as America’s latest, tangible example of environmental racism. The state administration doesn’t need to dictate what Flint needs, Kildee admitted. The help Flint needs is beyond the reach of the state of Michigan, because it was Michigan that failed Flint in the first place.
“I just don’t believe, in my heart, that if this had happened in a more affluent that was not a majority-minority community -- I don’t believe that the state [would have] ever let it get this far,” Kildee said.
"This is a big part of American history. No one wants to talk about it, but the chickens have come to roost.”
02/03/2016 08:02 am ET | Updated 9 minutes ago
·
WASHINGTON -- The contaminated water disaster flowing through one of Michigan’s poorest, blackest cities is tainted by poverty and racism.
Since April 2014, residents of Flint, a city that is almost 57 percent black and incredibly poor, have been drinking and bathing in water that contains enough lead to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of “toxic waste.”
No single person shoulders the blame for this situation, but thanks to widespread mismanagement a largely black and brown community now faces the disproportionate effects of systemic neglect. And to many, Flint’s water crisis fits into a historical trend of environmental racism in the U.S., which for decades has allowed polluters to prey on communities of color, in part because of weak environmental regulations.
“There’s a philosophy of government that has been writing these places off -- places like Flint get written off,” Flint's Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) told The Huffington Post. “And, to me, even though those people making those decisions might not see it this way, it’s hard for me to accept the fact that race is not the most significant factor.”
At the first democratic presidential debate of the year, Hillary Clinton issued a rallying cry for Flint's predicament, saying that the crisis would have been handled differently if it happened in a “white suburb outside of Detroit.”
While state offices and presidential candidates have rushed to criticize Michigan's handling of the Flint water crisis, the legacy of environmental injustice and racism in the once-thriving city stretches far beyond lead pipes and discolored tap water.
Five-year-old Morgan Walker is among the children aged six and younger to get free lead screenings in a Molina Healthcare-sponsored initiative since a state of emergency was declared in January for Flint over the water crisis.
In 1966, Flint’s automotive industry was booming. Buick City, a 235-acre factory that produced Buicks for General Motors, churned out thick clouds of smoke, which floated over Flint’s poverty-stricken, predominantly black North End neighborhood.
At a state Civil Rights Commission hearing on the environmental impact of the plant, which opened in 1904, North End resident Aliene Butler testified to the horrid conditions residents faced.
“The houses in this district are eaten up by a very heavy deposit, something like rust," she said. "You can imagine what we go through down there breathing when this exists on just material things."
Butler, a throat cancer survivor who lost her husband to the same illness, had highlighted one way de facto segregation leads to environmental injustice.
That same year, Buick City dumped 2.2 million gallons of waste per day into the Flint River. The year before, the eight GM plants around Flint had dumped about 26.5 million gallons of industrial waste into the river each day.
The city used the Flint River for its water supply until 1967, when it began buying water from Detroit and treating it with an anti-corrosive agent. A December 1966 EPA study showed that the water quality in Flint was poor decades before people were talking about lead pipes and poisoning.
It’s both a class and race issue. When you have companies there, they dump everything into the water and into poor communities.
Carl S. Taylor, a sociology professor at Michigan State University who built a national reputation as an ethnographer of poor communities, said the pattern had been there for some time.
"It’s both a class and race issue. When you have companies there, they dump everything into the water and into poor communities,” he told HuffPost. “You can’t go dump it into affluent communities. They wouldn’t tolerate it on their land.”
Poisoning a community's water supply was particularly common, Taylor said.
“Those large rivers, during the industrial age, particularly manufacturing, it’s not unusual to see that damage that’s done to the land or to dump them on poor communities,” he added.
Buick City didn’t close until 1999.
In December 1992, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality approved a permit to build Genesee Power Station, an $80 million incinerator slated for construction beside a poor black community on the city’s north side.
The incinerator opened for business in 1995 and sits to the east of an elementary school. The plant would release lead, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and other chemical compounds into the air, all products of burning wood covered in lead-based paint. In 1994, several community members filed administrative complaints with the EPA, citing Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which occurs when state environmental agencies allow polluting industries disproportionately in communities of color. They maintained that the plant would be a danger to public health in a community already exposed to large amounts of pollution.
While the permit for the incinerator requires overall lead emissions to be at least 100 times less than the national allowable limit, Michigan’s DEQ did not gauge the amount of lead already present in the community. Nor did it study the potential environmental and health impact.
Community complaints piled up at the EPA, creating a severe backlog. As of last year, the agency still had not responded.
The National Guard has tested water samples from residents in an effort to curb the crisis.
Environmental racism happens nationwide, but Paul Mohai, a professor who founded the University of Michigan's environmental justice program, said Flint is unique.
“It’s been a lot harder to say, ‘Oh, your lead poisoning is due to your bad diet, or too much second-hand smoke’ or anything like that,” Mohai said. “Some of these other environmental justice conflicts ... when people raise lifestyle choices or lack of access to health care, [those alternate explanations] seem plausible. But in this case I think it’s harder to discount the source of the problem.”
And the national media attention is bringing Flint an onslaught of support.
Michigan’s lawmakers and political figures have seized on the opportunity to speak out about other issues that disproportionately plague Flint's majority-black population. Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.), a ranking member of the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on the Interior, called for a congressional hearing on the high concentrations of lead in Flint’s water supply.
On Wednesday, witnesses including EPA and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality representatives, attend, but State Gov. Rick Snyder (R) andDarnell Earley, the former Emergency Manager who oversaw the city's switch to the Flint river in 2014, won’t be present.
Lawrence said it was Congress’ responsibility to address a “man-made disaster created by the poor policy decisions of elected and career government officials.”
“I want to get the facts, then I want legislation or policy to ensure we are closing those loopholes that obviously the Flint community fell through,” Lawrence told HuffPost. “As a member of Congress, I’m enraged. My thing is not to point fingers but to find out what happened and where did we fail so that we will never do it again. We [should] never have this conversation about children being developmentally impacted because of poisoning of the water that they drink.”
Flint's water crisis is finally in the national spotlight. Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI), center, flanked by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), discusses helping affected families, during a news conference on Capitol Hill, Jan. 28.
Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said in a January conference call that what’s happening in her city demands more than momentary support at the height of the crisis. Flint needs federal and state assistance, Weaver said, and for people to be held accountable for what’s happening.
Weaver’s comments support Taylor’s theories about Flint. The emergency in “Auto City” will last long after the city’s faulty lead pipes are gutted and water supply reinvigorated.
“It’s not just about black lives mattering here. Poor people’s lives don’t matter [in Flint],” Taylor said. “Flint didn't just get bad. The water just made everyone notice. Everyone is acting surprised, but it’s real simple. This is a big part of American history. No one wants to talk about it, but the chickens have come to roost.”
The state showed Flint the cold shoulder argues Virgil Bernero, the mayor of nearby Lansing, Michigan, who ran against Snyder in 2010. Snyder’s administration rated the city’s officials useless and incompetent, Bernero said. They wanted to make the decisions for the city, which led to the lack of reaction when the water crisis was taking shape.
“The response was muted. The state response was sluggish and irresponsible. That does have something to do with the people being voiceless,” Bernero told HuffPost. “When those voices started saying, ‘This water is discolored, it doesn’t smell right, I’ve got a rash, my kid isn’t responding properly,’ those voices were not heard. And that does have something to do with being poor and a minority, frankly.”
Researchers at Virginia Tech discovered in 2015 that the Flint River is 19 times more corrosive than Lake Huron. A November 2015 class-action lawsuit describes how Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality wasn’t treating the new water source with an anti-corrosive agent causing the water to get more and more discolored.
Adding that agent would cost $100 a day, according to CNN, and 90 percent of the problems with Flint’s water could have been avoided. Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech corrosion expert who helped expose the high lead levels, in Flint’s water, told HuffPost that not implementing corrosion control was not an honest mistake.
Edwards’ presentation on his research results, obtained by HuffPost, shows that if Flint had maintained corrosion control from the moment the city switched water sources, the lead poisoning would never have happened.
The decisions to delay assistance to Flint painted the city as America’s latest, tangible example of environmental racism. The state administration doesn’t need to dictate what Flint needs, Kildee admitted. The help Flint needs is beyond the reach of the state of Michigan, because it was Michigan that failed Flint in the first place.
“I just don’t believe, in my heart, that if this had happened in a more affluent that was not a majority-minority community -- I don’t believe that the state [would have] ever let it get this far,” Kildee said.
It's rare that a comedian can tug at my wallet like this
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/...anvassers-approves-gov-snyder-recall-petition
Posted: 6:10 PM, February 08, 2016 Updated: 6:17 PM, February 08, 2016
State Board of Canvassers approves Gov. Snyder recall petition
DETROIT - The Michigan State Board of Canvassers has approved a recall petition for Gov. Rick Snyder.
The petition calls for Snyder's removal from office over an executive order he signed last March related to the school reform office. The order included a section which created the state school reform and redesign office within the Department of Technology, Management and Budget.
The petition calls that order unconstitutional.
The group behind the petition must now collect nearly 800,000 signatures to get the recall on the ballot. They have 180 days and need valid signatures within 60 days of turning them in.
Meanwhile, the Board of Canvassers has rejected several petitions to recall the governor for reasons related to the Flint water crisis.
Posted: 6:10 PM, February 08, 2016 Updated: 6:17 PM, February 08, 2016
State Board of Canvassers approves Gov. Snyder recall petition
DETROIT - The Michigan State Board of Canvassers has approved a recall petition for Gov. Rick Snyder.
The petition calls for Snyder's removal from office over an executive order he signed last March related to the school reform office. The order included a section which created the state school reform and redesign office within the Department of Technology, Management and Budget.
The petition calls that order unconstitutional.
The group behind the petition must now collect nearly 800,000 signatures to get the recall on the ballot. They have 180 days and need valid signatures within 60 days of turning them in.
Meanwhile, the Board of Canvassers has rejected several petitions to recall the governor for reasons related to the Flint water crisis.
Snyder declined to come testify before the Democratic part of the committee, saying that he has a budget to present. 
The Dems don't have subpoena power, since they're the minority, and the Repubs refuse to call him to testify, despite repeated requests from the Dems.
The Dems don't have subpoena power, since they're the minority, and the Repubs refuse to call him to testify, despite repeated requests from the Dems.
Snyder declined to come testify before the Democratic part of the committee, saying that he has a budget to present.
Is this the US congress? Don't the senate have subpoena power?
http://wzakcleveland.hellobeautiful...2016-02-10&utm_term=WZAKCleveland-Subscribers
Manslaughter, Other Charges Possible In Flint Water Crisis
Feb 10, 2016
By D.L. Chandler
The special counsel for the state attorney general’s office in Michigan said Tuesday that manslaughter and other related charges could come forth in relation to the ongoing Flint water crisis.
Todd Flood, the special counsel, said Tuesday that the attorney general’s office investigation could prompt a combination of criminal charges or civil actions writes the Detroit News.
The Detroit News reports:
“We’re here to investigate what possible crimes there are, anything to the involuntary manslaughter or death that may have happened to some young person or old person because of this poisoning, to misconduct in office,” he said. “We take this very seriously.”
Flood joined Attorney General Bill Schuette, chief investigator Andrew Arena and deputy chief investigator Ellis Stafford for a media round table Tuesday in Lansing, where they provided an update on the investigation launched last month.
The probe will look at state and local government officials to determine whether any state laws were violated. There is no clear timeline for how long the investigation will take.
Flood added that bringing forth manslaughter charges is “not far-fetched” if their investigation reveals negligence or “breach of duty” in the handling of the water. As the Detroit News also notes, nine people have died of Legionnaires’ disease after the water was switched to Flint River water in April 2014.
Manslaughter, Other Charges Possible In Flint Water Crisis
Feb 10, 2016
By D.L. Chandler
The special counsel for the state attorney general’s office in Michigan said Tuesday that manslaughter and other related charges could come forth in relation to the ongoing Flint water crisis.
Todd Flood, the special counsel, said Tuesday that the attorney general’s office investigation could prompt a combination of criminal charges or civil actions writes the Detroit News.
The Detroit News reports:
“We’re here to investigate what possible crimes there are, anything to the involuntary manslaughter or death that may have happened to some young person or old person because of this poisoning, to misconduct in office,” he said. “We take this very seriously.”
Flood joined Attorney General Bill Schuette, chief investigator Andrew Arena and deputy chief investigator Ellis Stafford for a media round table Tuesday in Lansing, where they provided an update on the investigation launched last month.
The probe will look at state and local government officials to determine whether any state laws were violated. There is no clear timeline for how long the investigation will take.
Flood added that bringing forth manslaughter charges is “not far-fetched” if their investigation reveals negligence or “breach of duty” in the handling of the water. As the Detroit News also notes, nine people have died of Legionnaires’ disease after the water was switched to Flint River water in April 2014.
http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2016/02/doctor_who_exposed_blood_lead.html
on February 11, 2016 at 12:55 PM, updated February 11, 2016 at 3:49 PM
Possible lead exposure-miscarriage link probed in Flint water crisis
FLINT, MI -- The pediatrician who exposed rising blood lead levels in young children in Flint and the state of Michigan are separately investigating whether pregnant women who drank the city's tainted water had abnormally high miscarriage rates.
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, of Flint's Hurley Medical Center, and the state Department of Health and Human Services confirmed their work is already underway, but each said it is premature to draw any conclusions.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says too much lead in a pregnant woman's body puts her at risk for miscarriage, as well as increasing the risk of a baby to be born too early or too small.
That's because lead can cross the placental barrier, exposing both mother and unborn child to the toxin.
In addition to increased risk of miscarriages, lead can damage a developing baby's nervous system and even low lead exposures in developing babies have been found to affect behavior and intelligence, the CDC says.
Late last month, pregnant women and children under 6 were told by state, local and federal officials to stop using even filtered Flint tap water unless it has been tested for lead.
Officials announced during a Friday, Jan. 29, news conference that recent lead testing found 26 sites across the city with readings of 150 parts per billion or more of lead — 10 times the federal action limit.
Testing from the U.S. Department of Environmental Quality discovered at least one home with lead levels above 4,000 ppb.
Jennifer Eisner, a spokeswoman for the state DHHS, said epidemiologists in the agency are looking at the possible miscarriage-lead exposure link, and Hanna-Attisha said she began her work two months ago as a part of her work with the pediatric health initiative in Flint.
Hanna-Attisha is heading the initiative, which is a collaboration between Hurley, Michigan State University's college of human medicine and other community organizations.
"We are researching that now," she said. "(We are researching) all maternal fetal complications that could have been from lead and (total trihalomethanes). Lead was used as an abortion pill in the 1920s."
Exposure to both lead and total trihalomethanes (TTHM) are associated with low birth weight, congenital malformations and male infertility, and levels of each rose in city water while the Flint River was used as Flint's water source.
Data on miscarriages is maintained by DHHS, but currently available data doesn't go beyond the end of 2013, four months before the city's water source was changed from Lake Huron to the river.
After that change to a much more corrosive water source, lead increasingly leached into Flint tap water and damaged a protective phosphate coating in transmission pipes.
That protective coating is still being rebuilt — nearly four months after the city stopped using the river as its water source.
Professor Marc Edwards, whose reports on rising lead levels in Flint's water helped draw national attention to the city, said fetal death rates should be reviewed but said it's not certain researchers will be able to make a connection.
Edwards published a study in late 2013, showing stillbirth rates in Washington, D.C., rose in parallel with spikes in lead levels there.
"Comparing Washington, D.C., to Flint, the water lead levels were about three times higher and the population exposed was about five times higher in D.C.," Edwards wrote in an email to The Flint Journal-MLive.
"Both of those factors work in favor of scientifically establishing a strong association between water lead exposures and the miscarriages and fetal death in D.C.," the email says. "But it is definitely something that should be examined."
Marcie Treadwell, director of the University of Michigan Health Systems' Fetal Diagnostic Center, agreed that a possible connection between lead exposure and fetal death should be explored in Flint.
Treadwell said she's not familiar with human studies linking lead exposure to higher miscarriage rates, but animal studies have shown negative effects on brain development.
"We see the downstream effects in animal models. ... There are some really serious concerns with lead exposure that extend prenatally," she said.
Part of the uncertainty is that the degree of lead exposure Flint mothers were subjected to will never be known.
Lead leaves the bloodstream within weeks of exposure and lead levels have varied from home to home, depending on factors including whether water flowed to homes through lead service lines and whether homes had lead or lead solder in indoor plumbing.
Exposure questions also remain because while city testing showed rising lead levels in the water, officials for the city have acknowledged they filed false reports in 2014 and 2015, certifying that they tested water only in homes at the highest risk of elevated lead levels.
on February 11, 2016 at 12:55 PM, updated February 11, 2016 at 3:49 PM
Possible lead exposure-miscarriage link probed in Flint water crisis
FLINT, MI -- The pediatrician who exposed rising blood lead levels in young children in Flint and the state of Michigan are separately investigating whether pregnant women who drank the city's tainted water had abnormally high miscarriage rates.
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, of Flint's Hurley Medical Center, and the state Department of Health and Human Services confirmed their work is already underway, but each said it is premature to draw any conclusions.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says too much lead in a pregnant woman's body puts her at risk for miscarriage, as well as increasing the risk of a baby to be born too early or too small.
That's because lead can cross the placental barrier, exposing both mother and unborn child to the toxin.
In addition to increased risk of miscarriages, lead can damage a developing baby's nervous system and even low lead exposures in developing babies have been found to affect behavior and intelligence, the CDC says.
Late last month, pregnant women and children under 6 were told by state, local and federal officials to stop using even filtered Flint tap water unless it has been tested for lead.
Officials announced during a Friday, Jan. 29, news conference that recent lead testing found 26 sites across the city with readings of 150 parts per billion or more of lead — 10 times the federal action limit.
Testing from the U.S. Department of Environmental Quality discovered at least one home with lead levels above 4,000 ppb.
Jennifer Eisner, a spokeswoman for the state DHHS, said epidemiologists in the agency are looking at the possible miscarriage-lead exposure link, and Hanna-Attisha said she began her work two months ago as a part of her work with the pediatric health initiative in Flint.
Hanna-Attisha is heading the initiative, which is a collaboration between Hurley, Michigan State University's college of human medicine and other community organizations.
"We are researching that now," she said. "(We are researching) all maternal fetal complications that could have been from lead and (total trihalomethanes). Lead was used as an abortion pill in the 1920s."
Exposure to both lead and total trihalomethanes (TTHM) are associated with low birth weight, congenital malformations and male infertility, and levels of each rose in city water while the Flint River was used as Flint's water source.
Data on miscarriages is maintained by DHHS, but currently available data doesn't go beyond the end of 2013, four months before the city's water source was changed from Lake Huron to the river.
After that change to a much more corrosive water source, lead increasingly leached into Flint tap water and damaged a protective phosphate coating in transmission pipes.
That protective coating is still being rebuilt — nearly four months after the city stopped using the river as its water source.
Professor Marc Edwards, whose reports on rising lead levels in Flint's water helped draw national attention to the city, said fetal death rates should be reviewed but said it's not certain researchers will be able to make a connection.
Edwards published a study in late 2013, showing stillbirth rates in Washington, D.C., rose in parallel with spikes in lead levels there.
"Comparing Washington, D.C., to Flint, the water lead levels were about three times higher and the population exposed was about five times higher in D.C.," Edwards wrote in an email to The Flint Journal-MLive.
"Both of those factors work in favor of scientifically establishing a strong association between water lead exposures and the miscarriages and fetal death in D.C.," the email says. "But it is definitely something that should be examined."
Marcie Treadwell, director of the University of Michigan Health Systems' Fetal Diagnostic Center, agreed that a possible connection between lead exposure and fetal death should be explored in Flint.
Treadwell said she's not familiar with human studies linking lead exposure to higher miscarriage rates, but animal studies have shown negative effects on brain development.
"We see the downstream effects in animal models. ... There are some really serious concerns with lead exposure that extend prenatally," she said.
Part of the uncertainty is that the degree of lead exposure Flint mothers were subjected to will never be known.
Lead leaves the bloodstream within weeks of exposure and lead levels have varied from home to home, depending on factors including whether water flowed to homes through lead service lines and whether homes had lead or lead solder in indoor plumbing.
Exposure questions also remain because while city testing showed rising lead levels in the water, officials for the city have acknowledged they filed false reports in 2014 and 2015, certifying that they tested water only in homes at the highest risk of elevated lead levels.
http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/ind...on_learns_of_lead.html#incart_2box_news_flint
Chelsea Clinton learns of lead impact on children during Flint stop
FLINT, MI –- Chelsea Clinton weaved her way around the maze of hallways at Hurley Children's Center on the top floor at the Flint Farmers' Market Thursday afternoon as Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha stood alongside, answering questions about the impacts of lead in children.
http://video-embed.mlive.com/servic...AAAAQBxUr7k~,PsMaWpexSO1o2JBTRvXgK2F46WvPiWEP
Chelsea Clinton visits Hurley Children's Center in downtown FlintChelsea Clinton paid a visit Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016 to Hurley Children's Center in downtown Flint at the Flint Farmers' Market where she spoke with Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha about the effects of lead in children and what more can be done to help in ...
Clinton made the stop at the children's center in downtown Flint days after her mother and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton visited the House of Prayer Missionary Baptist Church on Flint's north side to discuss the city's ongoing water crisis and call for relief funding.
Hanna-Attisha, director of Hurley's pediatric residency program and an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics & Human Development at Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine, spoke to Clinton about the impacts and potential remedies including nutritional education.
With a small child and one on the way for Clinton, she said the impact hit home in thinking about what she would do if her children were in a similar situation and "that the most vulnerable Americans, our low-income children are going to carry a burden that is not of their making for the rest of their lives.
"Children who weren't even born when this crisis started, children who were newborns when this crisis started, children who may not have been born because their mothers miscarried because they were poisoned with lead," she said. "How could anyone not feel a moral urgency about this?"
Calling the situation a failure of government, Clinton said "All Americans have a particular responsibility to ensure that flint receives the support that it needs today but also for generations to come
LINK HERE
http://www.commondreams.org/news/20...ter-crisis-obama-wants-gut-public-water-funds
Published on
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
by
Common Dreams
Amid Flint Water Crisis, Obama Wants to Gut Public Water Funds
President's 2017 budget slashes $370 million from EPA's state water funds
President Barack Obama's 2017 budget proposal includes massive cuts to water funding, just weeks after he declared a state of emergency over the lead poisoning crisis in Flint. (Photo: Flint Journal)
President Barack Obama's 2017 budget, released Tuesday, includes a proposal to cut more than a third of a billion dollars from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) state water funding program, just weeks after the president declared a state of emergency over Flint, Michigan's water crisis.
The budget proposes slashing $370 million, or 11 percent, from the EPA's Clean Water State Revolving Funds (CW SRF)—which support water quality improvement projects like treatment plants—and reallocating the money to the Drinking Water (DW) SRF, which supports clean water systems and infrastructure.
Despite claims that the change would "boost water sustainability and reduce the price and energy costs of new water supply technology," watchdog groups warn that it does nothing to remedy the urgent water crises facing chronically underfunded communities like Flint.
But as Mae Wu, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), wrote in a blog post on Tuesday, that method is akin to "robbing Peter to pay Paul."
"Cutting funds that help keep pollution out of our water (CW SRF) and moving the money to remove pollution once it's already in our drinking water (DW SRF) is no solution at all," Wu wrote, noting that there is no guarantee the funds will ever even reach Flint.
"At best it is a short-term band-aid approach to addressing the chronic levels of underinvestment in our water infrastructure by local, state, and federal government," Wu said. "Both of the SRFs need more funding."
As Flint continues to struggle with lead poisoning in its public water, and Detroit residents are faced with ongoing water service shutoffs targeting low-income residents and communities of color, the cuts to such critical services are "unacceptable," said environmental advocacy group Food and Water Watch.
"Following the Flint water crisis, which is emblematic of our national water woes, it is outrageous that the Obama Administration can’t be moved to truly step up and deliver the leadership needed to fully fund our water infrastructure," said the group's executive director Wenonah Hauter.
The cuts were also slammed on Capitol Hill, with Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) saying he was "grossly disappointed" by the proposal.
As Hauter pointed out, the budget is requesting a total of $2 billion for both SRFs, which "is a $257 million decrease over what Congress appropriated for 2016."
"Whether it’s kids poisoned by lead in Flint and other towns, water service shutoffs in Baltimore and Detroit or water contaminated by factory farms in Ohio and Iowa, we face a growing water crisis that requires real, long term solutions that keep water clean, affordable and democratically controlled," Hauter said.
FORGET PARTY ITS PRINCIPLE.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/20...ter-crisis-obama-wants-gut-public-water-funds
Published on
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
by
Common Dreams
Amid Flint Water Crisis, Obama Wants to Gut Public Water Funds
President's 2017 budget slashes $370 million from EPA's state water funds
President Barack Obama's 2017 budget proposal includes massive cuts to water funding, just weeks after he declared a state of emergency over the lead poisoning crisis in Flint. (Photo: Flint Journal)
President Barack Obama's 2017 budget, released Tuesday, includes a proposal to cut more than a third of a billion dollars from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) state water funding program, just weeks after the president declared a state of emergency over Flint, Michigan's water crisis.
The budget proposes slashing $370 million, or 11 percent, from the EPA's Clean Water State Revolving Funds (CW SRF)—which support water quality improvement projects like treatment plants—and reallocating the money to the Drinking Water (DW) SRF, which supports clean water systems and infrastructure.
Despite claims that the change would "boost water sustainability and reduce the price and energy costs of new water supply technology," watchdog groups warn that it does nothing to remedy the urgent water crises facing chronically underfunded communities like Flint.
But as Mae Wu, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), wrote in a blog post on Tuesday, that method is akin to "robbing Peter to pay Paul."
"Cutting funds that help keep pollution out of our water (CW SRF) and moving the money to remove pollution once it's already in our drinking water (DW SRF) is no solution at all," Wu wrote, noting that there is no guarantee the funds will ever even reach Flint.
"At best it is a short-term band-aid approach to addressing the chronic levels of underinvestment in our water infrastructure by local, state, and federal government," Wu said. "Both of the SRFs need more funding."
As Flint continues to struggle with lead poisoning in its public water, and Detroit residents are faced with ongoing water service shutoffs targeting low-income residents and communities of color, the cuts to such critical services are "unacceptable," said environmental advocacy group Food and Water Watch.
"Following the Flint water crisis, which is emblematic of our national water woes, it is outrageous that the Obama Administration can’t be moved to truly step up and deliver the leadership needed to fully fund our water infrastructure," said the group's executive director Wenonah Hauter.
The cuts were also slammed on Capitol Hill, with Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) saying he was "grossly disappointed" by the proposal.
As Hauter pointed out, the budget is requesting a total of $2 billion for both SRFs, which "is a $257 million decrease over what Congress appropriated for 2016."
"Whether it’s kids poisoned by lead in Flint and other towns, water service shutoffs in Baltimore and Detroit or water contaminated by factory farms in Ohio and Iowa, we face a growing water crisis that requires real, long term solutions that keep water clean, affordable and democratically controlled," Hauter said.
FORGET PARTY ITS PRINCIPLE.
LINK
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/11/confronting-our-toxic-legacy
Published on
Thursday, February 11, 2016
by
Common Dreams
Confronting Our Toxic Legacy
by
Robert C. Koehler
Maybe if we declared “war” on poison water, we’d find a way to invest money in its “defeat.”
David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, writing at Tom Dispatch this week about what they called “The United States of Flint,” make this point: “The price tag for replacing the lead pipes that contaminated its drinking water, thanks to the corrosive toxins found in the Flint River, is now estimated at up to $1.5 billion. No one knows where that money will come from or when it will arrive. In the meantime, the cost to the children of Flint has been and will be incalculable.”
I sit with these words: “No one knows where the money will come from.”
In the president’s latest budget proposal, $7.5 billion is earmarked to “fight ISIS,” an absurd non-threat to the nation’s survival, but no matter. We’re engaged in endless war with whoever the latest enemy happens to be and this war is endlessly funded, no questions asked. Mostly we’re engaged in war preparation, of course (and the containment of the consequences of past wars — at least the ones that can’t be ignored). As usual, the Pentagon and other war-engaged institutions will consume well over half the nation’s discretionary spending, including a $59 billion “slush fund that permits the Pentagon to break through Congress’ legislated budget caps,” according to the National Priorities Project.
But the children (and adults) of Flint remain vulnerable to contaminated water and no one knows where the money will come from to replace its decrepit water pipes, which started leaching lead into the water supply after officials used chlorine to deal with the biological contaminants that invaded the city’s water after an austerity decision was made to draw water from the heavily polluted Flint River.
And Flint just happens to be the place drawing media attention right now. Millions of people across the country and around the world remain vulnerable to our legacy of industrial — and military — pollution.
And mostly they’re people of color, suffering from what is appropriately called environmental racism: “the fact that sewage treatment plants, municipal landfills and illegal dumps, garbage transfer stations, incinerators, smelters and other hazardous waste sites inevitably are sited in the backyard of the poor,” as David J. Krajicek wrote recently at AlterNet, citing the work of Dr. Robert D. Bullard.
Tick, tick, tick. This is the threat we face: toxic soil, water and air, our legacy of two centuries of industrial ignorance and recklessness, combined with something even worse: militarism and the arrogance of empire. The U.S. military is the largest and worst polluter on Planet Earth, leaving radioactive dust and an all sorts of other toxins in the wake of its disastrous adventures, including unexploded land mines and cluster bombs, and, for good measure, severe desertification across Iraq.
Its unregulated pollution has spread cancer, birth defects, neurological diseases and other horrific illnesses among friend and foe alike. U.S. nuclear testing has devastated both the American Southwest and the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific, and its 1,300 abandoned uranium mines continue to cause health problems for the Navajo people of Arizona and New Mexico.
Toxic burn pits, depleted uranium, Agent Orange, canisters of mustard gas dumped in the ocean — this is the “greatness” America’s military apologists tend not to talk about. Combine this with the legacy of the private industrial sector and its abandoned rust-belt cities and what we have is a nation in panic, gasping for breath.
“In truth,” Rosner and Markowitz write, “the United States has scores of ‘Flints’ awaiting their moments. Think of them as ticking toxic time bombs — just an austerity scheme or some official’s poor decision away from a public health disaster. Given this, it’s remarkable, even in the wake of Flint, how little attention or publicity such threats receive. Not surprisingly, then, there seems to be virtually no political will to ensure that future generations of children will not suffer the same fate as those in Flint.”
Certainly part of this lack of political will is racism — one more monstrous manifestation of it. Another part is no doubt the ongoing denial of our toxic legacy, creating a situation in which polluted regions do not exist — at least in the consciousness of politicians, military bureaucrats and corporate elitists — until the effects are so undeniable, as they are in Flint, that they have to be addressed in some minimal, face-saving way.
Meanwhile, we waste more than half our annual national budget developing weapons, preparing for and waging useless wars and, in the process, creating not just future enemies but environmental hell for millions of people.
This is “the way things are” but I don’t think it’s the way most people want them to be. How on earth do we find the “political will” to change — indeed, reverse — this situation?
The PR ploy of militarism is that it’s how we as a nation think and act in a big way. We uproot terrorists. We topple dictators. We bring democracy to Iraq. As a metaphor, “war” is our way of coping with drugs and cancer and crime. We confront evil and, in the process, become the good guys. We budget more than half a trillion dollars a year to maintain this illusion of ourselves.
What if we actually invested a serious portion of our budget in a cause that mattered? I don’t really believe we should pretend to go to war against toxic water. War is a limited — in my view, stupid — concept. We lose every war we fight. War always creates unintended consequences of monstrous proportions, which dwarf its strategic aims. But thinking big and standing up to a profound threat makes sense and has political cred.
What if we decided to rescue the children of Flint — indeed, rescue every child in this country — from the dangers of lead poison and industrial pollution and poverty? What if we stared directly at the ticking time bomb of climate change and environmental collapse and regrouped as a nation around a determination not to let this happen?
Instead of thoughtlessly budgeting our own demise, what if we found the political will to reprioritize the national budget and reclaim the future?
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/11/confronting-our-toxic-legacy
Published on
Thursday, February 11, 2016
by
Common Dreams
Confronting Our Toxic Legacy
by
Robert C. Koehler
Maybe if we declared “war” on poison water, we’d find a way to invest money in its “defeat.”
David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, writing at Tom Dispatch this week about what they called “The United States of Flint,” make this point: “The price tag for replacing the lead pipes that contaminated its drinking water, thanks to the corrosive toxins found in the Flint River, is now estimated at up to $1.5 billion. No one knows where that money will come from or when it will arrive. In the meantime, the cost to the children of Flint has been and will be incalculable.”
I sit with these words: “No one knows where the money will come from.”
In the president’s latest budget proposal, $7.5 billion is earmarked to “fight ISIS,” an absurd non-threat to the nation’s survival, but no matter. We’re engaged in endless war with whoever the latest enemy happens to be and this war is endlessly funded, no questions asked. Mostly we’re engaged in war preparation, of course (and the containment of the consequences of past wars — at least the ones that can’t be ignored). As usual, the Pentagon and other war-engaged institutions will consume well over half the nation’s discretionary spending, including a $59 billion “slush fund that permits the Pentagon to break through Congress’ legislated budget caps,” according to the National Priorities Project.
But the children (and adults) of Flint remain vulnerable to contaminated water and no one knows where the money will come from to replace its decrepit water pipes, which started leaching lead into the water supply after officials used chlorine to deal with the biological contaminants that invaded the city’s water after an austerity decision was made to draw water from the heavily polluted Flint River.
And Flint just happens to be the place drawing media attention right now. Millions of people across the country and around the world remain vulnerable to our legacy of industrial — and military — pollution.
And mostly they’re people of color, suffering from what is appropriately called environmental racism: “the fact that sewage treatment plants, municipal landfills and illegal dumps, garbage transfer stations, incinerators, smelters and other hazardous waste sites inevitably are sited in the backyard of the poor,” as David J. Krajicek wrote recently at AlterNet, citing the work of Dr. Robert D. Bullard.
Tick, tick, tick. This is the threat we face: toxic soil, water and air, our legacy of two centuries of industrial ignorance and recklessness, combined with something even worse: militarism and the arrogance of empire. The U.S. military is the largest and worst polluter on Planet Earth, leaving radioactive dust and an all sorts of other toxins in the wake of its disastrous adventures, including unexploded land mines and cluster bombs, and, for good measure, severe desertification across Iraq.
Its unregulated pollution has spread cancer, birth defects, neurological diseases and other horrific illnesses among friend and foe alike. U.S. nuclear testing has devastated both the American Southwest and the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific, and its 1,300 abandoned uranium mines continue to cause health problems for the Navajo people of Arizona and New Mexico.
Toxic burn pits, depleted uranium, Agent Orange, canisters of mustard gas dumped in the ocean — this is the “greatness” America’s military apologists tend not to talk about. Combine this with the legacy of the private industrial sector and its abandoned rust-belt cities and what we have is a nation in panic, gasping for breath.
“In truth,” Rosner and Markowitz write, “the United States has scores of ‘Flints’ awaiting their moments. Think of them as ticking toxic time bombs — just an austerity scheme or some official’s poor decision away from a public health disaster. Given this, it’s remarkable, even in the wake of Flint, how little attention or publicity such threats receive. Not surprisingly, then, there seems to be virtually no political will to ensure that future generations of children will not suffer the same fate as those in Flint.”
Certainly part of this lack of political will is racism — one more monstrous manifestation of it. Another part is no doubt the ongoing denial of our toxic legacy, creating a situation in which polluted regions do not exist — at least in the consciousness of politicians, military bureaucrats and corporate elitists — until the effects are so undeniable, as they are in Flint, that they have to be addressed in some minimal, face-saving way.
Meanwhile, we waste more than half our annual national budget developing weapons, preparing for and waging useless wars and, in the process, creating not just future enemies but environmental hell for millions of people.
This is “the way things are” but I don’t think it’s the way most people want them to be. How on earth do we find the “political will” to change — indeed, reverse — this situation?
The PR ploy of militarism is that it’s how we as a nation think and act in a big way. We uproot terrorists. We topple dictators. We bring democracy to Iraq. As a metaphor, “war” is our way of coping with drugs and cancer and crime. We confront evil and, in the process, become the good guys. We budget more than half a trillion dollars a year to maintain this illusion of ourselves.
What if we actually invested a serious portion of our budget in a cause that mattered? I don’t really believe we should pretend to go to war against toxic water. War is a limited — in my view, stupid — concept. We lose every war we fight. War always creates unintended consequences of monstrous proportions, which dwarf its strategic aims. But thinking big and standing up to a profound threat makes sense and has political cred.
What if we decided to rescue the children of Flint — indeed, rescue every child in this country — from the dangers of lead poison and industrial pollution and poverty? What if we stared directly at the ticking time bomb of climate change and environmental collapse and regrouped as a nation around a determination not to let this happen?
Instead of thoughtlessly budgeting our own demise, what if we found the political will to reprioritize the national budget and reclaim the future?
@the artist yo the gov and his cronies need the death penalty straight up
The potential generations that will be affected cannot be projected. They didn't expect for "us" to find out that "they" were experimenting and to save a buck.
They should certainly be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
A mother and Flint resident named Leeanne Walters,
students from Virgina Tech doing water testing, metro times reporter Curt Guyette others blew the lid off. Its a poor issue not a black and white one. It is about economics from day 1. I've said water is the new oil as usual Our community is the last one to understand. Locally Cut hot 107.5 , cut WJLB OFF it serves the community zero purpose. Its sad some citizens just trashed belle isle but threw a natural fit when thankfully it was privatized for good and cleaned up.
Water is an important resource but who had the hottest flow and some wealthy individual who bought a rap album from a senior citizen group is most important with us.
As bad as what is going on in Flint, this incident has proven to simply be the tip of the iceberg on water systems NATIONWIDE and how very few, if any, are up to code on preventing contaminants from entering our bodies.
I tell you...this age of Aquarius is shining the light on a lot that has been hidden. In China, it's the year of the monkey, well...that's us and we 'bout to show out!
I tell you...this age of Aquarius is shining the light on a lot that has been hidden. In China, it's the year of the monkey, well...that's us and we 'bout to show out!
Easy breh black folk ain't no monkeys
If CNBC AND MAINSTREAM NEVER TOLD YOU THIS IS IMPORTANT YOU WOULDNT GIVE A DAMN.
Da hell are You talking about bruh? All this shows is Black folk don't give a real damn about environmental issues until the tragedy is in your neighborhood or your family catches hell.
Fuck all the age of zodiac sign bullshit. You aren't up to code nor qualified to speak on Flint nor environmental issues. You aren't in the trenches when environmental issues isn't main stream nor when the 90s babies of twitter get emotional about it and cry . When they were doing the nay nay and stanking leg they should have had their asses cleaning up a local water way.
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/...int-police-chief-james-tolbert-has-been-fired
Flint mayor fires police chief, fire chief as part of 'restructuring'
City needs 'fresh faces' with 'new ideas,' mayor's office says
Posted: 1:47 PM, February 12, 2016 Updated: 5:52 PM, February 12, 2016
FLINT, Mich. - The Flint police chief and fire chief have been fired as part of restructuring that is underway in city operations, the mayor's office said Friday.
In a statement, the mayor's office said the city needs "fresh faces in place with new ideas."
While a search for replacements is being conducted, the departments will be headed by police Capt. Colin Bernie and District Commander Stephen Cobb.
“We have full confidence in the ability of Capt. Bernie and Commander Cobb to meet the needs of the City of Flint as we conduct a search for the best qualified individuals to provide these vital services to the residents and businesses of Flint,” Weaver said. “We expect to have announcements soon filling both positions with highly qualified individuals who will help us as we work to restore faith and hope in our city government."
Moreover, Weaver announced later Friday that city administrator Natasha Henderson also has been relived from her duties, according to NBC25 News in Flint.
Tolbert served as deputy chief with the Detroit Police Department until leaving in 2013 to become chief of police with the Flint Police Department.
Flint mayor fires police chief, fire chief as part of 'restructuring'
City needs 'fresh faces' with 'new ideas,' mayor's office says
Posted: 1:47 PM, February 12, 2016 Updated: 5:52 PM, February 12, 2016
FLINT, Mich. - The Flint police chief and fire chief have been fired as part of restructuring that is underway in city operations, the mayor's office said Friday.
In a statement, the mayor's office said the city needs "fresh faces in place with new ideas."
While a search for replacements is being conducted, the departments will be headed by police Capt. Colin Bernie and District Commander Stephen Cobb.
“We have full confidence in the ability of Capt. Bernie and Commander Cobb to meet the needs of the City of Flint as we conduct a search for the best qualified individuals to provide these vital services to the residents and businesses of Flint,” Weaver said. “We expect to have announcements soon filling both positions with highly qualified individuals who will help us as we work to restore faith and hope in our city government."
Moreover, Weaver announced later Friday that city administrator Natasha Henderson also has been relived from her duties, according to NBC25 News in Flint.
Tolbert served as deputy chief with the Detroit Police Department until leaving in 2013 to become chief of police with the Flint Police Department.
But y'all have the same typing pattern though. Maybe it's in the water
They should have delivered ultra filtered water to resident.
There should be regulation on the max distance from the water treatment facility. It might be more appropriate to setup multiple sites within the city so that the distance is minimized.
There should be regulation on the max distance from the water treatment facility. It might be more appropriate to setup multiple sites within the city so that the distance is minimized.
The less than 4 minute video clip below lays bare the stark reality of "The primacy of profit throughout the society takes precedence over life itself" that author Chris Hedges wrote about.
General Motors was more concerned about the poisonous Flint river water destroying the metal engines they were manufacturing than they were about the human beings that were drinking and bathing in that same water. FUCK the human beings, the god damn engines are more valuable that the disposable piece-of-shit humans that live in Flint. That is the mentality of the technocratic corporate managers that run the world's trans-national corporations. It's all about fealty and deference to the corporate state; It's about Me, Myself & I. It's about getting the company stock price to rise by any-means-necessary so that "I" can $$$$$$$$$$ cash in my stock options. This callous disregard for human life in the pursuit of unbridled greed $$$$$$$$ is not new at General Motors. General Motors willfully installed defective ignition switches in automobiles which resulted in hundreds of deaths and serious injuries. The corporate managers knew that people would die; they didn't give a damn, they just wanted their bonus checks, Fuck the stupid consumers that are buying defective cars, let them die, "I" got my $$$$$$$$$$$ check. FUCK Them!!!!
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>
In October 2014, General Motors recognized the Flint water was corroding its engines. They got permission from the city’s unelected emergency manager—who was appointed by Republican Governor Rick Snyder—to disconnect from Flint’s water and go back to Detroit water. It would be another year before the people of Flint were finally allowed to disconnect from the corrosive Flint River as their water supply and hook up again to the Detroit water system. By then, the Flint River water had corroded the city’s aging pipes, poisoning the drinking water with lead, which can cause permanent developmental delays and neurological impairment, especially in children. We speak with a GM autoworker in Flint about the company’s actions once it realized that Flint’s water was corroding car engines.
WATCH THE FULL LENGTH FLINT VIDEO BELOW
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>WATCH THE FULL LENGTH FLINT VIDEO BELOW
I swear this guy snyder has got to go. You see how he is deflecting and re-positioning himself? Mfkr looks like he's gonna get away with all his fuckery. It makes me so angry I can barely stand to keep abreast of the situation.
Citizen Scientists to Test 100+ U.S. Cities for Lead in the Water:
ITS NOT JUST FLINT.
WWW. youtube.com/watch?v=LBLiRRsEDcg
ITS NOT JUST FLINT.
WWW. youtube.com/watch?v=LBLiRRsEDcg
Mystery black rain hits Michigan town: Tar-like substance falls from the sky and leaves residents bewildered
http://www.wxyz.com/news/region/mac...ance-covering-cars-homes-in-harrison-township
http://www.wxyz.com/news/region/mac...ance-covering-cars-homes-in-harrison-township
Michigan officials deliberately blocked investigation into water contamination while poisoning children en masse
Thursday, February 18, 2016 by: Sarah Landers
link here
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/053021_Flint_Michigan_water_contamination_lead_poisoning.html#ixzz40YMqq95i
(NaturalNews) In an extremely unsettling report by Reuters it seems That Michigan officials were actually aware of a serious problem with the water supply in the city of Flint but took measures to block an investigation into an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is said to be undertaking a full review of the way the water crisis was handled, which led to contaminated drinking water seriously poisoning 87 people – 10 of whom died.
The responses from the state and federal government have provoked a great deal of criticism over the past few months and it seems that more could have been done to prevent this crisis.
The Flint water crisis
The city of Flint has seen a lot of publicity over the past year or so, starting back in April 2014 when a state-appointed official made the decision to switch the city's water supply over, according to Fortune. Flint used to get most of its water from the nearby city of Detroit, which not only supplied the water but also took responsibility for controlling chemicals in the water supply.
The switch seemed logical – stop using water from Detroit and start using the water available in the Flint River, saving the city money. According to Vox, the city of Flint is bankrupt and, along with the rest of Michigan, is actively trying to save as much money as possible.
However, without Detroit's corrosion-preventing treatment, the water from the river corroded the city's lead pipes, leaching poisonous metals into the water supply and exposing as many as 8,000 children to elements that have lifelong effects on their nervous systems. According to Curt Guyette, an investigative journalist, some of the water samples tested so high for lead that they were "more than twice the amount at which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies water as hazardous waste."
As if this wasn't bad enough, the impoverished residents of Flint were consuming the water and complaining loudly to every official within earshot that there was something wrong with it. The water had changed color, had a smell to it and was clearly not right. However, they were reassured time and time again that things were fine.
Was there a cover-up?
In a report by Fox2Now.com, it seems that Jim Henry, Genesee County Environmental Health Supervisor, is accusing the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality of deliberately blocking the attempts of his office to involve the national health authorities – such as the Centers for Disease Control.
Henry stated, "You could see that it was an intentional, deliberate method to prevent us from doing our job." The EPA is now reviewing what could have been done differently after these accusations have come to light, and a great deal of public criticism about the way the crisis was handled has been directed at the state government.
The story of the Flint Water Crisis is a complete tragedy – lead does irreversible damage to the brains of developing children and unborn babies. Those exposed will likely suffer from low IQs and have learning difficulties and could require assistance for their entire lives. However, the fact that Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality took measures to actively downplay the discolored, smelly water makes this crisis an absolute atrocity. Negligent state officials caused residents' deaths and destroyed thousands of children's lives just to save money; whether those responsible for the disaster will be held accountable by government or citizens remains to be seen.
Two citizens have now set up a non-profit food and water laboratory to pick up where the EPA failed in Flint, with the goal of preventing U.S. children from being exposed to toxic chemicals in water supplies. The Flint municipal water has since been switched back over to the supply from Detroit – however, the damage has already been done and will impact the city for generations to come
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/053021_Flint_Michigan_water_contamination_lead_poisoning.html#ixzz40YMKHQvY
Thursday, February 18, 2016 by: Sarah Landers
link here
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/053021_Flint_Michigan_water_contamination_lead_poisoning.html#ixzz40YMqq95i
(NaturalNews) In an extremely unsettling report by Reuters it seems That Michigan officials were actually aware of a serious problem with the water supply in the city of Flint but took measures to block an investigation into an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is said to be undertaking a full review of the way the water crisis was handled, which led to contaminated drinking water seriously poisoning 87 people – 10 of whom died.
The responses from the state and federal government have provoked a great deal of criticism over the past few months and it seems that more could have been done to prevent this crisis.
The Flint water crisis
The city of Flint has seen a lot of publicity over the past year or so, starting back in April 2014 when a state-appointed official made the decision to switch the city's water supply over, according to Fortune. Flint used to get most of its water from the nearby city of Detroit, which not only supplied the water but also took responsibility for controlling chemicals in the water supply.
The switch seemed logical – stop using water from Detroit and start using the water available in the Flint River, saving the city money. According to Vox, the city of Flint is bankrupt and, along with the rest of Michigan, is actively trying to save as much money as possible.
However, without Detroit's corrosion-preventing treatment, the water from the river corroded the city's lead pipes, leaching poisonous metals into the water supply and exposing as many as 8,000 children to elements that have lifelong effects on their nervous systems. According to Curt Guyette, an investigative journalist, some of the water samples tested so high for lead that they were "more than twice the amount at which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies water as hazardous waste."
As if this wasn't bad enough, the impoverished residents of Flint were consuming the water and complaining loudly to every official within earshot that there was something wrong with it. The water had changed color, had a smell to it and was clearly not right. However, they were reassured time and time again that things were fine.
Was there a cover-up?
In a report by Fox2Now.com, it seems that Jim Henry, Genesee County Environmental Health Supervisor, is accusing the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality of deliberately blocking the attempts of his office to involve the national health authorities – such as the Centers for Disease Control.
Henry stated, "You could see that it was an intentional, deliberate method to prevent us from doing our job." The EPA is now reviewing what could have been done differently after these accusations have come to light, and a great deal of public criticism about the way the crisis was handled has been directed at the state government.
The story of the Flint Water Crisis is a complete tragedy – lead does irreversible damage to the brains of developing children and unborn babies. Those exposed will likely suffer from low IQs and have learning difficulties and could require assistance for their entire lives. However, the fact that Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality took measures to actively downplay the discolored, smelly water makes this crisis an absolute atrocity. Negligent state officials caused residents' deaths and destroyed thousands of children's lives just to save money; whether those responsible for the disaster will be held accountable by government or citizens remains to be seen.
Two citizens have now set up a non-profit food and water laboratory to pick up where the EPA failed in Flint, with the goal of preventing U.S. children from being exposed to toxic chemicals in water supplies. The Flint municipal water has since been switched back over to the supply from Detroit – however, the damage has already been done and will impact the city for generations to come
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/053021_Flint_Michigan_water_contamination_lead_poisoning.html#ixzz40YMKHQvY
The political red tape to get things moving is sickening.
Where is my president?
And this is genocide
United Nations need to step in
And this is genocide
United Nations need to step in
Do we joke about the killings in Chicago? This is no laughing matter little fella.
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