Snyder pledges contact with every Flint household

Sunday editorial pages and national news shows were harshly critical of the state’s response to the Flint crisis. The city switched back to a less corrosive water source last fall, but the damage was done. Eroding infrastructure isn’t unique to Flint. And as manufacturing jobs have moved overseas, the population has steadily dropped to fewer than 100,000 – more than 40 percent of whom live below the poverty line. (Lead can leech into drinking water from lead pipes.) A study released in September 2015 concluded that the change has put Flint children at significantly increased risk of lead poisoning. Residents then began complaining about dirty water with a bad smell and taste, as record high lead levels started appearing in the blood samples of children. One of those decisions was to flip the water supply for the city from the Detroit water district to the Flint River.

Over the weekend, for example, the editorial board of the Detroit Free Press turned its attention directly to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), who’s facing calls for his arrest from protestors, comparing his handling of the Flint crisis to George W. Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina.

To help out all the people without any water, Flint firehouses have been giving people free bottled water, faucet filters and water testing kits. But many residents remain unsatisfied. “This committee, made up of experts from government and the Flint community, will set a course of action to remedy the water situation and resulting health issues, and carry on long after the emergency declaration expires”.

“I can stand up here and fight with him or I can get the people out there what they need”, she said. It could cost .5 billion to fix the problem, a staggering sum for any city, much less one already struggling as badly as Flint is. Snyder said he may ask state lawmakers for additional money for the emergency before his budget proposal in February. That approach, the report added, was “completely unacceptable”.

The total toll, both financial and human, is still ticking upwards, with a class action lawsuit now being brought against the city by Flint residents, and late last month, Director of the Department of Environmental Quality Dan Wyant turned in his resignation.

The people of Flint deserve to know the truth about how this happened and what Governor Snyder and other leaders knew about it. And they deserve a solution, fast. That was more than a year after the switch to water from the Flint River.

“This is a crisis”, Snyder said.