Michigan’s Snyder facing big speech on water crisis

Snyder continues to face national criticism for Flint, where residents are relying on bottled water and filters to avoid lead contamination and the possibility of Legionnaires’ disease.

“We’ve had a city in the United States of America where the population, which is poor in many ways, and the majority African American, has been drinking and bathing in lead-contaminated water”.

President Barack Obama will meet with the mayor of Flint, Michigan, on Tuesday to discuss the city’s problems in dealing with lead-contaminated water, the White House said. She says Obama “needs to hear first-hand what’s going on in Flint”.

Rick Snyder began his second term as MI governor promoting the same achievements that propelled him to victory in 2014: The state was in the midst of an economic comeback, and Detroit had emerged from bankruptcy. During the summer of 2015, rising levels of lead were detected in children’s blood, elevating the situation to crisis level.

The group said the Department of Environmental Quality erred by not requiring Flint to keep the water out of residents’ homes and belittling concerns from the public. Obama on Saturday declared a federal emergency, which allows $5 million to be sent to Flint, but did not declare a disaster which could have come with more money.

“I said it was outrageous the governor hasn’t acted, and within two hours, he had”, she said.

The lawsuit filed with the Genesee County Circuit Court requests that customers of Flint water are not required to pay past or future bills for “useless and harmful water”, WXYZ reported, and in the Court of Claims lawsuit, residents want the state to be accountable for destruction of property values and to cover those property losses.

Snyder is expected to lay out some of those steps when he addresses the Michigan Congress on Tuesday night.

HHS said in its release the goal of the federal response will be “to help state and local leaders identify the size and scope of the problem and work with them to make and execute a plan for mitigation of the short- and long-term health effects of lead exposure”. Bernie Sanders has called on Snyder to resign, and Hillary Clinton used her closing statement in Sunday’s NBC News debate to highlight the problem.

That was a year before a team of researchers from Virginia Tech tested the water and discovered its extremely high lead content.

According to a report from Mic, citizens are still receiving bills from the city for water that smells like sewage even on the few occasions it runs clear.

“Water is a basic right, so it’s a social issue”, Weaver said.

Following the appointment of Lurie to coordinate the federal response, U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. “She has been the only candidate, Democratic or Republican, to reach out and ask, ‘What can I do?'” Weaver said, adding that she wants “a friend like Hillary in the White House”. Snyder said in response, “If you’re in Flint and you’re affected by it I can see a wide range of opinions on lots of things”.