Barack Obama Flint Water Crisis

“I know if I were a parent (in Flint) I know I would be beside myself”, Obama said in Detroit early in his remarks that were supposed to focus on the Big Three automakers’ recovery. “They need to be much more aggressive in what’s going on with Flint”, Weaver said on CNN about the EPA’s response. Obama said to reporters and photographers.

Snyder says the “considerable” needs brought by the disaster exceed the funding capabilities of state and local government.

Munoz called what’s happening in Flint “a public health crisis” and said it’s fitting that a doctor from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been placed in charge of a federal team tasked with providing support to the effort in Flint. In announcing the rescue plans that March, the president said his goal was “an auto industry that is once more out-competing the world; a 21st century auto industry that is creating new jobs, unleashing new prosperity, and manufacturing the fuel-efficient cars and trucks that will carry us towards an energy-independent future”.

The lead contamination – which can lead to behavior problems and learning disabilities in children and kidney ailments in adults – has left Flint residents unable to drink unfiltered tap water. “I want people to remember how far we’ve come”.

A day after local doctors reported high levels of lead in Flint children, Gov. Rick Snyder’s chief of staff told him the “real responsibility” for the city’s water issues rested with local government officials. The corrosive water caused lead to leach from old pipes.

Sixty-eight miles north by road, thousands of residents of the long-neglected industrial town have been poisoned by lead-contaminated water, the effect of tight-fisted city authorities who switched the source of the city’s drinking water from Detroit to the Flint river in April 2014.

Canada could have significant growth in its auto sector in the next five or 10 years, but only with backing from senior levels of government comparable to that in the USA, according to a Windsor union leader. “He saved Michigan. Where do you go from there?”

Still, it’s worth noting that Obama has faced sustained pressure throughout his second term to sign this specific executive order, but failed to take action.

President Barack Obama slammed Republican presidential candidates for failing to recognize how strong the economy is under his administration. It was part of a planned bailout and restructuring, begun in the last days of George W. Bush’s presidency, that included $82 billion in USA and Canadian taxpayers’ money to keep General Motors and what was then Chrysler Group afloat.

When he wanted to help US carmakers, the president said, many were opposed.