Snyder aide email blamed Flint for water crisis

The water damaged Flint’s pipes, which ultimately drew in lead.

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 unanswered question: How did this happen?

Rick Snyder released more than 250 pages of his emails Wednesday regarding the Flint water crisis.

The correspondence records mounting complaints by the public and elected officials, and growing irritation by state officials over the reluctance to accept their assurances. Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality has drawn particular criticism for allowing Flint to draw drinking water from its river without using corrosion controls to prevent lead contamination.

The lead- 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.

The emails were released late Wednesday, after Snyder’s State of the State address Tuesday night in which he profusely apologized to the residents of Flint and promised to help remedy the problem and get to the bottom of how it occurred.

Snyder also revisited his State of the Union address, where he appeared choked up at times during his apology to Flint over having harmful amounts of lead in its water.

FEMA is also providing lead testing and water filters.

The crisis has had repercussions stretching to Washington and the Democratic presidential contest.

It stressed that the Safe Drinking Water Act works to ensure that water is safe to drink but does not regulate aesthetic values of water. She said she wants Snyder to give Flint “the services and the money, the funds that we need to address the population”.

“We take things for granted”, said Ken Van Wagoner, owner of Flint’s Good Beans Cafe coffee shop.

Leadership at the DEQ resigned and was replaced by Snyder in the wake of the crisis.

“The right answer isn’t that you just roll over”, he said. “We know that, but if we want to start pointing fingers, there’s enough blame to go all the way around”.

“I am very proud of what I’ve done as president, but the only job that is more important to me is the job of father”, the president said Wednesday speaking to the United Auto Workers in Detroit. “And I know if I was a parent up there, I would be beside myself if my kids’ health could be at risk”.

Young added, “We are targeting the governor, all of the emergency managers” appointed by Gov. Snyder that made the decision to switch the city’s water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River “and completely disregarded the health, welfare, and safety of residents”. In the summer, the city began advising residents to boil water to combat high bacteria levels found in the water. The city’s mayor at the time, Dayne Walling, encouraged leaders to “toast” the switch with a taste of the “regular, good, pure drinking” water, the governor’s emails show. It especially causes disastrous developmental problems in children who are 6 years old and younger.

The Flint water crisis has overwhelmed Snyder’s administration, focusing national attention on its mishandling of the situation in Flint. In one memo for the governor from February 2015, officials played down the problems and spoke of “initial hiccups”. Exposure wasn’t a “top health concern”, the memo stated, as it only poses “a public health concern with chronic, long-term exposure”. Nicholas Pearce challenged all members of the community to think about what Dr. King would say to us today.

Kinney, who has lived in Flint since she was a child, told Martin, “The water crisis has impact[ed] us to the point that we can not take baths, we can not brush our teeth, and the water that we were receiving prior to now was so bad and smelled so bad you wouldn’t believe it”.