Two employees with Michigan’s DEQ suspended over Flint water crisis

Cher is calling for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s resignation, asserting he failed to take action to prevent Flint’s polluted water problem from becoming a major health and safety issue. For many, it echoes the lackluster federal response to New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Southfield, says she’s requested the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hold a hearing.

“We’re focused on fixing the problems and making sure nothing like this happens again in Flint or any other MI city”.

Koegel Meats is actually located outside the city, in Flint Township.

Snyder, a Republican in his second term, was blasted by Hillary Clinton in her remarks after the recent Democratic presidential debate. “He accepted accountability for that, and noted that federal, state, and local leaders broke the trust of the people”, it said. “And the governor of that state acted as though he didn’t really care”, Clinton said.

“I can not tell you the outrage that I feel”. They work in the agency’s drinking water division, state spokesman Kurt Weiss said. Now families fear for their health and especially for the future of their children, who can develop learning disabilities and behavior problems from lead exposure.

Nearly 60 per cent of the population is black.

A succession of Flint emergency managers appointed by the governor to try to solve the city’s fiscal woes have come under criticism.

“We’ll move as quickly as possible to determine the best way to achieve the results”, Snyder said in a statement. Healthy Michigan was a whole Medicaid expansion. Flint is a place I’ve been devoted to helping. Flint, a poorer mostly African-American city of 100,000, is about an hour north of Detroit. In the early 1970s, the automaker employed 80,000 blue- and white-collar workers in the area.

The crisis was “a reminder of why you can’t shortchange basic services that we provide to our people”, he said. Fewer than 8,000 GM jobs remain.

In another internal communication, Muchmore underscored the state’s indifference to Flint: “There folks are scared and anxious about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us (as a state we’re just not sympathising with their plight)”. Reports have pointed to errors at the city, state and federal level, but the bulk of the blame has been put on the DEQ, a state agency whose director resigned at the end of a year ago over Flint’s water issues.

Residents are allowed to pick up one case of bottled water per household each day at the emergency distribution sites. “I mean, he knew what he was doing…”

Water from the river, known locally as a dumping ground, was more corrosive, causing more lead to leach from Flint’s aging water pipes than the Detroit water the city previously used.

For example, in Philadelphia and MI, testers were instructed by local water boards to run the water for two minutes or until cold before testing for lead, a practice called “pre-flushing”, which is seen as controversial.

Frustrations boiled over at a weekend protest outside City Hall. Many Flint residents, and Democratic politicians including Hillary Clinton and Flint’s mayor, Karen Weaver, have said the answer is yes.