MI governor to address Flint water crisis

Baird helped recruit Jones Day bankruptcy lawyer Kevyn Orr to become Detroit’s emergency manager and helped the city navigate the country’s largest municipal bankruptcy in history. We are a generous people who are often quick and eager to respond to a crisis.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week issued an emergency order directing the state to take actions to protect public health and said it would begin sampling and analyzing lead levels.

In the near term, the state will continue to focus on recoating service pipes to control lead leaching.

Before the governor’s announcement, in an interview with Free Press reporters, one of the leading public health advocates in Flint said that the state and federal government had set aside little up until now to pay for new efforts to treat young people who have been exposed to lead. “This is how far we have sunk; you can’t go any lower”.

MI officials say that water samples in Flint are “trending better”, but that it’s too soon to give the go-ahead to residents to resume drinking unfiltered water.

She announced that Virginia Tech Scientist Mark Edwards has been retained by the city of Flint. The city has previously said that hindering its ability to raise water rates and put liens on those delinquent on bills could push Flint toward bankruptcy.

Critics also pointed out that, even though Flint residents were told not to drink the contaminated water starting in October, they are still required to pay for the water.

The Michigan Senate could vote as early as Thursday on $28 million in supplemental funding for Flint, as requested by Snyder.

If water from the Flint River was corroding machinery, imagine what it was doing to human bodies, including the smallest and most vulnerable.

Snyder’s office said Tuesday that the state is seeking expanded Medicaid eligibility for all residents in the impacted areas up to age 21.

“There’s plenty of time to look at what happened and who did what when and where, but right now we have people that don’t have safe drinking water and we’re going to make sure that’s done first”, Meekhof said. “I’m asking for a staircase. I don’t want to create panic, but residents need to know”.

Attorneys representing victims of the Flint water fiasco in a class action lawsuit served Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) with subpoenas on Monday. The water contained corrosive elements that caused lead in the pipes to leech into the water.

Other critics have wondered aloud if letting Schuette investigate Flint’s water dilemma presents a fox-watching-the-henhouse scenario.

The Michigan attorney general’s investigation into the process that left Flint’s drinking water tainted with lead is drawing bipartisan criticism, with a Republican leader saying Tuesday that it duplicates the work of a state task force and Democrats questioning whether the special counsel will be impartial.

Officials at the local, state and federal levels have resigned in connection with Flint’s water crisis. “It’s about getting the facts out there”.