Professor estimates 8000 lead pipes in Flint

Leading House Democrats visited Flint, Mich., on Monday to examine the city’s water crisis and lob warnings that cuts in infrastructure would promote similar emergencies nationwide.

This is thefirst petition approved for circulation that cites the governor’s handling of the Flint water crisis as a reason to remove him from office. That investigation is expected to wrap up within the next few weeks.

A state of emergency has been declared in Flint, a city with at least 40 percent of residents living in poverty and in April of 2014 the debt-wracked city opted to switch its water supply to the Flint River in a desperate cost-cutting measure.

His recall petition was approved Monday by the Board of State Canvassers. Old lead pipes corroded as Flint River water flowed through, allowing lead to leach into the city’s tap water. “This could be a tax liability on the citizens of Michigan”, Wayne State University law professor Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor, told the “Detroit Free Press”.

If the Legislature approves Snyder’s proposed budget, Wayne State would get the smallest funding increases of the state’s public universities for the last five years because of the state’s funding model, said university President Roy Wilson.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office is working with the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate the Flint crisis, and Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has also launched a probe.

“Right now, as best I can understand, the governor, the Republican governor, Gov. Snyder, is refusing to ask for the triggering of the federal help that he needs in order to take care of the people who are his constituents”. Local and state officials insisted for months the water was safe to drink but reversed course after independent testing discovered unsafe lead levels throughout the system believed to be caused by leaching from lead piping.

The board also approved one recall petition unrelated to the lead contamination crisis in Flint earlier this month and was split on another 2-2, which failed because it lacked majority approval.

“I think once these individuals have been lied to as many times as I have, they’re going to want (subpoena power), and I’m going to have it ready for them”, he said. They need to collect 789,133 voter signatures in a 60-day period.

The Flint Journal reports Tolbert, Cox and Henderson were hired while Flint was under a state-appointed emergency manager.

Snyder said 89 percent of water samples collected from “sentinel” sites in Flint measured below the action level of 15 parts per billion for lead, but concerns remain.