Snyder lawyer called Flint water ‘scary’ before lead crisis

The Detroit Free Press and Detroit News earlier reported about the emails, which were released by the governor’s office.

Meanwhile people in Flint have seen precisely ZERO lead water service lines removed in their beleaguered city in the 148 days since Gov. Snyder admitted their water was poisoned. And again I always want to say-apologize to the people of Flint for what happened-and we’re working hard to solve this problem, and each and every day we’re making progress on solutions. “I wish I wouldn’t have accepted the answers”.

Quality problems prompted two of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s top lawyers to urge that Flint be moved back to the Detroit water system just months after a decision to draw water supply from the Flint River, according to emails released on Friday.

In October of 2015, one full year later, the state changed the city’s drinking water source back from the polluted Flint River to the Detroit water system, but warned that the water was still not safe.

The $30 million budge supplemental was unanimously approved by the legislature, and will give Flint families credits for the portion of their water bill used for drinking, cooking and bathing.

The Flint crisis has been consuming Snyder’s administration since Flint began receiving national attention after elevated blood lead levels were discovered in some Flint children following the switch to the Flint River as a water source under direction of a state-appointed emergency financial manager.

The e-mails can be viewed here and here.

The emails show Valerie Brader, Snyder’s senior policy advisor, expressed concerns over the water in October 2014.

“Too bad (former Flint emergency manager Darnell Earley) didn’t ask me what I thought, though I’m sure he heard it from plenty of others”, Gadola wrote to Brader, Muchmore, then-communications director and current chief of staff Jarrod Agen and deputy chief of staff Elizabeth Clement.

The governor says people shouldn’t have to pay for water they can’t drink. Those chemicals are trihalomethanes (TTHMs), a carcinogen that can cause kidney and liver damage, among other issues, and two months later the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) issued a notice in Flint that it had violated the allowable levels of TTHMs in the water.

Snyder denied that his staffers were hesitant to alert him to problems. Other e-mails show several officials in Snyder’s office were sent information about a possible link between the Flint River water and outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease early in 2015. In March, after he was forwarded a resident’s threat to city officials about an “environmental racism” lawsuit against the majority-black city, he wrote an email to state officials suggesting potentially buying bottled water to distribute through churches, saying “If we procrastinate much longer in doing something direct we’ll have real trouble”.