Despite Outcry, Flint Homes Still Have Lead Pipes

“We are a member of this community”, said Dan Bartlett, Walmart executive vice president of corporate affairs, during a presser at the company’s Flint Township store, referencing the roughly 1,000 employees that work at their stores in the Genesee County area.

No doubt, the federal Environmental Protection Agency deserves blame for failing to sound warnings more loudly and publicly once it learned past year that high lead levels in Flint were poisoning children. A federal state of emergency has been declared.

Many think it’s time for Snyder to resign, a step that Sen.

Howard Croft, the former director of public works for Flint who resigned in November 2015, asserted more than four months ago in a videotaped interview with the ACLU of MI that the decision to use the dangerously corrosive river came directly from the Snyder administration.

“We need to remove all the lead”, said University of Michigan Professor Martin Kaufman, who is helping the city create a database of the 15,000 to 20,000 homes that have the risky pipes.

The crisis has even attracted the attention of the United Nations, which is “looking at the human implications closely”, according to Baskut Tuncak, a UN expert on hazardous substance and waste.

The “Ride Solo” musician took to Instagram to tell fans about how he has family living in Flint, whose river water was found to be contaminated with lead.

The Michigan region of the American Red Cross is actually in the middle of its biggest push to provide relief in the city: 520 volunteers delivered 6,000 cases of water, 4,000 water filters and 5,500 water-filtration kits over the weekend.

The Republican attorney general also said his office is reviewing what can be done to prevent Flint residents from being billed for water.

But almost three-quarters of the populace still say they’re somewhat or very confident that their own tap water is safe to drink – a number little changed since the previous survey.

If you want to help the people of Flint, the Tri-State Defender will be taking donations through February 2nd.

Meekhof suggested Schuette should pay for the outside investigators with existing funds and not ask the Legislature for additional money. The decision over a project that will cost hundreds of millions of borrowed dollars went all the way to Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s office.

Senate Democratic Leader Jim Ananich says Schuette took months too long to investigate, but he will “give him the benefit of the doubt until I see otherwise”. In the meantime, filtering water and drinking bottled water are the best ways to avoid ingesting more lead.

It is unclear whether the attorney general’s probe could result in criminal or civil charges.

Democrats question whether the special counsel would be impartial.

Two other DEQ officials who have each been named as defendants in at least one class action related to the Flint public health catastrophe – Adam Rosenthal and and Mike Prysby – remain on the job with duties related to Flint’s drinking water.