Flint to get water from Lake Huron as soon as system ready

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette says his office has filed a civil lawsuit against two companies involved in Flint’s lead-tainted water crisis.

Houston-based LAN – whose Flint office in 2013 and 2014 helped the city of almost 100,000 switch to the Flint River as its primary water supply after decades of buying treated water from Detroit – was accused of professional negligence and public nuisance. “In Flint, Veolia and LAN were hired to do a job and failed miserably, basically botched it. They didn’t stop the water in Flint from being poisoned”.

“They didn’t make that decision originally; it was made by predecessors”, said Snyder. In April, Schuette announced more than a dozen separate criminal counts against two officials at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, as well as a Flint water quality supervisor. It recommended an additional dosage of ferric chloride, a powerful acid, to the water, a move the attorney general’s office alleges was “unqualified and in no way warned that ferric chloride could increase corrosion”.

Flint’s water has been in trouble since 2014 when the state switched the city’s source to the Flint River.

It was intended as a short-term measure to save money while another pipeline to Lake Huron was under construction.

“I’m not supporting that at all, because we need to know what happened”, Weaver said.

Demonstrators protest over the Flint, Michigan contaminated water crisis in March. The company suggested in a report the following month that phosphate could be added to the water to address discoloration, with no mention of the far more serious lead problem, the suit says. Though the city is back on Detroit’s water system, Flint citizens remain under orders to use a filter because of lead that remains in the system. But the city didn’t act on the recommendation at the time, which was well after the lead leaching problem began.

The Detroit Free Press reports the defendants (which include a water company and an engineering firm) are all related to two companies that worked with the city of Flint.

But a LAN spokesman has said it was the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, not the company, that said corrosion control chemicals were not needed. He pleaded no contest to willful neglect of duty, a misdemeanor, and won dismissal of a more serious felony charge of tampering with evidence.

The group of attorneys, which also included Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton and special assistat attorney general Noah Hall, said this is part of the plan to secure funding to compensate the people of Flint and taxpayers and provide funding for health, education, infrastructure.

Weaver held a press conference following Bill Schuette’s announcement that lawsuits would be filed in connection to the Flint water crisis.