Former WCBI Reporter Comments on Water Crisis in Flint, Mich.

The head of a local nonprofit will be in Flint, Mich., today and Thursday to help students there share how they are coping with the city’s water crisis.

Rick Snyder named a panel of experts Wednesday to help solve the city of Flint’s water crisis, including some of the very critics who forced local, state and federal governments to acknowledge unsafe levels of lead in the drinking water there. Residents had been complaining since the city switched from Detroit water to water from the Flint River in 2014. Snyder said work is being done to find lead service lines, to be followed by a cost calculation for replacing them. He said the governor should be arrested for his role in the water crisis.

Snyder has asked Michigan’s legislature to appropriate $28 million to deal with the Flint crisis, $3 million of which would go to utility repairs. The members includes Flint Mayor Karen Weaver and county and state officials.

Organizers also want free home inspections to determine the extent of damage caused by lead that leached out of aging pipes.

Walmart and several major corporations are banding together to give 6.5 million bottles of water to students in Flint, Michigan. An environmental education organization focusing on the global water crisis, AKL typically spends its time Guatemala doing about 30 video conferences a year. App users can tap here. “The” class=”local_link” target=”_blank”>lead. The city and state have since declared a public-health emergency.

Activists in Flint plan to present petitions with nearly 20,000 signatures to Weaver and Snyder on Thursday calling for a moratorium on water bills.

The idea, state officials said, is to spread comprehensive benefits to children who may have come into contact with lead in the water regardless of their ability to pay. “We need those pipes replaced, and not a single pipe has been replaced since they discovered lead in the water”.

“I would certainly not bathe a newborn child or a young infant in this bad water, and if you can’t drink the bad water, you shouldn’t pay for it”, Schuette said.

Creagh says officials are studying whether the city’s pipes are being recoated with enough of a lining of phosphates to keep the lead from leaching.

“We’re not going to guess”.

Water treatment plants across the country are required to closely monitor lead levels in tap water and use chemicals to reduce acidity and coat pipes to prevent corrosion.

The city switched from Detroit’s water system in 2014 while under state emergency management and began drawing from the Flint River to save money, but the water wasn’t properly treated.

Hall, an environmental attorney, said there is precedent for a federal judge to effectively assume broad authority over a water system.

The suit differs from past class actions because the Safe Drinking Water Act allows citizens to sue when government fails to protect their drinking water, according to the press release.

The National Resources Defense Council, the American Civil Liberties Union of MI and Flint residents asked for relief for any medical harm suffered.