House backs bill to require EPA notification in lead cases

Michigan’s governor has proposed spending almost $200 million to address Flint’s ongoing crisis over lead-contaminated water.

Wakes was one of a number of Flint residents who protested at the capitol as Gov. Rick Snyder (R) released this year’s budget proposal. The overall $54.9 billion in state spending is an increase of less than 1%, or $438 million over last year’s budget.

“It’s not too far-fetched”, Todd Flood, the special investigator, told reporters on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. He also reiterated the possibility of charges for misconduct in office. Another factor is what officials did or failed to do after their mistakes.

“It’s pretty hard to be appreciative of a less than adequate response to a problem that the state itself created”, Kildee said.

Health workers, most notably the pediatrician who first reported the elevated blood lead levels in children in Flint, Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha, testified that the city’s children will need additional nutrition services to combat the neurotoxin and to be surveilled for long-term health impacts. Outside experts also have suggested a link between the Flint River and a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak. It was an interim measure while a new pipeline to Lake Huron is being built. The lead pipe replacement is meant to come at no cost to Flint homeowners, though they will have to sign an agreement giving the city access to their property’s water system and open their home to a meter.

Brain development, kidney, and neurological function can be impaired by exposure to lead, particularly among young children.

The petition draws attention to the fact that Flint’s mostly poor and black residents do not have access to safe drinking water, while at the same time Nestlé is the largest owner of private water sources in the state.

The EPA did not notify the public for months after learning that MI officials were not treating Flint’s water. The church had already collected enough items to fill two 26-foot trucks, Lee said. “We were deeply disturbed”, their statement says, “to observe the indignity people have faced and continue to live with in one of the wealthiest countries in the world and in a city that was a symbol of America’s prosperity”. However, Flint mayor Karen Weaver says they need to replace the lead pipes, and protesters are claiming the Governor’s plan won’t make up for the heartache and strife suffered by Flint residents.

More hard than proving gross negligence, he said, would be establishing a link between the contaminated water and a specific death.

“We can’t forget that we have lead pipes and challenges in other places in addition to Flint, and it’s time to act on that”. “We deserve equal protection under the law”, she said, adding that access to safe water should be a basic right.

“And we don’t yet know what the city of Flint was telling the state or EPA”.

“I invite Gov. Snyder and his team to pledge their full cooperation to help us get this done”, Weaver said. “And I call on the legislature and Congress to appropriate the necessary funds so we can get started as soon as possible”. “People figured out there was no corrosion control, that children had been lead poisoned, that we were finding very high lead in the water in late August, and people (were) asking questions – ‘Why aren’t you doing something about this?'”