In Flint, Michigan, daily live revolves around lead fears

On the morning of Saturday, January 16, 2015, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders called for the immediate resignation of Governor Rick Snyder (R) of MI over the ongoing lead poisoning scandal in the town of Flint. The city has since switched over to the nearby Detroit’s water supply but residents are still anxious about the long-term effects of lead exposure.

Rumors that the Flint water supply had been contaminated with lead began to surface in December, but the number of children exposed to risky levels of lead is staggering.

The US Justice Department is helping the Environmental Protection Agency investigate the matter, and state Attorney General Bill Schuette has opened his own probe, which could focus on whether environmental laws were broken or if there was official misconduct. The city is now beginning to address the water issues and provide more services, according to the New York Times, including water testing, filters, education, and health care.

State Democratic Party leaders accuse Schuette of stonewalling efforts to learn more about Flint’s water crisis in the past. “There was also FEMA staff that was sent to MI to provide some logistical and technical support to…state and local officials that are on the ground responding to the situation”.

But after the switch, residents complained the water looked, smelled and tasted amusing.

“And that local Flint River was innately more corrosive than the Great Lakes water source”. Within a year and a half, the proportion of Flint’s children with dangerously high levels of lead in their blood had almost doubled.

Documentary filmmaker and former Flint-area resident Michael Moore has returned to his hometown to call for President Barack Obama to come see the water crisis for himself. As of that day, the water still wasn’t safe to drink in Flint.

USA health officials say pregnant women should avoid traveling to Latin American and Caribbean countries with outbreaks of a tropical illness linked to birth defects.

“You know what they say”, quips Noah.

The limitation to natural disasters “would seem to preclude the crisis in Flint, which could still qualify for a designation as an emergency, ‘ writes Todd Spangler for the Detroit Free Press”.

He declined to put a time frame on how long such a decision could take, but if an emergency or major disaster is declared in Genesee County, it would result in additional federal resources being deployed, potentially including assistance in rebuilding infrastructure and disaster aid for individuals. “He did nothing. As a result, hundreds of children were poisoned”.

Emergency protective measures, limited to direct federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent federal funding. “And I think that if the council, which is the legislative body, which is also the check and the balance, we have to have the power to do what we need to do”.