Mich. gov asks Obama for emergency help in water crisis

Rick Snyder is asking President Barack Obama to issue an emergency and major disaster declaration amid the Flint water crisis.

Snyder’s office said late Thursday it had asked for the declarations and is seeking additional federal aid for both individuals and public agencies involved in the effort to provide Flint residents with clean drinking water.

The crisis dates back to April 2014 when Flint switched water sources to save money.

A state of emergency was declared in Flint after health officials found elevated levels of lead in the city’s water. Rick Snyder activated the National Guard to help the American Red Cross distribute water to Flint residents to help them deal with the lead contamination that is in the City of Flint’s water supply.

Meantime, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette says he was launch an investigation into the Flint Water Situation.

Flint pulled water from the Flint River for 18 months until last fall but didn’t use treatments that could have reduced corrosion and possibly removed other contaminants. Testing in October detected increased lead levels in residential water supplies and in children’s blood.

An issue would remain for those customers, as Zelenko said each resident is responsible for the leads to the city’s water main system. A National Guard spokesman said the plan called for getting 30 soldiers into the city by Friday.

“The water crisis in Flint is a total abomination”.

Documents and emails show discrepancies between two reports detailing the toxicity of lead samples collected by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the city of Flint between January and June 2015, Professor Marc Edwards from Virginia Tech University said. “It has been a long time coming”, she told WWJ-AM.

The Attorney General’s office says they will be checking if any MI laws were violated during the state’s handling of the crisis.

“As a husband and father I greatly empathize with the fears of Flint parents and family members, who are rightly concerned for their health”, Schuette said in a statement today.

Lead poisoning is unsafe for anyone, but Flint Mayor Karen Weaver has pointed to research showing how lead exposure can affect a developing child’s IQ, resulting in learning disabilities.

“I encourage them to investigate because we want to learn as much as possible from this to make sure it doesn’t happen again”, he said in an interview.