Michigan should have required Flint to treat water

Department of Environmental Quality Director Dan Wyant resigned in December after acknowledging that the DEQ failed to require the addition of needed corrosion-control chemicals to the corrosive Flint River water. Testing has since showed high lead levels in some children.

“Flint residents will not have to pay for water they can not drink”, Republican governor Snyder said in the statement to AP, adding: “My budget recommendation will include the request that the state make payments to the city’s water system for residential bills going back to April 2014 and alleviate the need for residential water shutoffs”. Metro Detroit and Flint churches are working together to deliver cases of water after river water was not treated properly and lead from pipes leached into Flint homes.

The state has reported that almost 90 cases of Legionnaires’ were confirmed and nine people died between June 2014 and November 2015. The hearing is the first since the lead contamination crisis in Flint erupted previous year.

Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., listen to a question as they discuss proposed legislation to help Flint, Mich. with their current water crisis, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016, during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. About one-third of the infected people’s homes received Flint water, which was found to have elevated lead levels after the city began drawing from the Flint River.

Detroit schools emergency manager Darnell Earley, who was state-appointed emergency manager for Flint when its water source was switched, had been asked to testify at Wednesday’s hearing but declined.

The AP left a message for Earley.

Gina Balaya, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit, told the Detroit Free Press Monday that federal prosecutors are “working with a multi-agency investigation team on the Flint water contamination matter, including the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, EPA’s Office of Inspector General, and EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division”.

Snyder has repeatedly apologized for the mistakes that led to the city’s drinking water supply pipes to be contaminated by lead.

Officials haven’t said whether criminal or civil charges might follow.

The Flint water crisis spawned from the city’s switch to using the Flint River in 2014 as a drinking water source after leaving the city of Detroit’s system, which draws water from Lake Huron.

Angela Wittrock, spokeswoman for Senate Democratic Leader Jim Ananich of Flint, said Snyder’s plan “doesn’t even come close to refunding Flint residents for undrinkable, unusable water they paid for starting in April 2014 – let alone what they then paid for water they could use”.