National Guard activated to assist with Flint’s water emergency

Flint was reconnected to the Detroit water system in mid-October, but state officials said this week the city’s drinking water still is not considered safe. Lead is known to cause permanent mental and physical disabilities. The state also has urged all Flint parents with children younger than 6 to have their childrens’ blood tested for exposure to lead.

Congressman Dan Kildee of MI says he’s glad to see that Gov. Rick Snyder is asking President Barack Obama to issue an emergency and major disaster declaration amid the Flint water crisis. Snyder declared a state of emergency in Flint and Genesee County over the water issue on January 5.

The state asked for the help, but Snyder has not yet made a request through FEMA for federal financial aid, an official said Saturday. Its executive director resigned December 29, but a Freedom of Information request from a Virginia Tech researcher revealed a July email from Snyder’s top aide, acknowledging that Flint residents were “basically getting blown off by us” in the state’s response to lead contamination problems. By facilitating the delivery of the filters, Snyder’s office was not so much acknowledging a problem as trying to pacify Overton and others, who had been “raising so much hell” about the water, Overton said. “If you remember the flood here in Detroit, that took over 30 days to go through that process”. Members of the Guard are expected to start arriving in the city Wednesday.

The ongoing controversy in Flint also drew the attention of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who is traveling to Detroit for a fundraiser on Tuesday.

“This damage to children is irreversible”, Mayor Karen Weaver of Flint, Michigan, wrote when she declared a state of emergency December 14, after discovering dangerously high levels of lead in the city’s water. “This the greatest show I’ve been to here during in my term as governor”, he said.

Volunteers and authorities are going door-to-door in Flint neighborhoods to give residents bottled water, water filters, replacement cartridges and lead water testing kits.

State police said Monday they thought it would take weeks to reach almost 33,000 Flint homes with water and filters.

The move comes as Flint police have been warning people to be wary of scammers trying to prey on residents by selling them faulty water filters.

The state auditor general and a task force created by Snyder have faulted the Department of Environmental Quality for not requiring Flint to treat the river water for corrosion and belittling the public’s fears. The people of Flint and others deserve a government responsive to their basic needs, not one beholden to an anti-democratic ideology.

The lawsuit alleged those complicit in the crisis imposed “serious personal injury” by exposing residents to “the extreme toxicity of water pumped from the Flint River into their homes, schools, hospitals, workplaces and public places”.