New Lawsuit Seeks Replacement of Flint’s Lead Pipes

The river had a reputation for nastiness, and after the April 2014 switch, residents complained their water looked, smelled and tasted amusing. The Detroit water system, which had supplied Flint for a half-century, fought fiercely until 2013 to keep the city as a customer. “I just felt like if we’re going to donate some water, let’s donate some water”.

Michigan’s attorney general is investigating the process that left Flint’s drinking water contaminated with lead, but that effort is drawing bipartisan criticism.

The project will be the first time Roehre – and her one-woman her water education nonprofit Adventure Kids Learning – will be in a USA city to help tell its water story.

The state is working to identify newer neighborhoods with no lead pipes, so those residents can potentially get the all-clear on their water sooner. Work to replace the lead lines has not begun after the state acknowledged a public health crisis around October 1, after months of denials and downplaying the problem. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2016 CBS Broadcasting Inc.

The state is also asking the federal government to expand Medicaid health care eligibility to cover all Flint-area residents up to 21 years of age and provide Medicaid match dollars for lead abatement activities. Flint is 57% black, 37% white, 4% Latino and 4% mixed race; more than 41% of its resident live below the poverty level, the U.S. Census says. Baird helped recruit Jones Day bankruptcy lawyer Kevyn Orr to become Detroit’s emergency manager and helped the city navigate the country’s largest municipal bankruptcy in history.

“We want to highlight our lack of trust in state and federal government to properly address both the short-term crisis of the Flint water poisoning, and Detroit water shutoffs and the long-term effects and solutions”, Wedes said.

State regulators never required that the river water be treated to make it less corrosive, causing lead from plumbing and pipes to leach into the water supply. Schuette also said Monday that having special counsel will prevent conflicts of interest since the attorney general’s office also will defend the state against lawsuits brought by Flint residents.

“We are committed to supporting the communities where we operate, and our collective action today will allow Flint school children and their parents to focus on their education rather than where they can find clean water”. Overall, about 40 percent of city residents live below the federal poverty line.

President Barack Obama announced Thursday that $80 million in new funding would be available to MI next week to help the state improve its water infrastructure.

The suit also asks the court to bar the state and other defendants from further violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act, in connection with the way Flint drinking water is treated and tested, and the way the public is notified about the results of that testing, and to “mitigate the health and medical risks and harm resulting from defendants’ violations”.