Public health emergency declared due to lead in Flint water

Michigan will spend $1 million to buy water filters and immediately test water in public schools in Flint after testing showed elevated levels of lead in the city’s children, the governor announced Friday, a day after local health officials declared a public health emergency. Despite the announcement, authorities in Flint delivered a plan today that won’t, for now, switch out the city’s water source, Flint River, for Lake Huron, which supplies water for most of the rest of Detroit. Only one filter will be available per home.

The scientists said the lead isn’t actually in the water, but that the river water itself was more corrosive than the lake water Flint had been buying from Detroit. The Flint Journal’s editorial board praised the move last April, right before the change went into effect.

What was the science that allowed the MDEQ to approve the switch to Flint River water? “We can not conclusively say that water source is the only cause of this”, said Nick Lyon, the director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

The Flint River water is leaving the treatment center safe, but it is Flint’s aged infrastructure that needs the long-term attention.

But residents did notice a change.

The full plan, detailed by officials with the state Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Health and Human Services, also includes a commitment from the city to continue free water testing, provide free water filters, and names the state’s chief medical executive as the Flint drinking water public health adviser.

The Snyder administration will make a decision about reconnecting with the Detroit Water & Sewerage System within a week, Snyder said from California in a teleconference Friday morning. Facebook pages have been forums for complaints and concerns… After, that figure jumped to 4%. He acknowledged that lead levels have increased.

Exposure to lead can cause behavior problems and learning disabilities in young children.

Edwards contends that even though the city did random sampling instead of “worst case” sampling, the results were still over the action level for lead.

Individuals shouldnt notice any difference, said Steve Busch, Lansing and Jackson district supervisor in the DEQs office of drinking water and municipal assistance.

Flint Mayor Dayne Walling listens as city and state officials announce a plan to deal with lead levels in Flint’s drinking water during a news conference on Friday, October 2, 2015, at Kettering University in Flint, Mich. The city is now telling residents to use only cold water for drinking, cooking and making baby formula, and recommending they use the certified filters.

Flint officials say they know which homes have risky pipes but the information is on about 45,000 index cards and hard to retrieve. “(They) said everything was OK.

Flint-based Coalition for Clean Water, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, and the Natural Resources Defense Council joined the petition to trigger the EPA to launch a comprehensive federal response to the ongoing crisis.

Fast forward nearly a year and a half, and now we learn a few residents in the city are being exposed to unsafe levels of lead in their drinking water.

Local citizens and national groups are calling for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take immediate action addressing drinking water contaminate with lead in Flint, Michigan, according to a press release. Residents have received a string of “boil water” notices due to mistakes made at the plant.