Spokesman: Fresh water in Flint state building was for all

Officials are hopeful that the addition of anti-corrosion chemicals will effectively recoat the lines.

“Marco Rubio said he wasn’t fully briefed on the Flint water crisis”.

District engineer Mike Prysby echoed this guidance at a city hall meeting a few weeks later, when he, alongside EPA representatives and a Michigan State University microbiologist, attributed the water’s discoloration to iron and calcium – not lead – from old city pipes.

“There was a significant government breakdown in terms of when they switched the power – the water source to a lake that was known to be polluted and unfortunately now we have people that are facing this awful situation with potential lead poisoning and all sorts of things”, he said. Public health officials want to test the thousands of children who have drunk and bathed in the water because they may suffer developmental and emotional disabilities associated with high lead levels in the bloodstream.

Flint residents are now warned to drink only filtered or bottled water because of lead contamination in the city’s supply.

The governor’s spokesman Dave Murray said the federal legislation is being reviewed but declined to say if Snyder supports it. Snyder is “always grateful for support from our federal partners”, he said. Emails that were released Thursday revealed that employees at the state office in Flint have been drinking from coolers of purified water for a year.

Rep. Brenda Lawrence of MI and Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland have complained that the Oversight Committee’s Republican chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, rejected their request for Snyder to testify at a hearing next week. The two lawmakers say officials must hear from everyone involved to understand how the crisis in Flint occurred and how a similar problem can be prevented.

“The American people deserve a full accounting of this man-made disaster”, Lawrence said.

Darnell Early, former emergency manager for Flint. “That was a decision we made as the building owner” in Flint, said Caleb Buhs, a spokesman for the agency that manages state buildings.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has signed into law $28 million in emergency funding to address Flint’s lead-contaminated water crisis.

Since then, dangerously high levels of lead from corroded pipes have been found in the water. The Republican governor said the funding will provide immediate resources in Flint, but is not the end of state assistance.

The money is meant to pay for bottled water, faucet filters, testing kits, additional school nurses, medical treatment and to help the city with unpaid water bills.

The state spending bill includes $500,000 for outside experts to study the integrity of the water system infrastructure.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) reacted to the water crisis in Flint, calling it a failure at every level of government.

“I had no knowledge of that taking place”, Snyder said Friday.

The coolers were introduced after Flint officials warned residents about elevated levels of a disinfection byproduct called trihalomethane in the city’s water.