State workers in Flint got bottled water as crisis brewed

In addition to adding to the enormous available evidence revealing the Snyder’s administration lackluster (if not criminal) response to the water crisis in Flint, Scott said the documents also make it plain just “ineffective” and “unequal” the state’s handling of the situation has been.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says he wasn’t aware that the state offered fresh bottled water for state employees in Flint starting in January 2015, although residents were told that tap water was safe to drink until last fall.

Caleb Buhs, a spokesman for the agency that manages state buildings, says the water coolers began in January 2015 after Flint had flunked some drinking water standards apart from the lead contamination that has caused the current crisis. It’s “very personal when, in fact, you’re trying to get drinking water or cook or bathe and the water looks like that”.

He said the EPA was highly unrealistic when it insisted that the state map all of Flint’s lead pipe water connections within 10 days.

First, residents learned that their complaints about brown, abrasive, nauseating water were ignored by state officials, and that water quality tests were manipulated to show lower levels of lead and other toxins. The bill requires the state of MI to match the federal spending. Gary Peters said at a news conference at the Capitol. He wants the removal and arrest of Governor Snyder, and notes that the state of MI should be made to pay for the disaster it created using its $600 million rainy day fund and $600 million surplus. And now, the Detroit teachers’ union has sued its city’s school district, demanding the fix of “deplorable” conditions and removing Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, the state-appointed emergency manager who once oversaw Flint.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said Snyder tried to “save a few bucks with the water and, in the process, poisoned lots of people”. A coalition of advocacy groups allege that by switching drinking water sources, Flint officials violated the United States federal Safe Drinking Water Act, meaning a U.S. federal court could order Flint to replace its lead-pipe infrastructure immediately.

Even so, lawmakers said they hope to finish the overall energy bill next week.

According to the Detroit Free Press, Prysby said there were only health concerns among the young, elderly and ill if they ingested trihalomethanes over a long period of time: “We’re talking decades”, he said.

Two weeks earlier, the Snyder administration told its own employees in Flint – in writing – that “the public water does not meet treatment requirements”. The Legislature also voted Thursday to extend Michigan’s emergency declaration until mid-April, which coincides with a federal emergency declaration.