You might have heard that there is lead in Flint’s water. You’re not going to believe how much. And you’re not going to believe how bad lead exposure is for people. But you’ll probably believe it happened because government-hating Republicans set aside democracy so Flint’s residents couldn’t stop them from running government “like a business” and cutting government spending.
Trade Policies Sent The Jobs Away
Michigan is one state that has been hard hit by our country’s trade policies. Once considered the center of the automobile industry, factories and jobs were sent out of the country to places where people are exploited and barely paid, and the environment is not protected. (Yes, we let them do that.)
The result has been absolutely devastating (see “ruin porn“) to Michigan cities like Detroit and Flint as jobs disappeared and people who could afford to move to try to find jobs did just that. The rest of the city’s residents are left in poverty amidst miles of boarded-up, abandoned and falling-down buildings and homes, empty storefronts, and absolutely overwhelmed and underfunded public services. Help from the state and federal governments is not forthcoming.
Run Government Like A Business
Rick Snyder is a businessman (CEO, venture capitalist) who in 2010 campaigned for governor on running government like a business, promising to be the CEO governor who would create jobs. Michigan was starved for jobs, first from Wall-Street-sponsored deindustrialization, then from the Wall-Street-caused crash and recession/depression. So any promise of jobs went a long way. Maybe it was time to try turning government over to someone wealthy from outside government who said he knew better than government how to run government. Daily Beast noted at the time, “there is a more than a hint of plutocrats-know-best in Rick Snyder’s campaign pitch.”
But government in a democracy is nothing like a business. It is supposed to organize itself to deliver services and make people’s lives better, not profit off the people. Managing government and business requires entirely different skill sets and mindsets. (Also, that thing about businesses “creating jobs?” That’s not what businesses strive to do; they strive to cut costs and eliminate jobs. According to the Daily Beast, “While Snyder was on the board of Gateway [a U.S.-based computer company that had its heyday in the 1990s but ceased independent operations in 2007], the company’s workforce contracted from 21,000 American workers in 2000 to 7,400 workers in 2003.”)
Emergency Manager Law, Setting Aside Democracy
In 2011, Republicans passed a controversial law allowing the governor to run government like a business and appoint a CEO-style “emergency manager” when a city is considered to be financially irresponsible (i.e., too black). Under the law, it does not matter that the people of the city already elected a mayor, council and other leaders. The governor sets the election aside, brings in an emergency manager to take control of the local government, reduce its size and cost, and privatize public property, no matter the effect on the people there.
Like a turnaround CEO brought in from another company, the emergency manager has few connections to the community. Cut services, cut costs, strip, streamline, just like a business would do. (Such cities are typically surrounded by well-off “white-flight” suburban areas that are not required to financially or otherwise participate in solving the problems.)
The affected communities didn’t like that, and, unlike a business, could still do something about it. Michigan’s emergency manager law was repealed by referendum in 2012. So Republicans re-passed it in a lame duck legislative session. But this time they included a small appropriation, which under Michigan law meant it cannot be subject to a voter referendum. That’s that; the board has spoken, everybody get in line, all row in the same direction, play on the same team, run the ball down the field, just like in a business, or get out. Except unlike in a business there is no “get out” – you still live there.
Public Health Emergency
Flint’s public health emergency started when the city’s emergency manager “saved money” ($8.5 million over 5 years) by switching the city’s water source from Detroit via a pipeline to drawing water from the polluted Flint River. People involved in water systems will tell you that river water is acidic, which leaches lead and other metals from pipes, but they were not asked. The emergency managers could have added corrosion control chemicals to the water, but that would be more “government spending,” and they didn’t.
This happened in April 2014. Immediately people started complaining about the taste and smell of the now-brown water that was coming into their homes. For 18 months people complained. They started getting rashes. People’s hair was falling out. The government, run like a business, did what businesses do: they entered “damage-control mode,” denied there was a problem, blamed the messengers and tried to spin things their way. City and state officials said the water was OK. But there were growing concerns that there was a problem.
A Flint pediatrician, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha of Hurley Children’s Hospital, compared blood test results for 1,746 children in Flint before and after April 2014 and discovered an increase in lead levels. “But when we announced the results, the state called me ‘an unfortunate researcher causing near hysteria,’ an ‘irresponsible researcher.’”
Then, in September, 2015, a study from Virginia Tech‘s Marc Edwards was released showing dangerous levels of lead in the water. Then in October city officials finally said, yes, something is wrong with the water and people should not drink it.
What was happening? Lead and other metals were “leaching” into the water as corrosion affected old pipes. From April 2014 until October 2015 the people of Flint were forced to drink contaminated water, filled with toxic amounts of lead and other metals.
How Much Lead Are We Talking About?
How much lead is in Flint’s water? Brace yourself.
The Washington Post provided a way to understand just how much lead, in “This is how toxic Flint’s water really is“:
In the spring of 2015, city officials tested water in the home of LeeAnne Walters, a stay-at-home mother of four and a Navy wife. They got a reading of 397 ppb, an alarmingly high number.
But it was even worse than that. Virginia Tech’s team went to Walters’ house to verify those numbers later in the year. They were concerned that the city tested water in a way that was almost guaranteed to minimize lead readings: They flushed the water for several minutes before taking a sample, which often washes away a percentage of lead contaminants. They also made residents collect water at a very low flow rate, which they knew also tended to be associated with lower readings.
So the Virginia Tech researchers took 30 different readings at various flow levels. What they found shocked them: The lowest reading they obtained was around 200 ppb, already ridiculously high. But more than half of the readings came in at more than 1,000 ppb. Some came in above 5,000 — the level at which EPA considers the water to be “toxic waste.”
The highest reading registered at 13,000 ppb.
Five parts per billion of lead are a concern. When lead reaches 15 parts per billion, the EPA says you are in trouble. 5,000 parts per billion is considered “toxic waste.”
From April 2014 until October 2015 (and later, and still) the people of Flint were drinking water with up to 13,000 parts per billion of lead in it.
What Lead Does To Health, Especially Children
Lead has terrible and irreversible effects on people’s health, especially children. Even low levels – 5 parts per billion – of exposure have been shown to have many subtle health effects.
According to the CDC, short-term exposure can cause people to feel: ● Abdominal pain ● Constipated ● Tired ● Headaches ● Irritable ● Loss of appetite ● Memory loss ● Pain or tingling in the hands and/or feet ● Weak
But if a pregnant woman is exposed, it can damage a developing baby’s nervous system. “Even low-level lead exposures in developing babies have been found to affect behavior and intelligence. Lead exposure can cause miscarriage, stillbirths, and infertility (in both men and women).”
In children lead exposure has “lasting neurological and behavioral damage.” It leads to intellectual disabilities, serious difficulty controlling impulses, retaining information and learning in school. It is difficult or impossible for them to later have thought-intensive jobs.
Lead can also keep the body from getting nutrients required for cell development and the growth of strong teeth and bones. (One way it does this is to “inhibit or mimic the actions of calcium.”)
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) “How Lead Poisons the Human Body,” “The lead builds up in soft tissue — kidneys, bone marrow, liver, and brain — as well as bones and teeth. … Some scientists believe that low-level chronic lead exposure in childhood can alter secretion of the human growth hormone, stunting growth and promoting obesity.”
The NRDC document has a warning for the future: “Unfortunately, most children do not present overt symptoms of poisoning. Because their symptoms (ranging from irritability to stomach upset) may not be immediately recognizable as lead-related the majority of cases go undetected.”
Cover Up?
Between April 2014 and October 2015, when studies confirmed that the water was poisoning people in Flint, people fought to get the city and state to do something. The water smelled, was brown, tasted bad and people were experiencing symptoms from it. And doctors were warning that people were showing signs of lead poisoning but could not yet confirm from where it was coming. All along the state kept saying this was not the result of the emergency manager’s decision to switch Flint’s water source to cut government spending, business-style.
It’s not as if people around the country were not trying to sound the alarm.
In May 2014, just a month after the water switch, the city learned that trihalomethanes ( TTHMs) were above levels allowed in the Clean Water Act, but did not inform residents until January 2015, and did not switch back to safe water.
In October 2014, GM noticed that the water was corroding engines and started trucking water in from elsewhere.
In March 2015, The New York Times reported:
"After Flint changed the source of its drinking water last spring, Ms. Mays said, she noticed a change in the water’s color and odor. Then she started having rashes, and clumps of her hair fell out. When the city issued a boil order, she stopped using the water for drinking and cooking. Now her family spends roughly $400 a month on bottled water.
"… Flint officials insist that the city’s water is safe. They say that the issues of odor and color are separate from the question of whether the water meets federal standards, and that no link to health problems has been proved.
"…“I don’t feel hopeful,” Mr. Palladeno said. “At one time, I loved this town. I still love it. There’s good people here. But the governing is killing us. I think we need a federal intervention.”
The Atlantic wrote in July 2015:
"Melissa Mays looks around the emergency room at a frail, elderly man in a wheelchair and a woman with a hacking cough and can’t quite believe she’s here. Until a few months ago, she was healthy—an active mother of three boys who found time to go to the gym while holding down a job as a media consultant and doing publicity for bands.
"But lately, she’s been feeling sluggish. She’s developed a rash on her leg, and clumps of her hair are falling out. She ended up in the emergency room last week after feeling “like [her] brain exploded,” hearing pops, and experiencing severe pain in one side of her head.
"Mays blames her sudden spate of health problems on the water in her hometown of Flint. She says it has a blue tint when it comes out of her faucet, and lab results indicate it has high amounts of copper and lead. Her family hasn’t been drinking the water for some months, but they have been bathing in it, since they have no alternative."
The State of Michigan, under the direction of Governor Rick Snyder, tried to keep the story under wraps, and deny there was a problem, apparently even after they knew there was a serious problem. As late as September the state was still denying there was a problem with the water from the Flint river, and taking issue with the studies saying otherwise. Michigan Live wrote, “State says data shows no link to Flint River, elevated lead in blood“:
"Angela Minicuci, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said blood lead levels in Flint have remained fairly steady for children under 16 years old since the city switched from Lake Huron water to the river."
However, while denying there was a problem, the governor’s office was secretly ordering filters be supplied to Flint.
Professor Marc Edwards from Virginia Tech University says the reason the state was still denying the link could be that they altered data from samples. CNN reports in “Did Michigan officials hide the truth about lead in Flint?“
"Documents and emails show discrepancies between two reports detailing the toxicity of lead samples collected by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the city of Flint between January and June 2015, Professor Marc Edwards from Virginia Tech University said.
"… According to Edwards, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the city of Flint collected 71 lead level samples from homes when they were required to collect 100. The final report from the Department of Environmental Quality however, only accounted for 69 of those 71 samples.
"Edwards said those two discarded samples were “high-lead” and would have lifted the “action level” above 15 parts per billion."
But wait, there’s more,
Edwards said the samples should have been taken from homes with lead pipes. The reports say they were, but Michael Glasgow, then-assistant supervisor of the Flint water plant, said this is not true. Glasgow told CNN the records were not complete, and the sampling teams did not know which homes had lead pipes.
“In essence, the state took an ‘F-grade’ for Flint water’s report on lead and made it into an ‘A-grade,'” Edwards told CNN.
But wait, there’s more,
The memo notes that residents were instructed to “pre-flush” taps before samples were taken, a practice that has been shown “to result in the minimization of lead capture and significant underestimation of lead levels.”
Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality notified the city on June 25, 2015 that they had found high lead levels in some of the samples. It was after that notification that the samples changed, and showed no more lead.
Now Legionnaire’s Disease, Too
On top of the lead crisis, Legionnaire’s disease is breaking out in Flint, also apparently a consequence of the problems with Flint’s water. So far 87 cases of Legionnaire’s Disease, 10 of them fatal, have turned up.
Federal Emergency
Saturday President Obama declared a federal emergency in Flint. This means the federal government, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies can start to help the people there. FEMA will provide water, filters and cartridges and other items, up to $5 million. However, he did not declare Flint and its county, Genesee, to be disaster areas, which would bring additional funds and assistance, because that status has always been used for natural disasters rather than man-made (in this case we should say Republican-made) ones.
This crisis is terrible news for Flint. It comes as Flint was entering a period of revival. The University of Michigan had opened dormitories for its Flint campus and the result was new restaurants and shops springing up. Housing prices were finally stabilizing and increasing.
What Must Be Done
Michael Moore wrote a public letter to President Obama asking for President Obama to provide federal assistance:
● The CDC here at once to truly assess all of the disease and damage that has been forced upon the people of Flint.
● FEMA has to supply large water containers in every home in Flint — and they must be filled by water trucks until the new infrastructure is resolved.
● The EPA must take over matters from the State (can the governor be removed and replaced like he did to the mayor of Flint?). Immediately.
● You must send in the Army Corps of Engineers to build that new water infrastructure. Otherwise, you might as well just evacuate all the people from Flint and move them to a white city that has clean drinking water — and where this would never happen.
The people in Flint are going to need complete health evaluations and care for any problems that show up. But this is also a long-term public health crisis. People will need evaluation and care for years.
Flint’s children that have been affected are going to need special teaching and other assistance, as well as other help for the rest of their lives.
One more thing. Like a business, Flint is telling customers they still owe for the poisoned water. They are sending shut-off notices to residents telling them they will be cut off if they do not pay up.
Government is not a business. It shouldn’t be thought of as a business and especially not run like a business. Government is supposed to represent us, We the People, and help us have better lives. It should serve us, not profit off of us and disregard our lives.
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scipio africanus replied on
flint water crisis
Union Officials Admit They Let Veterans Die Rather Than Talk To Republicans
LUKE ROSIAK Investigative Reporter 12:50 AM 03/10/2016
A federal employee union president is wracked with regret because veterans likely died at a time when she knew about gross misconduct within her Department of Veterans Affairs facility but didn’t tell congressional leaders because they were Republicans.
“If I would’ve gone to him two years ago, who knows what kind of lives could’ve been saved,” Germaine Clarno told a radio interviewer Monday, referring to the Republican leader of a VA subcommittee. Clarno, a lifelong Democrat and social worker at the Hines Veterans Affairs Hospital in Hines, Ill., has been president of the union representing doctors at the hospital since before the deadly wait-time scandal unfolded.
Dozens of veterans have died in recent years while waiting for appointments with doctors at multiple VA hospitals and care centers around the nation. But VA staffers systematically manipulated records to make it seem like they didn’t have long waits. The problems became so severe by 2013, that as many as 40 patients died at just the Phoenix facility.
The same practices took place at Hines, with the knowledge of its director. Additional problems also plagued Hines, like heart scans getting discarded without being read.
Clarno’s tale of haunting regret is at least the second case of people connected with VA unions admitting they did not speak up about life-and-death issues because the idea of talking to a Republican was too distasteful.
Sen. Mark Kirk
was the ranking Republican on the Senate VA Appropriations subcommittee when Clarno finally talked to him in 2013, and wielding the power of the purse, he immediately launched a crusade to expose wrong-doing at Hines.
But in the previous years, Clarno went instead to Democrats who were ill-positioned to do anything, and who indeed, did nothing. Clarno and Lisa Nee, a VA doctor she worked with, described their actions during the interview Monday with Illinois’ WLS-AM radio host John Howell.
HOWELL: Both [Sen. Dick] Durbin and [Rep. Tammy] Duckworth put out a statement last week, as did our junior senator Mark Kirk, who I know has been helpful to you, right doctor?
NEE: Yes. And I didn’t think he would be. He was the last resort.
HOWELL: And usually when a union has to go to Republicans it’s a frosty reception, I suppose.
CLARNO: Exactly. And if I would’ve gone to him two years ago, who knows what kind of lives could’ve been saved.
HOWELL: That’s a really sad aspect of this.
CLARNO: It is.
The women first went to Rep. Danny Davis , a Democrat who represented the district that included Hines, but he was not on any committees with VA oversight authority. “Danny Davis was pretty apathetic not because he didn’t know what was going on but because he felt like their was nothing he could do,” Nee said in the interview.
The two women then went to Rep. Tammy Duckworth , a disabled veteran Democrat who also represents the area and was an official at VA before being elected to Congress, but since was a new lawmaker without leadership roles on any committees, she did not help. Clarno and Nee said Duckworth wouldn’t even read a report about the situation at Hines.
“It was really upsetting. This isn’t about, you know, whether you have a D or an R at the end of your name. This is about the VA, this is about protecting the men and women who fought for our country,” Clarno said.
Clarno tried to work through Hines managers before going to Congress, and is now tirelessly working every possible avenue to fix problems in the VA.
A similar situation unfolded in Wisconsin, the site of VA’s Tomah hospital — known as “Candy Land” because its doctors doped up veterans with dangerous combinations of sedatives rather than treating their underlying conditions.
The Tomah VA employees union didn’t take complaints to Sen. Ron Johnson , a Republican, even though he is not only from Wisconsin, but is chairman of the Senate Oversight Committee with jurisdiction over management issues in government agencies.
“We didn’t even talk to Republicans then,” Lin Ellinghuysen, union president and past vice president, told the Wisconsin Watchdog.
But there is no remorse in Wisconsin. The union is now running ads against Johnson, faulting him for not acting on information he was never given. The public employees union is campaigning for Russ Feingold, a Democrat who preceded Johnson in office and is now running to retake the seat.
The union initially said it told Feingold of problems at the facility via a hand-delivered letter in 2009, when he still occupied the Senate seat. But after the absence of any corrective action by Feingold became a campaign issue, the union retracted its claim, and said it never told him.
Democrat Tammy Baldwin , the state’s other senator, received an investigation report detailing problems at the Tomah facility, but nothing came of it. Baldwin admitted that it was a major failing, and fired the staffer she said was responsible.
Ellinghuysen said the union talked with Democrats about the problems, but she didn’t follow up when they didn’t get results because she is no “courageous Wonder Woman” and “needed a paycheck.”
Ryan Honl, a lifelong Democrat who worked at Tomah, reluctantly went to Johnson’s office, and got a response the next day after being frustrated with a lack of response from Baldwin and another Democrat, Rep. Ron Kind
Then, after Republicans did the work of proving undeniable mistreatment, the Democratic members belatedly chimed in with expressions of outrage at the mistreatment of vets — just as Durbin and Duckworth did in Illinois — Honl told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The failure of the unions to alert relevant authorities about patient abuse, coupled with political attacks against the few congressmen who actually tried to put a stop to it, astounded Honl to such an extent that he renounced his political party.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/10/union-officials-admit-they-let-veterans-die-rather-than-talk-to-republicans/#ixzz42oVGVJYm
scipio africanus replied on
flint water crisis and epa role
EPA email: Let's not 'go out on a limb' for Flint
Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News8:50 p.m. EDT March 15, 2016
Washington — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency came under withering criticism during a Tuesday congressional hearing for its failure to swiftly respond to the lead contamination of Flint’s water supply.
Former EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman told the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that the agency did nothing wrong — a statement that was derided by Republicans.
“The bad news is that this problem should never have happened in the first place, and I need to remind you: EPA had nothing at all to do with that,” Hedman told the committee.
The EPA’s Midwest agency repeatedly urged Michigan officials to act faster on beginning anti-corrosion treatment of Flint River water, she said, but the state was slow to respond.
The testimony elicited criticism from Virginia Tech University water expert Marc Edwards, who labeled the agency’s inaction as “willful blindness,” emphasizing the EPA has “never apologized” for its failures.
“EPA had everything to do with creating Flint,” Edwards told lawmakers. “To this day, they have not apologized for what they did in Flint, Michigan. ... I guess working for a government agency means never having to say you’re sorry.”
In his opening statement, Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, upbraided Hedman for her management of the EPA’s Region 5 and quoted from an email among Region 5 staffers about Flint.
“We’ve included information on Flint’s financial practices, as we think Susan needs to be aware,” Debbie Baltazar, chief of the Region 5 Water Division’s State and Tribal Programs Branch, wrote in late September.
“Perhaps she already knows all this, but I’m not so sure Flint is the community we want to go out on a limb for. At least without a better understanding of where all that money went.”
Chaffetz told reporters, “They didn’t know if they wanted to take the time, effort or money to help the people of Flint. ... The person who responds next in the email says, ‘I concur.’ ”
According to emails obtained by The News, Region 5 employees were discussing whether Flint could redirect certain federal funds usually used for wellhead protection to pay for in-home water filtration for Flint. The EPA officials said offering such assistance to Flint would send the wrong message to other cities that better managed their water fees.
Hedman criticized
Showing up a bit late, Hedman testified on a panel that included former Flint Mayor Dayne Walling and Darnell Earley, one of Flint’s emergency managers.
Chaffetz slammed Hedman’s oversight of the Chicago-based Region 5, saying she missed multiple chances to address the water crisis and created a culture that allowed retaliation against whistle-blowers.
He called Hedman’s contention that the EPA responded as swiftly as it could have under the law “laughable.”
He also took aim at EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who is scheduled to testify Thursday, saying she continues to “shift blame” and accept “no culpability whatsoever.” The agency still has not produced all the Flint records the committee requested, he said.
Flint’s water problems stem from an April 2014 switch in the city’s supply from treated water from Lake Huron to untreated water from the Flint River. The untreated water caused aging water lines to leach lead into the drinking water supply.
Hedman said she resigned Feb. 1 in part because the crisis occurred on her watch and because of “false allegations about me” published in early January “which EPA was unable to correct on the record before they began to damage the agency’s ability to perform critical work in Flint.”
Hedman said she was referring to allegations that she downplayed a memo by Region 5 water quality expert Miguel Del Toral that raised concerns about Flint’s water.
“I did not sit on the sidelines, and I did not downplay any concerns raised by EPA scientists or apologize for any memos they wrote,” Hedman told the committee. “In fact, I repeatedly asked for a final memo about lead in a form that EPA could publicly release.”
She said when a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Brad Wurfel, attacked Del Toral as a “rogue employee,” she called to complain to the DEQ’s director.
“What happened in Flint should not have happened anywhere in United States, and I was horrified that it happened in my region, the Great Lakes Region. I thought — and still think — that resigning was the honorable thing to do,” Hedman said, her voice shaking.
“Although I have left government service, I have not stopped worrying about the people of Flint.”
State ‘slow to deliver’
Hedman said she learned of the lack of corrosion-control treatment for Flint’s water on June 30, 2015 — about 14 months after the city started using river water.
She said she offered technical help to then-Flint Mayor Walling the next day, and her agency released its first statement the next week urging residents to contact their water utility for lead testing.
She said Michigan DEQ officials three weeks later agreed with the EPA’s recommendation to require Flint to implement corrosion controls, but then the state was “slow to deliver on the agreement.”
“... While I used the threat of enforcement action to motivate the state and city to move forward, we found that the enforcement options available to us were of limited utility last fall, due to the unique circumstances of this case,” Hedman said.
Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, pressed Hedman: “Do you actually think EPA had nothing to do with the crisis in Flint?”
“No,” she replied.
Walberg also asked why Hedman didn’t take “emergency action” sooner as authorized under federal law. She said she received legal advice that such a move would be difficult.
Walberg turned to Edwards, the Virginia Tech water expert who helped uncover the water problems in Flint, asking how soon Hedman should have taken action “according to the code of law and to human decency, as well?”
Edwards said, “I don’t know law but, as a human being, she should have told people immediately.”
Hedman continually downplayed the EPA’s role in the crisis, telling lawmakers, “I don’t think anyone at the EPA did anything wrong, but I do believe we could have done more.”
After the hearing, Edwards said he found it “very frustrating to see the lack of accountability.”
“We’re going to need a bipartisan effort to get that fixed — and we have to get it fixed,” he said. “Until we do, no one is safe in this country with agencies that value loyalty to the agency before loyalty to the public.”
Walling, in his testimony, said he’s disappointed that EPA didn’t help Flint more. He asked Hedman about the internal memo by the Region 5’s Del Toral warning about lead contamination of Flint’s water and was told that a review process was underway, and the city would be alerted by the state of any new requirements.
“We now know we were getting bad information and worse water,” Walling told the committee.
Chaffetz also criticized Hedman, who last summer “dismissed and downplayed this memo, calling it a ‘preliminary draft’ and asserting ‘it would be premature to draw any conclusions.’ ”
He noted it wasn’t until Jan. 21 — nearly seven months after Del Toral’s memo — that the EPA issued an emergency order citing “imminent and substantial endangerment exists” with regard to the high levels of lead in the Flint water supply.
“How many more people were poisoned in those seven months? How many illnesses were worsened in those seven months?” Chaffetz said at the hearing.
In connection with the hearing, Chaffetz on Tuesday released several emails obtained from the EPA, including one from Del Toral to a group of recipients at Region 5 on Sept. 22, 2015, following a Flint pediatrician’s study finding high blood levels in Flint children.
“I am very upset about this because I told people this was going to be the outcome,” Del Toral wrote. “I watched this movie before in Washington, D.C., and we are heading down the exact same path of denial and delay, and meanwhile the children are being irreparably damaged.”
Hedman’s answers about the EPA’s actions failed to satisfy some Republican lawmakers.
“Dr. Hedman, I’m sorry,” said U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Georgia. “There’s a special place in hell for actions like this.”
mburke@detroitnews.com
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/03/15/hearing-epa/81805068/
scipio africanus replied on
flint water crisis epa "lets not go out on a limb" for flint
EPA email: Let's not 'go out on a limb' for Flint
Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News8:50 p.m. EDT March 15, 2016
Washington — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency came under withering criticism during a Tuesday congressional hearing for its failure to swiftly respond to the lead contamination of Flint’s water supply.
Former EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman told the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that the agency did nothing wrong — a statement that was derided by Republicans.
“The bad news is that this problem should never have happened in the first place, and I need to remind you: EPA had nothing at all to do with that,” Hedman told the committee.
The EPA’s Midwest agency repeatedly urged Michigan officials to act faster on beginning anti-corrosion treatment of Flint River water, she said, but the state was slow to respond.
The testimony elicited criticism from Virginia Tech University water expert Marc Edwards, who labeled the agency’s inaction as “willful blindness,” emphasizing the EPA has “never apologized” for its failures.
“EPA had everything to do with creating Flint,” Edwards told lawmakers. “To this day, they have not apologized for what they did in Flint, Michigan. ... I guess working for a government agency means never having to say you’re sorry.”
In his opening statement, Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, upbraided Hedman for her management of the EPA’s Region 5 and quoted from an email among Region 5 staffers about Flint.
“We’ve included information on Flint’s financial practices, as we think Susan needs to be aware,” Debbie Baltazar, chief of the Region 5 Water Division’s State and Tribal Programs Branch, wrote in late September.
“Perhaps she already knows all this, but I’m not so sure Flint is the community we want to go out on a limb for. At least without a better understanding of where all that money went.”
Chaffetz told reporters, “They didn’t know if they wanted to take the time, effort or money to help the people of Flint. ... The person who responds next in the email says, ‘I concur.’ ”
According to emails obtained by The News, Region 5 employees were discussing whether Flint could redirect certain federal funds usually used for wellhead protection to pay for in-home water filtration for Flint. The EPA officials said offering such assistance to Flint would send the wrong message to other cities that better managed their water fees.
Hedman criticized
Showing up a bit late, Hedman testified on a panel that included former Flint Mayor Dayne Walling and Darnell Earley, one of Flint’s emergency managers.
Chaffetz slammed Hedman’s oversight of the Chicago-based Region 5, saying she missed multiple chances to address the water crisis and created a culture that allowed retaliation against whistle-blowers.
He called Hedman’s contention that the EPA responded as swiftly as it could have under the law “laughable.”
He also took aim at EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who is scheduled to testify Thursday, saying she continues to “shift blame” and accept “no culpability whatsoever.” The agency still has not produced all the Flint records the committee requested, he said.
Flint’s water problems stem from an April 2014 switch in the city’s supply from treated water from Lake Huron to untreated water from the Flint River. The untreated water caused aging water lines to leach lead into the drinking water supply.
Hedman said she resigned Feb. 1 in part because the crisis occurred on her watch and because of “false allegations about me” published in early January “which EPA was unable to correct on the record before they began to damage the agency’s ability to perform critical work in Flint.”
Hedman said she was referring to allegations that she downplayed a memo by Region 5 water quality expert Miguel Del Toral that raised concerns about Flint’s water.
“I did not sit on the sidelines, and I did not downplay any concerns raised by EPA scientists or apologize for any memos they wrote,” Hedman told the committee. “In fact, I repeatedly asked for a final memo about lead in a form that EPA could publicly release.”
She said when a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Brad Wurfel, attacked Del Toral as a “rogue employee,” she called to complain to the DEQ’s director.
“What happened in Flint should not have happened anywhere in United States, and I was horrified that it happened in my region, the Great Lakes Region. I thought — and still think — that resigning was the honorable thing to do,” Hedman said, her voice shaking.
“Although I have left government service, I have not stopped worrying about the people of Flint.”
State ‘slow to deliver’
Hedman said she learned of the lack of corrosion-control treatment for Flint’s water on June 30, 2015 — about 14 months after the city started using river water.
She said she offered technical help to then-Flint Mayor Walling the next day, and her agency released its first statement the next week urging residents to contact their water utility for lead testing.
She said Michigan DEQ officials three weeks later agreed with the EPA’s recommendation to require Flint to implement corrosion controls, but then the state was “slow to deliver on the agreement.”
“... While I used the threat of enforcement action to motivate the state and city to move forward, we found that the enforcement options available to us were of limited utility last fall, due to the unique circumstances of this case,” Hedman said.
Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, pressed Hedman: “Do you actually think EPA had nothing to do with the crisis in Flint?”
“No,” she replied.
Walberg also asked why Hedman didn’t take “emergency action” sooner as authorized under federal law. She said she received legal advice that such a move would be difficult.
Walberg turned to Edwards, the Virginia Tech water expert who helped uncover the water problems in Flint, asking how soon Hedman should have taken action “according to the code of law and to human decency, as well?”
Edwards said, “I don’t know law but, as a human being, she should have told people immediately.”
Hedman continually downplayed the EPA’s role in the crisis, telling lawmakers, “I don’t think anyone at the EPA did anything wrong, but I do believe we could have done more.”
After the hearing, Edwards said he found it “very frustrating to see the lack of accountability.”
“We’re going to need a bipartisan effort to get that fixed — and we have to get it fixed,” he said. “Until we do, no one is safe in this country with agencies that value loyalty to the agency before loyalty to the public.”
Walling, in his testimony, said he’s disappointed that EPA didn’t help Flint more. He asked Hedman about the internal memo by the Region 5’s Del Toral warning about lead contamination of Flint’s water and was told that a review process was underway, and the city would be alerted by the state of any new requirements.
“We now know we were getting bad information and worse water,” Walling told the committee.
Chaffetz also criticized Hedman, who last summer “dismissed and downplayed this memo, calling it a ‘preliminary draft’ and asserting ‘it would be premature to draw any conclusions.’ ”
He noted it wasn’t until Jan. 21 — nearly seven months after Del Toral’s memo — that the EPA issued an emergency order citing “imminent and substantial endangerment exists” with regard to the high levels of lead in the Flint water supply.
“How many more people were poisoned in those seven months? How many illnesses were worsened in those seven months?” Chaffetz said at the hearing.
In connection with the hearing, Chaffetz on Tuesday released several emails obtained from the EPA, including one from Del Toral to a group of recipients at Region 5 on Sept. 22, 2015, following a Flint pediatrician’s study finding high blood levels in Flint children.
“I am very upset about this because I told people this was going to be the outcome,” Del Toral wrote. “I watched this movie before in Washington, D.C., and we are heading down the exact same path of denial and delay, and meanwhile the children are being irreparably damaged.”
Hedman’s answers about the EPA’s actions failed to satisfy some Republican lawmakers.
“Dr. Hedman, I’m sorry,” said U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Georgia. “There’s a special place in hell for actions like this.”
mburke@detroitnews.com
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/03/15/hearing-epa/81805068/
scipio africanus replied on
flint water crisis
Data shows even higher lead poisoning in kids in West Michigan than Flint
POSTED 6:29 PM, JANUARY 4, 2016, BY DANA CHICKLAS
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – The recent scandal over lead-poisoning in the water in Flint prompted many of our communities to take a closer look at the issue. According to recent data, West Michigan neighborhoods are home to even higher levels of lead poisoning in kids than Flint.
The problem in Flint was so bad it forced the head of Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality to quit last week. Yet as this crisis continues, data shows the problem is broader than the Flint area.
In a recent report, The Center for Michigan, a think tank promoting awareness of public policy issues, cited evidence that among five Grand Rapids’ zip codes alone, nearly one in 10 kids tested positive for lead poisoning.
“In Grand Rapids, it’s collectively between those zip codes, it’s 10 percent,” said Paul Haan, executive director with the Healthy Homes Coalition of West Michigan. “We’re four times the national level of kids with that low to moderate to even high level of lead poison.”
Haan told FOX 17 lead-based paint in older, distressed homes is the underlying problem of lead poisoning.
“Lead is a colossal problem because the reality is we let the genie out of the bottle, or the lead paint out of the can, for more than a century,” Haan said.
“So we have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of housing units across the state of Michigan that have this lead based paint spread upon them. So how do you put that genie back into the bottle?”
Haan called kids “lead detectors,” urging for landlords and families with children to test their homes for lead first, rather than waiting for a devastating blood test. However, he and other Kent County Health Department leaders recognize the lack of funding and support for families in need.
“Families would like to get their home done, and get the remodeling done in a lead safe way and they look for a program that might cover that, and there’s limited resources in that regard,” said Joan Dyer Zyskowski, program supervisor with the Community Wellness Division for the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.
“We had a HUD grant here in the city of Grand Rapids, we don’t have one now."
Like many others, they are calling for government and philanthropic funding to go toward building safe, affordable housing for families with kids.
Specifically, Haan believed a tiered strategy would help eradicate lead poisoning, including: landlords would ensure rental properties are in safe condition; agencies would raise more awareness for parents to affordably protect their children from lead; and then concentrated education and funding to safely fix or replace housing with high lead levels.
“We’ve got to target families with children to make sure those kids are safe because it not only provides a housing unit that’s affordable for that family, but that becomes a platform for so many other things: good health, good performance in school, good employees later on in life,” Haan said.
http://fox17online.com/2016/01/04/data-shows-even-higher-lead-poisoning-in-kids-in-west-michigan-than-flint/
scipio africanus replied on
flint water crisis
Flint lead crisis getting a tad overdone: David Mastio
David Mastio, USA TODAY 1:36 p.m. EST January 22, 2016
Before hitting the panic button, remember we are winning the war on lead poisoning
Now that the leaching of poisonous lead into the tap water of Flint, Mich., has been declared a national emergency, it might be time to dial back the panic just a notch (or two).
Flint's 8,000 children have not had their lives destroyed. Jesse Jackson can roll up his crime tape. Michael Moore can go back to promoting his latest film. Taken as a whole, in fact, Flint's kids are better off than the previous generations of Michigander kids in at least one important way. Even after Flint’s disaster, the city’s children have far less lead in their blood than their parents or grandparents did at the same age.
That's of little comfort, of course, to those exposed to higher levels than they should have been because of a nearly bankrupt local government, a scientifically incompetent city water utility, indifferent Michigan environmental regulators and a bumbling federal Environmental Protection Agency. And any lead has a long-term insidious health impact, even after it has left the blood. But amid the furor, it's important to take a deep breath and put the exposure levels in context.
Less lead than 10 years ago
In 2005, Michigan completed the years-long process of collecting 500,000 lead blood tests from children in the state under 6. Back then, 26% of kids tested — that's more than one in four — had blood lead levels (5 micrograms per deciliter or greater) that would cause concern today. In the hardest hit parts of Flint now, only 10.6% of kids have such concerning levels of lead in their blood.
How can that be? While drinking water management in Flint has obviously been a mess in recent years, it's a mess that comes amid one of the greatest public health and environmental triumphs in U.S. history.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data are clear. In the late 1970s, 88% of Americans ages 1 to 5 had at least 10 micrograms per deciliter of lead in their blood, or twice as much as today's level of concern.
By the early 1990s, only 4.4% of children were exposed to so much lead. And year by year since then, according to more than 31 million blood tests compiled by the CDC just since 2005, lead has been steadily disappearing from American kids’ blood.
Is that good enough? No. As any public health official will tell you, there is no safe level of lead. Once you are exposed, lead can haunt you even as it disappears from your blood. But reality is frustrating. We spent decades spewing lead into the air and coating our houses with it before we banned leaded gasoline and lead paint. Millions of American homes get water from lead pipes and millions more have copper pipes with lead solder.
New tighter lead laws
Getting to zero isn’t going to happen anytime soon, but government officials of both parties have steadily increased efforts to combat exposure to lead, which causes an array of health problems, including significantly lower IQs in children. In 2007 and 2008, the George W. Bush administration tightened rules for lead in the air and water. In 2011, President Obama signed a law tightening rules for lead in plumbing fixtures. In 2012, the CDC tightened its rules on what level of lead in blood raises concern.
After years of progress, context-free panic over events in Flint is counterproductive. It feeds the cynical idea that government always fails. And, when a more sober analysis of the health threat in Flint eventually emerges, it will damage the credibility of the politicians, public health advocates, scientists and journalists who raised alarms shorn of nuance.
Virginia Tech University researchers first brought proof of high lead levels in Flint water to public attention last September, performing three water tests in each of the more than 250 Flint homes. Lead levels were high enough to warrant urgent government action. But in a similar problem with Washington, D.C.’s tap water a little over a decade ago, hundreds of homes were found to have stratospheric lead levels of 300 parts per billion or more. In Flint, Virginia Tech found one home with such a high lead level in the water.
So how dangerous was that water? In 2015, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services tracked one child in Flint whose initial blood test was so alarming it required hospitalization. A later, more accurate test showed a lower, but still dangerous level of lead at more than five times the CDC's level of concern. In contrast, 2005 CDC data show more than 300 people in Michigan with the same or worse confirmed test results.
Flint research complications
Michigan State University-backed research, comparing the lead in Flint children’s blood before and after poison-laced tap water flowed into their homes, did find a dangerous rise in blood lead. But in raising the alarm about a threat throughout Flint, researchers minimized results that cast doubt on the breadth of the health problem — neglecting to emphasize that, in three of the city’s nine wards, lead tests showed a nearly 50% decline in the number of kids testing positive. In a fourth, there was no change. The study also found that the number of children with elevated blood lead levels rose even for county residents whose water supply did not change.
One reason for such widely divergent results in Flint, where the percentage of children with elevated blood lead levels tripled in one place while nearby the percentage of kids affected fell, may be that some of the test results stem from an inaccurate screening test far less reliable than the procedure recommended by the CDC as the gold standard.
According to officials in the CDC's lead program, "capillary" test errors overestimate the amount of lead in a child's blood. Test results that show blood lead levels of 5 to 9 micrograms per deciliter, the lowest level of lead exposure now tracked by health officials, require only a single prick test. According to the CDC, the average error is 1 microgram per deciliter, a 10% to 20% overestimate in lead levels between 5 and 9. And federal rules allow laboratories to overestimate blood lead levels by as much as 4 micrograms per deciliter and still meet accuracy standards.
How many false positives?
The Michigan State University researchers who raised the alarm on blood lead levels in Flint refused to give USA TODAY their data on exactly what levels of lead they found. Michigan's health department maintains a similar database of 3,353 blood tests on children in Flint from 2015 and provided USA TODAY a preliminary analysis. Seventy-seven percent of the "positive" test results are in the lowest 5-9 micrograms per deciliter range most vulnerable to the inaccuracy of capillary tests, raising the possibility of a significant number of false positives. As one CDC analysis dryly notes, "the ratio of imprecision to measurement value, particularly at (blood lead levels of less than 10 micrograms per deciliter) is relatively high."
What happened in Flint starting in 2013 needlessly risked the health of thousands of people who deserve better, exposing anyone who drank tap water to poisonous lead that never should have been there. Of this, there is no question.
But it also true that the health threat in Flint is being exaggerated. While plenty of questions remain about who is most at fault and who is most at risk, one thing is for sure: Flint residents of only a decade ago would have counted themselves lucky to suffer the lead “poisoning” rates plaguing the city today.
David Mastio, the deputy editorial page editor of USA TODAY, was an environmental reporter for The Detroit News.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/01/22/flint-water-lead-poison-michigan-health-column/79019134/
scipio africanus replied on
epa mistakes that poisoned western rivers
Here Are EPA’s Mistakes That Poisoned Western Rivers
MICHAEL BASTASCH AND ETHAN BARTON 1:51 AM 03/15/2016
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials missed key signs its intentional breach of Colorado’s Gold King Mine would cause a major blowout that ultimately flooded two major rivers with three million gallons of toxic mine waste.
A Daily Caller News Foundation review of the evidence found EPA workers made at least two major mistakes when they intentionally penetrated Gold King Mine in August 2015: The agency-led crew didn’t test for pressure in the mine mouth and mistakenly dug at the bottom, rather than the top of the mine.
“The underestimation of the water pressure in the Gold King Mine workings is believed to bethe most significant factor relating to the blowout,” the EPA’s Internal Review of the spill said.
It’s still unclear why the agency didn’t conduct pressure tests, especially considering it knew the mine was pressurized.
The agency’s work the day of the breach was intended to “relieve hydrologic pressure,” Brent Lewis, who heads the Bureau of Land Management’s abandoned mine program, wrote in an email to other BLM officials. Lewis sent the email after speaking with Steve Way — EPA’s project manager at the mine.
But an EPA spokeswoman contradicted that claim, telling TheDCNF, “work goals for Aug. 4 and 5, 2015, were to assess the site conditions and to help prepare for a decision on future work.” Yet, that day, EPA workers decided to breach the mine.
Meanwhile, Way was reportedly on vacation the day of the breach. Even so, Gold King Mine’s interim on-scene coordinator, Hays Griswold, knew the mine was pressurized.
“I personally knew it could be holding back a lot of water and I believe the others in the group knew as well,” he wrote in an Oct. 28 email obtained by the House Committee on Natural Resources. “This is why I was approaching this adit as if it were full … I also knew there was some pressure behind the blockage but not much.”
Griswold’s revelation, however, was omitted from reports on the spill. EPA’s Internal Review even contradicted his claim. The on-site EPA crew believed there was “no or low mine water pressurization,” the report said.
“[T]here is still no explanation for the EPA’s failure to conduct hydrostatic testing before excavating the Gold King Mine adit,” the Natural Resources committee wrote in a recent report.
“In fact, the agencies have not even provided documentation that EPA actually considered testing the pressure prior to beginning work,” the report continued.
Another major cause of the blowout was the EPA’s “erroneous conclusions” that a drainage pipe was six feet above the mine entrance’s floor, the committee reported. The agency falsely determined water filled the entrance above even with drainage pipe.
It’s unclear how the EPA came to this conclusion, which led the agency to dig at the bottom of the water-filled mine and unleash millions of gallons of toxic mine wastewater.
The installation at that height is “inconsistent with the purpose of the drainage pipe,” as it wouldn’t be able to properly drain the mine, the committee report said.
Plans show the pipe was to be positioned at the bottom of the mine entrance, according to the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety, which installed the drain. Yet, EPA workers assumed the opposite — that the pipe was at the top of the mine adit.
EPA’s website still contends workers were “excavating above the old” mine entrance when “pressurized water began leaking above the mine tunnel.”
Consequently, workers dug at the bottom of the highly pressurized mine, which blew out 880,000 pounds of metals, like lead and arsenic, into drinking water for Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and the Navajo Nation.
This is the second article in TheDCNF’s series on Gold King Mine. The DCNF previously showed the incident clearly wasn’t an accident. In the following days, the investigation will detail the EPA’s shifting accounts of what happened, and questionable aspects of an independent review of the spill.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/15/here-are-epas-mistakes-that-poisoned-western-rivers/#ixzz42yRxQlYx
scipio africanus replied on
deconstructing the liberal narrative on the flint water crisis
Deconstructing The Liberal Narrative About The Flint Water Crisis
IAN SHETRON Researcher, Luntz Global Partners 5:55 PM 01/21/2016
I haven’t spoken much of the city of Flint’s water crisis among my out-of-town friends, primarily because it’s such a sad story, and in reality, an apolitical one. But it’s important for people everywhere to get the whole story.
This past Saturday, Michael Moore went to city hall and held a little protest and media scrum, wherein he demanded the “arrest” of our governor, Rick Snyder. It’s a regular source of amusement for me how concerned Michael Moore becomes about Flint whenever he’s got a movie to sell. But I digress.
Michael Moore coming out to demand someone’s arrest is not news. But what caused him to do it is significant. The situation in Flint has reached national attention. I now have friends from around the country asking me about it, asking if I’ve got clean water.
But why now? Questions have been flying for over a year, and it was back in October that the city returned to getting their water from Detroit. The answer: politics. Pushers from all over the country suddenly realized the potential for the story to fit neatly into their larger narrative. So, they’ve decided to lay blame for the crisis at the feet of Rick Snyder, and thus, the entire Republican Party. Brilliant.
Don’t get me wrong. I think Governor Snyder deserves his share of the blame, as he’s ultimately responsible for what happens in government in the state. But clearly, the lion’s share of responsibility rests with the city.
It was the city – not the state, or the Governor, or the Department of Environmental Quality – that decided to go to the Flint River as an interim water source while our pipeline to Lake Huron was completed. City Council voted 7-1 to support the plan, and the mayor approved it. And it wasn’t a difficult decision; the city has considered the Flint River a backup water source for decades. I was in meetings in 2008, two years before Rick Snyder was first elected, where community leaders of all political stripes backed the Flint River option as Detroit continued to raise rates, the reason Flint and surrounding areas had decided to build their own pipeline in the first place.
And the blame rests with more than just elected officials. Unelected bureaucrats and city workers responsible for providing clean water were clearly negligent from start to finish. Ignored emails to city and county departments from the state bear that out. For their unresponsiveness to complaints from citizens, and their inability to adequately clean the water in the first place, many of them deserve to lose their jobs, be investigated and, if necessary, face prosecution.
No, the pushers say, Flint was under the control of an unelected, state-appointed emergency manager stooge when the switch to Flint River water occurred, making the state responsible. This is true. But look at who this “stooge” is. Darnell Earley was involved in Flint city government for many years prior to becoming emergency manager, even including a stint as interim mayor. After that, he was appointed Natural Resources Commissioner under Governor Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat. It’s hardly the résumé of a Republican yes-man. What’s more, as I’ve indicated, Mr. Earley’s actions were in continuity with the progress the city had already made in planning and executing their water plan.
What’s my point? It is simply this: I wish that when Flint had a problem (and it’s had its share), people would simply work to fix it, rather than pointing fingers. The fact that Flint’s ongoing water crisis is national news is largely a function of fulfilling a political agenda, rather than the very real human tragedy. I wish people like Michael Moore cared about Flint in the times when there aren’t cheap political points to be made, movies to market, or headlines to create.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/21/deconstructing-the-liberal-narrative-about-the-flint-water-crisis/
scipio africanus replied on
root cause of the flint water crisis is the city council & mayor
Column: Don’t blame Emergency Manager for Flint water disaster
Darnell Earley 11:32 p.m. EDT October 26, 2015
It is critically important that the record be set straight about the decision-making and approval processes that led to Flint joining the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA) with the use of Flint River water as the interim water supply. The fact is, the river has served and been used as the back-up supply for decades, and this was the rationale given to me by staff and Mayor Walling, who also serves as chairperson of the KWA board. Contrary to reports in the media and rhetoric being espoused by individuals, the decision was made at the local level, by local civic leaders.
The decision to separate from Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and go with the KWA, which included the decision to pump Flint River water in the interim, were part of a long-term plan that was approved by Flint’s mayor and confirmed by a City Council vote of 7-1 on March 25, 2013. This plan was presented to me when I was appointed as Flint emergency manager in October 2013 – a full seven months after the City Council’s affirmative vote.
Genesee County Drain Commissioner Jeff Wright also made the affirmative vote by the City Council a necessary condition of joining the KWA, and applauded the decision in a March 26, 2013, news release, “… I have said from the beginning that this decision must be made by Flint’s City Council and Mayor … I am glad that the residents of Flint were able to have their voices heard via their elected officials.”
The mayor’s approval of the plan and the subsequent near unanimous vote by City Council were in no way coerced, forced or demanded by the state, nor any emergency manager. Council’s affirmative vote was supported and signed as an Executive Order by then-Emergency Manager Edward Kurtz on March 29, 2013. A subsequent order Kurtz signed on June 26, 2013, speaks specifically to “… upgrading of the Flint Water Plant to ready it to treat water from the Flint River to serve as the primary drinking water source for approximately two years and then converting to KWA delivered lake water.”
When I began my term as emergency manager, it fell to me to oversee the implementation of the previously accepted and approved plans, as the DWSD terminated the contract with Flint in April 2014. It did not fall to me to question, second guess or invalidate the actions taken prior to my appointment.
At the time the decision was made there was no way to predict such an unfortunate outcome. I would also offer that had local leaders known then what they know now, parts of their decision may have been entirely different. What the City of Flint and the State of Michigan are now dealing with is the management of an unintended consequence resulting in a negative outcome from an otherwise sound public policy decision. There is no “blame” to affix on any emergency manager for that.
As the solutions are put into place to address the serious concerns at hand, I believe that everyone’s attention should now turn toward another serious concern – what is being done in the long term to replace the aged and crumbling water distribution systems that exists throughout Flint and Genesee County, which was a major contributing factor to this serious issue in the first place.
I am a strong believer that the truth supported by fact speaks for itself. This was a local decision that was made by local civic leaders. Anyone who says otherwise is being disingenuous for whatever reason.
Darnell Earley formerly served as the emergency manager of Flint. He is currently the emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools.
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2015/10/26/opinion-flint-water-disaster/74657458/
(For those outside of MI, Flint is run by Democrats. Democrats did all the work on this, made the decision, approved it, reachout to State Environmental Dept and EPA and it all still went wrong)
scipio africanus replied on
flint water crisis and Hillary's tangental role
Hillary Clinton, Before Spotlighting Crisis In Flint, Michigan, Voted Against Measure To Prevent Groundwater Pollution
BY ANDREW PEREZ @ANDREWPEREZDC AND DAVID SIROTA @DAVIDSIROTA ON 03/04/16 AT 9:15 AM
When the Democratic presidential contenders meet on Sunday for their debate in Flint, Michigan — where thousands of residents have been poisoned by polluted water — the candidates’ records on clean water policy are likely to be in the spotlight. Hillary Clinton seems eager for that discussion, recently telling NPR: “The idea that you would have a community in the United States of America of nearly 100,000 people who were drinking and bathing in lead-contaminated water infuriates me.”
But despite that rhetoric, the issue of clean water may be politically perilous for the leading Democratic candidate, thanks to her vote against banning a possible carcinogen at the center of one of the largest water pollution scandals in recent history.
Facing reports that a controversial fuel additive was contaminating water supplies across America, Clinton as a senator in 2005 opposed a bipartisan measure to ban the chemical — even though Bill Clinton’s Environmental Protection Agency had first proposed such a prohibition. At roughly the same time, one major company producing the chemical also triedto use provisions in a trade deal backed by Hillary Clinton to force local governments in the United States to let it continue selling the toxic compound.
Clinton’s campaign did not respond to International Business Times’ questions about her vote.
At issue was the chemical known as methyl tertiary butyl ether — or MTBE. Though the compound makes fuel burn cleaner, by the end of the 1990s, scientists began detecting an increasing amount of the potential carcinogen in groundwater supplies. In 2000, a federal study found that drinking water wells in up to 31 states were at risk of MTBE contamination, and by 2003, the compound had contaminated drinking water supplies for more than 15 million Americans, according to data compiled by the Environmental Working Group. Seventeen states ultimately joined together in lawsuits against the major producers of the compound, including ExxonMobil — which became a major Clinton Foundation donor.
Amid the uproar, Washington lawmakers in 2005 proposed an amendment to national energy legislation that would have banned MTBE. By that time, 21 states had passed legislation banning the use of MTBE, including New York.
“When leaked or spilled into the environment, MTBE may cause serious problems of drinking water quality,” Sen. Pete Domenici’s legislation stated in its justification of the phaseout. “In recent years, MTBE has been detected in water sources throughout the United States.”
Breaking with then-Sen. Barack Obama, Clinton joined 14 Republicans and 11 Democrats in voting against the measure to phase out MTBE, which passed the Senate by a vote of 70-26. Critics of the amendment to ban MTBE, like New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer,charged it would end up forcing states to use more ethanol.
When Clinton cast her vote against banning MTBE, she was in the midst of a re-election campaign in which she raised more than $74,000 from the oil and gas industry, according todata compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. But her record was not one of unanimous support for that industry.
One month after Clinton voted against the MTBE ban, the Environmental Working Groupclaimed an EPA draft report had found MTBE to be a “likely” carcinogen, linking it to cancers like leukemia and lymphoma.
A subsequent press release from Clinton’s senate office announced she and her colleagues were requesting additional information about the study. The release noted that MTBE had caused “serious damage to water quality nationwide,” and asserted that “Congress should act to discontinue the use of MTBE.” It also declared Clinton’s opposition to a proposal to give MTBE producers legal immunity from environmental and public health lawsuits.
Though the MTBE ban was not included in the final energy legislation, the new bill did include language discouraging the use of the chemical. Despite expressing concerns about MTBE, Clinton voted against the overall bill, which passed the Senate 74-26.
One Clinton critic says her vote against banning MTBE could be a vulnerability. Last year, Democratic operative Matt Barron cited Clinton’s vote as one of a handful of issues that could cost her in the presidential campaign as she tries to win over voters in rural areas.
Though MTBE was eventually phased out of domestic gasoline supplies over the last decade, the controversy over the additive continues to simmer. In recent months, concerns about MTBE contamination have once again arisen in states such as Kentucky, Connecticut,Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/hillary-clinton-spotlighting-crisis-flint-michigan-voted-against-measure-prevent
scipio africanus replied on
hillarys mental capacity
Hillary Clinton Took 6 Months to 'Get Over' Concussion, Bill Says of Timeline
May 14, 2014 By MARY BRUCE
Bill Clinton did more today than defend his wife, Hillary Clinton, from recent accusations leveled by GOP strategist Karl Rove that she suffered brain damage after falling in December 2012.
The former president revealed that his wife's injury "required six months of very serious work to get over," he said during a question-and-answer session at the Peterson Foundation in Washington.
"They went to all this trouble to say she had staged what was a terrible concussion that required six months of very serious work to get over," he said. "It's something she never low-balled with the American people, never tried to pretend it didn't happen."
But Bill Clinton's timeline appears to differ from official comments from the State Department at the time.
"Judging by the woman we saw this morning and the workload that she's got she seems to be fully recovered," spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters at a State Department briefing Jan. 7, 2013, about a month after Hillary Clinton's fall and concussion occurred.
That same day, State Department officials presented the secretary of state with a football helmetas a welcome-back gift. With Hillary Clinton's health back in the headlines, here is a review of her illness and the statements that were released about her initial "bug," hospitalization and, several weeks later, those now-famous glasses:
2012:
Dec. 7: Last time Clinton is seen in public before the illness, wrapping up a European trip in Northern Ireland.
Dec. 10: Clinton cancels trip because of illness. From State Department spokesman Philippe Reines: "Since she's still under the weather, we'll be staying put this week instead of heading to North Africa and the Middle East as originally planned. In her place, Deputy Secretary Burns will travel to Marrakech for the Friends of the Syrian People meeting. We will let you know when she shakes this bug and resumes a public schedule."
Sometime early the week of Dec. 9: Clinton faints and falls while at home.
Dec. 13: Clinton is diagnosed with a concussion, the New York Times reports, with a State Department official saying the concussion "was not severe"
Dec. 15: State Department spokesman Philippe Reines' statement on the concussion: "While suffering from a stomach virus, Secretary Clinton became dehydrated and fainted, sustaining a concussion. She has been recovering at home and will continue to be monitored regularly by her doctors. At their recommendation, she will continue to work from home next week, staying in regular contact with Department and other officials. She is looking forward to being back in the office soon."
Dec. 15:Statement from her doctors: "Secretary Clinton developed a stomach virus, leading to extreme dehydration, and subsequently fainted. Over the course of this week we evaluated her and ultimately determined she had also sustained a concussion. We recommended that the Secretary continue to rest and avoid any strenuous activity, and strongly advised her to cancel all work events for the coming week. We will continue to monitor her progress as she makes a full recovery." - Dr. Lisa Bardack, Mt. Kisco Medical Group, and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi, George Washington University
Dec. 15: Clinton informs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee that she will not testify before Congress on Benghazi later that month. Republican Rep. Allen West accused Clinton of catching "Benghazi flu" and John Bolton, former U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush, suggested Clinton fabricated a "diplomatic illness" to miss the hearing.
Dec. 17: State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland shoots down any suggestion that the secretary's illness is an excuse to avoid from testifying before Congress on Benghazi. "She very much wanted to, she was willing to," and had planned to, Nuland said. To that end Nuland said that Clinton sent letters that morning to both committees, "making clear that she expects there will be on going communications in January with Congress and she will be open to that," essentially leaving it open that she would be willing to testify at a later date.
Dec. 20: Reines announces that Clinton is being grounded: "Given her condition, the secretary's doctors have advised that she may not fly for any significant duration in the coming weeks. So as things stand we are not planning any travel through mid-January."
Dec. 30: Reines statement on the discovery of her blood clot: "In the course of a follow-up exam today, Secretary Clinton's doctors discovered a blood clot had formed, stemming from the concussion she sustained several weeks ago. She is being treated with anti-coagulants and is at New York-Presbyterian Hospital so that they can monitor the medication over the next 48 hours. Her doctors will continue to assess her condition, including other issues associated with her concussion. They will determine if any further action is required."
Dec. 31: Statement from Clinton's doctors: "In the course of a routine follow-up MRI on Sunday, the scan revealed that a right transverse sinus venous thrombosis had formed. This is a clot in the vein that is situated in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. It did not result in a stroke, or neurological damage. To help dissolve this clot, her medical team began treating the Secretary with blood thinners. She will be released once the medication dose has been established. In all other aspects of her recovery, the Secretary is making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery. She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family, and her staff." - Dr. Lisa Bardack, Mt. Kisco Medical Group, and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi, George Washington University.
2013:
Jan. 2: Clinton is released from the hospital. Reines statement: "Secretary Clinton was discharged from the hospital this evening. Her medical team advised her that she is making good progress on all fronts, and they are confident she will make a full recovery. She's eager to get back to the office, and we will keep you updated on her schedule as it becomes clearer in the coming days. Both she and her family would like to express their appreciation for the excellent care she received from the doctors, nurses and staff at New York Presbyterian Hospital Columbia University Medical Center."
During the briefing that day, Nuland responds to criticism that the department had not been forthcoming in disclosing the secretary's health problems: "I think really we've been extremely forthcoming including from her doctors on the very specific issues here."
Jan. 7:Clinton returns to work.
Jan. 9: Clinton first appears on camera at a photo-op alongside Dan Rooney, ambassador to Ireland. She is not wearing glasses. She tells reporters in a brief, playful question and answer session that she is thrilled to be back.
Jan. 23: Clinton testifies on the Hill about Benghazi, raising questions about her glasses. Reines confirmed that Clinton was wearing the glasses as a result of the concussion: "She'll be wearing these glasses instead of her contacts for a period of time because of lingering issues stemming from her concussion. With them on she sees just fine. In fact, she got a kick out of the above when she saw them crystal clear."
Nuland offered a similar statement: "In response to lots of speculation, the secretary is going to be wearing the glasses instead of her contacts for some period of time because of lingering issues that stemmed from her concussion. She sees just fine with them, and she also enjoyed some of the comments she saw in the press about the extra sort of diplomatic lift she gets from gesturing with them."
Jan. 27: CBS News airs a joint "60 Minutes" interview with Clinton and Obama. She is still wearing the glasses.
Feb. 1: Clinton's last day as Secretary of State (from this point on she is a private citizen). She is still wearing the glasses.
Feb. 14: Clinton makes her first public appearance since leaving office. She is not wearing the glasses.
ABC News' Steven Portnoy contributed reporting.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/05/hillary-clinton-took-6-months-to-get-over-concussion-bill-says-of-timeline/