House backs bill to require EPA notification in lead cases

Thousands of children are believed to have ingested risky levels of lead, a toxin that can harm brains and cause other health problems. “I submit to you that we are not disposable people”, Weaver said.

State health officials defended their response to the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Flint, discounting concerns that infighting hurt public health.

Back in Flint, a broken water main had placed parts of the city under a boil-water notice Tuesday and Wednesday.

The city’s water utility set the stage for this crisis in April 2014, when it stopped buying water from Detroit’s utility and began getting water from the nearby Flint River.

The NAACP’s Flint Branch and Michigan State Conference have diligently worked over the last two years to inform the public about the poisoned water and its potential effects.

The Department of Agriculture said on Thursday it would temporarily allow MI to use funds from its Women, Infants and Children program for low income citizens to conduct lead testing.

Protesters chant loudly during Gov. Snyder’s budget presentation. Residents in the former auto-making hub — a poor, largely minority city — feel their complaints about lead-tainted water flowing through their taps have been slighted by the government or ignored altogether. The delay has heaped scrutiny on city, state and federal officials about what they knew and when they knew it. Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, a Democrat who represents Flint, called the 2017 budget Snyder unveiled a step in the right direction.

Officials announced Wednesday that representatives of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and licensed plumbers will visit about 400 homes citywide to teach homeowners how to accurately test water so they can submit regular samples for analysis. His email also didn’t say who ultimately decided against using corrosion control chemicals. Up to 15,000 lead pipes could be removed within one year in Flint under the best of conditions by dozens of work crews. “But we need to find the most cost-efficient ways to do that”.

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver traveled to Washington, D.C. today to testify in front of the House Democratic Committee on Steering and Policy.

Flint Congressman Dan Kildee, (D-Michigan) says the money pledged by Snyder is not almost enough.

On Oct. 8, Governor Snyder said at a Flint news conference, “We found some concerns in some of our testing of the schools in Flint. Water is a very hard commodity – we’re going past the water now and we’re going into put in nutritional food and put it in the hands of people with great need”.

The state already has directed more than $37 million toward the disaster in Flint, and Governor Snyder is calling for a $195 million plan to help resolve the crisis.

The bureau’s Director Edward Rodgers says in a statement that officials “will continue to provide assistance to any Flint resident who is blind or visually impaired”. The city is struggling with a long-running crisis of lead pollution in the municipal water supply. Regardless, that’s a lot of spending, and it’s all got to be approved by a Republican-led Legislature.

The amendment includes emergency funds for Flint, Mich., which is reeling from a water contamination crisis, and the public notification measure.