Snyder defends office’s handling of Legionnaires’ outbreak

Since then, many people in the city have been exposed to drinking water with high levels of lead and a series of health problems.

High-ranking officials in Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s administration were aware of a surge in Legionnaires’ disease potentially linked to Flint’s water long before the governor reported the increase to the public last month, internal emails show.

Clinton has made Flint a focus of her campaign since early January and her aides say she wanted to visit Flint earlier this year, but was concerned that the horde of journalists, Secret Service agents and aides that come with her would overwhelm the city’s already strapped resources. Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis, the RedBlueAmerica columnists, weigh in. Worse, when Flint’s families immediately and loudly complained that their tap water was oddly colored, nasty tasting, stinky and causing rashes on their children, Snyder and his top officials did nothing.

Celebrities, businesses, non-profits, anyone who can help, including people from around Michiana, have been sending bottled water to the residents of Flint. Despite that, the water was declared safe by officials. An EPA worker named Miguel Del Toral had reached out to LeeAnne Walters and was the first one to work with her and to figure out that something was amiss in Flint, Edwards explained. “It’s like I’m just stuck here in this mess”.

Not that Gov. Snyder personally dumped lead and other toxins into Flint’s water, but by dumping his small-minded, budget-whacking policies on the people of this largely poor, largely minority community, he did, in fact, poison them.

Other sources include soil from surrounding homes with flaking exterior lead based paint, food stored in imported ceramic dishes or pottery, imported cosmetics, folk medicine and sometimes workplace exposure in lead-related industries. “As I said weeks ago, if what had been happening in Flint had happened in Grosse Point or Bloomfield Hills, I think we all know we would have had a solution yesterday”, Clinton added, referencing two wealthy, largely white Detroit suburbs.

The problem with Flint’s water supply arose when its source was switched to the Flint River from Lake Huron.

The Detroit News reports that about 30 from Michigan State University helped pass out water and collect empty plastic bottles Friday outside a Flint shopping center. “They wrote a report at the height of the media outcry that said not a single man, woman or child had blood lead elevated over the level of concern and that this was all much ado about nothing”. This week, the House held a hearing on the crisis, during which Houston Congressmember Sheila Jackson Lee compared the poisoning of Flint residents to the 1978 mass suicide and murder in Jonestown, Guyana. Stabenow filed an amendment yesterday that would offer additional resources to any state – if the president declares an emergency – in order to address the lead poisoning crisis that began in Flint, Michigan.