E-mails released by Republican Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder show his office dismissed concerns about the poisonous water in Flint. From the NYT story:
A top aide to Michigan’s governor referred to people raising questions about the quality of Flint’s water as an “anti-everything group.” Other critics were accused of turning complaints about water into a “political football.” And worrisome findings about lead by a concerned pediatrician were dismissed as “data,” in quotes.
That view of how the administration of Gov. Rick Snyder initially dealt with the water crisis in the poverty-stricken, black-majority city of Flint emerged from 274 pages of emails, made public by the governor on Wednesday.
The correspondence records mounting complaints by the public and elected officials, as well as growing irritation by state officials over the reluctance to accept their assurances.
It was not until late in 2015, after months of complaints, that state officials finally conceded what critics had been contending: that Flint was in the midst of a major public health emergency, as tap water pouring into families’ homes contained enough lead to show up in the blood of dozens of people in the city. Even small amounts of lead could cause lasting health and developmental problems in children.
RTWT.
In an editorial the other day, the Detroit Free Press blistered Snyder’s administration, calling its handling of Flint’s water crisis “an obscene failure of government.” From the editorial:
And in at least three Flint schools, children have been drinking lead-contaminated water for up to 16 months.
Sixteen months, as Flint residents told the state again and again that their water wasn’t right. Sixteen months, as independent researchers meticulously documented rising lead levels in water and in the blood of Flint children. Sixteen months, as the state worked to disparage and discredit the work of respected scientists, even as its own data supported those findings.
At a press conference Thursday, Gov. Rick Snyder appeared chastened.
He should.
Snyder appoints the head of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, the agency charged with ensuring that drinking water throughout our state is safe.
In Flint, it failed.
Flint’s decisions first to join a new regional water authority, and then to pump water from the Flint River — ending a decades-long relationship with Detroit’s system — were made while Flint was under state oversight, during the tenure of a Snyder-appointed emergency manager charged with balancing Flint’s budget. That system is justified by the governor’s constitutional responsibility to attend to the health and wellness of all Michiganders.
In Flint, he failed.
The newspaper, which twice endorsed the Republican for governor, said that Snyder has a reputation for fiscal conservatism. It accused him of penny-pinching at the expense of the basic health of the people of Flint, who could not even rely on the safety of the water they need to sustain their lives.
There’s no way to read Snyder’s mind, but it is hard to believe that Snyder’s administration would have been so bureaucratically callous about the children of a rich, white city like, say, Grosse Pointe. If you are the governor, and you find out that the people in one of your cities are forced to drink poisoned water, you move heaven and earth to get them relief. It’s basic human decency. It’s beyond politics, or the ordinary business of bureaucracy.
To be fair, the newspaper earlier praised Snyder for making hard choices to reform bankrupt Detroit, though it faulted him for lacking empathy. It should not be hard to hear stories about an entire city suffering from foul drinking water, including elevated lead levels, and to know at once that this is an emergency.