Flint Water Crisis: City Threatens To Evictions Of People Who Wouldn't Pay For Undrinkable Water

The water has been undrinkable in
Flint, Michigan for three years now,
but people there are being told to pay
their water bills, or else.

For years now, Flint, Michigan has been struggling with a water crisis, in which people unwittingly drank water highly contaminated with lead. 

The water crisis was caused by a series of boneheaded moves by state officials, who wanted to prove their "conservative" cost saving ways by switching water systems to something cheap and unsafe.

Who cares if a bunch of kids get sick if the move proves your conservative GOP credentials, right?

While Flint has been slowly working on a fix for this problem, the city also did something horrible, but again, state GOP officials have culpability here too:

The city is threatening to foreclose on and evict up to 8,000 residents because they refused to pay their water bills. Why pay for something you can't use and is unsafe, right?

According to NBC 25 in Flint:

"City leaders say they are in a bind and need the cash.

'We have to have revenue coming in, so we can't give people revenue, I mean excuse me, give people water at the tap and not get revenue coming in to pay those bills,' said Al Mooney, City of Flint Treasury Department."

If people do not pay up by May 19, their water bills go to the tax department, which starts the process of putting properties up for tax sales, and eventual foreclosures."

Got that? Pay for something dangerous and pay for a service that was not provided or lose your homes. Ain't America great?

The state of Michigan had been offering credits up until February, when the state decided the water was fine in Flint now, so everything's totally back to normal.

Except it isn't, of course.

Thousands of homes still have aging pipes that put people at risk for lead poisoning and those pipes have to be replaced. Expensive job for sure.

Few of the residents who received the tax liens expected them, and people have little time to save money to pay the bills or prepare for the notices. If people don't pay within nine months, they risk losing their homes.

Some politicians are still on Flint residents' side. "Flint families should not have to pay for water that they still cannot drink, and they certainly should not lose their homes over the ongoing water crisis that was caused by the callous decisions of state government," said Rep. Daniel Kildee in a written statement.

But, corrupt people who poison the citizenry have got to get their money from somewhere. Let's just soak people they've victimized even more, I guess.

Are People Charged With Felonies In Flint Water Crime Scapegoats, Too

Three people now face criminal charges for helping
cause Flint, Michigan's epic water crisis, but
will Gov. Rick Snyder face charges, too?
I hope an investigation into what he did or didn't
do stays aggressive.  

A lot of us heard the news yesterday that three people involved in the Flint water crisis has been charged with crimes.

This is part of the whole mess in which the entire city was poisoned by bad municipal water basically because the govenor of Michigan wanted to save money, to prove what a High and Mighty fiscal conservative he is.

You know, for future political gain. Maybe he could one day be president!!

Or not. Gov. Rick Snyder's political career is on the ropes because of all the negative publicity swirling around this fiasco.

The Flint Journal, and basically the rest of the national media said Michael Glasgow, a Flint municpal water employee and Steven Busch, and Michael Prysby, both Michigan Department of Environmental Quality employees, are charged with felonies.

They're accused of falsifying and tampering with water test results that downplayed the high levels of lead in the water. The high levels that permanently damaged many of Flint's children,

But Snyder saved money switching to the Flint River for the city's water, away from Detroit's system. The governor is fiscally conservative!  It's worth it to poison kids to save taxpayer's money, right?

I'm harping on the governor so much because I'm still convinced the three charged with crimes were under immense pressure from the highest levels of Michigant government to falsify data.

If the three charged with doing so actually did tamper with evidence and alter test results, they ought to be punished.

But the ones that ordered them to do so need even greater punishment.

The Flint Journal/MLive notes that Glasgow, the municipal water employee, tried to warn against switching Flint's drinking water source to the Flint River. He knew something bad was happening.

Just before the switch, Glasgow wrote in an email: "If water is distributed from this plant in the next couple weeks, it will be against my direction."

Sounds to me like someone in state government told Glasgow to change his direction or he will face some sort of awful hell from the governor's office. Or someone high up there.

For what it's worth, Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech professor who uncovered how bad the Flint water situation really was says Glasgow "should not be put in the same category" as the two state employees who are facing criminal charges, the Flint Journal/MLive reported.

"He made mistakes, but I've see nothing in the evidence I've uncovered that puts him in the same league as the other instigators," Edwards said.

It seems Busch, too, tried to warn against using Flint River water, but someone made him change his tune, too.

Michigan's attorney general says the investigation is far from over and more criminal charges against other people might well be coming.

I just hope this goes to whoever was ordering the coverup that led to so much suffering in Flint.

If the governor indeed drove this, he deserves to be in prison too. For a lot longer time than the low level employees who are facing charges.

We'll see if justice is served. I have my doubts, but you never know.

This is important for all of us, not just Flint. Politicians and everyone need to understand if you hurt people, hurt them severely for political gain, you won't get away with it.

That seems like a minimum requirement for a public official, right?

Checking In On Flint: The Scandal Keeps Getting Worse

The revelations about how the administration of
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder managed Flint's water,
leading to mass lead poisoning among the city's residents,
just keeps getting worse and worse.  

I feel like I should check in once in awhile to see how the scandal involving Flint, Michigan's water contamination is going.

The water isn't getting much better in terms of lead poisoning and other contaminants.

Speaking of contaminants, the drip, drip, drip of scandal news is getting worse and worse in terms of how the people running the show handled this whole thing.

I'm repeating reporting from publiciations like Flint Journal, MLive, Detroit News,  The Guardian and other outlets, as I believe their reporting on this tragic scandal ought to be repeated as often as possible. The bit of any optimist in me hopes this drumbeat of reporting and sharing information might help to prevent something like this from happening again, and/or hold people accountable.

Way back in April, 2014, so called financial "emergency managers," in a cost cutting move, switched Flint from a more expensive water source from Detroit to a less expensive source in the Flint River.

The Flint River is full of pollutants. City residents almost immediately began complaining about water quality, but, given that budget austerity is MUCH more important than people's health, or so the emergency managers, under the Gov. Rick Snyder seemed to think.

As we now know, the Flint River water was incredibly corrosive, and wore down pipes, which leached lead into the drinking water. Thousands of people were likely poisoned and many kids will now live the life long cognitive health effects of lead poisoning.

I've said before Snyder's handling of the whole thing is criminal and he should be jailed, much less the governor of Michigan.

And as with most scandals, new revelations over how bad this thing was managed keep coming out.

There was a growing, very loud chorus from Flint residents by October, 2014 about the water.

Michael Gadola, Snyder's legal counsel wrote in now-leaked emails that the Flint water situation had gotten "downright scary" and said the city "should try to get back on the Detroit system as a stopgap ASAP before this thing gets too far out of control," according to The Guardian. 

Well, it was too far out of control, but I get what Gadola was saying. He knew, correctly, that if Snyder stayed the course, this would get even uglier. Much uglier. We know now he was right.

However, other advisors to Snyder decided it would be too expensive to assume the monthly $1 million cost to return to Detroit water.

Yeah, that's pricey, but what about the effect on Flinters' health. And if you don't care about people, it's gotten a lot more expensive than $1 million a month, now, huh, Ricky?

The Guardian's reporting goes on:

Snyder's chief of staff at the time, Dennis Muchmore, told the Detroit News last week, "The assessment was you couldn't do it because it was a cost that should have been borne by the system."

On February 5, 2015, a reporter asked the Snyder administration about returning Flint's water to Detroit. State Treasury Spokesman Terry Stanton said, again, it would be too expensive to do so.

Later that day, according to the recently discovered emails and documents, Muchmore wrote that switching Flint back to Detroit would "probably be a good use of money as opposed to people refusing to use city water."

He went on: "After all, if (General Motors) refuses to use the water in their plant and our agencies are warning people not to drink it....we looks pretty stupid hiding behind some financial statements."

That memo referred to a previously disclosed GM's decision not to use Flint water in its plant because it was corroding the brand new cars it was trying to manufacture. And it referred to a state office building in Flint in which workers were given bottled water to avoid Flint water, a piece of the scandal also previously disclosed.

Snyder finally put Flint back on Detroit's water in October, 2015 when the public pressure finally became too much to bear.

This new information above, reported in The Guardian and Flint Journal, were part of a batch of 2,500 emails released last week under Freedom of Information Act requests.

Why didn't we read these sooner, when other batches of Flint water-related emails were released?

Because the administration, naturally dragged its feet on releasing them. I can give Snyder a quick PR 101 lesson here: If there's a mess up: Release all the information you have right away. No matter how hard you try to hide information, it's going to come out sooner or later.

The PR damage, if thats the only thing you care about, will be much less if you're upfront, early.

Getting back to the Flint water issue here,  Snyder's administration has repeated said, over and over again, it was Flint officials' decision, not his or his aides or his emergency managers, who decided to take Flint off Detroit water in the first place and start taking water from the dangerous Flint River.

The Flint Journal reported this weekend, that despite Snyder's claims to the contrary, emails show that wasn't the case.

Says the Journal: "Newly released emails show an aide to Gov. Rick Snyder disputed that notion just days before a damning op-ed by former Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley.

'It is important to note that council did not take a vote to use Flint river (sic)',  Harvey Hollins, Snyder's director of urban initiatives wrote in an October 7, 2015 email to Dan Wyant, former director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

Days later, Earley penned an op-ed claiming Flint officials approved the switch to the Flint River as the city's drinking water source."

The Flint City Council DID agree to stop using Detroit water, but they also never voted to start taking water out of the Flint River.

This doesn't make clear precisely who decided to make the switch, but it doesn't exactly absolve Ricky, does it?

I'm sure there will be a continued slow parade of new revelations about Flint, his emergency managers and the government of Michigan.

Meanwhile, Flint is still struggling with undrinkable water, an unknown number of kids from Flint, no doubt many, will have to contend with the lifelong effects of lead poisoning, and gawd knows new horrors we will learn about what happened to all those unsuspecting citizens of Flint.

I keep saying Snyder should face criminal charges. Investigations are still underway. But it's looking worse and worse for him. Though frankly, I care much less about him than I do about the fine residents of Flint, Michigan.

Don't Send Bottled Water To Flint, Michigan

Filmmaker and Flint, Michigan native Michael
Moore is quite understandably calling for the arrest
of Michigan's governor for allowing the mass
poisoning of Flint through the municipal water system. 

I'd swear, the state government in Michigan really wants to send the city of Flint back to the age of the Flintstones.

They've caused the now notorious problem of causing lead and other pollutants to flow through city residents' tap water in a move to save money and show how conservative they are.

Go Austerity!

You'd think a modern society would ensure everybody gets safe drinking water. Not in Michigan.

So what if a few thousand kids get brain damage from lead? We're fiscally conservative, Yay!

As the crisis intensifies, the administration of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder still seems totally aloof. If poisoning an entire city and seeming not to care doesn't get every American's blood boiling, I don't know what does.

I love the irony in the slogan on Snyder's web site: "Getting it right. Getting it done."

Ooookay!

Now, I grant you the headline on this post sounds awfully mean. Don't send bottled water to Flint? Let them drink lead?

After all, the water in Flint is still unsafe, Snyder's administration is clearly not interested in really fixing the problem and Flint's kids face lifelong disabilities because of the lead in the water.

So shouldn't we be sending everybody in Flint clean, safer bottled water instead of forcing them to literally drink poison from their taps?

Well, yes, that's been an OK short term solution. But forcing a city to live on mountains of water bottles is no way to go.  We definitely DO need to give a huge shout out to all the individuals, corporations and celebrities who have sent, or encouraged us to sent lots and lots of bottled water to Flint.

But, enough.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's administration
expected people to drink water that looked like this
in Flint. Maybe we should force him to drink that water? 

I have to agree with none other than Flint, Michigan native Michael Moore who also says it's time to stop sending bottled water.

Moore, the famous guerilla filmmaker, is not being mean to his home town either.

Moore, instead says Michigan needs to dig deep. And fast. The first step is getting that idiot Snyder and his administration out of the way.

Moore compares the Snyder administration to terrorists. To be honest, I think Moore is being rather fair.  Read his words and decide for yourself:

"There's not a terrorist organization on Earth that has yet to figure out how to poison 100,000 people every day for two years - and get away with it. That took a Governor who subscribes to an American political ideology hell-bent on widening the income inequality gap and conducting various versions of voter and electoral suppression against people of color and the poor."

Snyder had appointed "emergency managers" to several financially troubled Michigan communities., including Flint.

These managers reported to Snyder, so local residents and voters had very little say in what went on in their cities.

The many critics of these managers said it disenfranchised voters and the managers were insulated and indifferent to what residents were saying. (If elected officials were in charge, they'd presumably be voted out of office if they ignored voters. Especially ones up in arms about poisoned drinking water. )

And as the New York Times suggested, the worry is and was that "emergency managers are more concerned with fiscal discipline than public health."

Flint would be Example A of that.

Since the Snyder administration seemed so indifferent to the crisis in Flint, Moore wants Snyder kicked out of office and arrested.

I totally agree. Despite his denials and faux expressions of concern, what he did or more accurately, didn't do to Flint is criminal.

As Moore says:

"The perp who allowed the poisoning to continue once he knew something was wrong -- and his minions who cooked the evidence so the public and the feds wouldn't find out, must be removed from office ASAP."

Moore also notes that Snyder says the EPA has no legal authority to tell him what to do with Flint. Really?

Earlier this week, we got news that way back in last January - a year ago! -  Snyder was telling Flint residents the water there was hunky dory and drink up!.

Mother Jones reported Thursday on an email from the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget to employees in a state office building in Flint.

"While the city of Flint states that corrective actions are not necessary, DTMB is in the process of providing a water cooler on each occupied floor, positioned near the water fountain, so you can choose which water to drink. The coolers will arrive today and will be provided as long as the public water does not meet treatment requirements."

By the "City of Flint" the email pretty much meant the aloof emergency manager appointed by Snyder.

My guess is that the Snyder administration was worried the public employees union would sue if they found out employees were drinking bad water.

Meanwhile, the residents of Flint, mostly African American, and many of them poor, were left to drink the scary water. Brown water for brown people, Governor Snyder?

Moore goes on to say that Snyder, with all his fiscal conservatism, along with previous administrations, did help Michigan develop an  $800 million surplus and $600 million in a rainy day fund. Moore says Snyder should use that money to fix Flint.

Snyder is the face of the state of Michigan broke Flint so he oughta pay for it, goes the logic.

That said, practically nobody, Moore included, doesn't trust Snyder's administration to fix the problem. Like the feds or not, they've got to step in even more.

Other sensible ideas Moore lists are to move people who want to from Flint to nearby districts that have safe water, at government expense. For those who want to stay in Flint, FEMA should set up temporary water supplies at each home.

The rest of us in the United States who are presumably not drinking lead-laced municipal tap water ought to care about Flint a lot.

First of all,it's a national tragedy and a disaster. Second of all, it's a cautionary tale. Yep, we don't want to pay high taxes to fund the government, and we don't like seeing governments waste money.

That is absolutely reasonable.

You need to strike a balance, though, and balance is now seriously lacking in American politics. Some Republicans, in particular, seem to be in a contest to see how badly they can screw over people without a lot of power. For fun and profit, I guess. Especially profit.

You know, African-Americans, Hispanics, poor people. OK, don't give these groups free hand outs. But don't take your hand and slap them across the face either.

As Slate points out, there's a lot of municipalities out there with marginalized population with aging infrastructure. Flint probably won't be the last town in the country to find out it has been poisoned. There's no political will, no desire to fix old pipes and other fixtures before its too late for residents.

I guess turning America into a Third World country is now political palatable, which is another real tragedy here.

In Michigan, Snyder's administration thought saving money was more important than protecting health and public safety. Maybe he thought if he caused brain damage to the voters of Flint, they'd be too stupid to vote against him in the next election.

But as Rachel Maddow's Town Meeting show in Flint demonstrated the other night, there are a lot of smart people in Flint.

Who won't take being victimized by some self serving politicians.

Are there others politicians like him across the nation?  If so, I hope we have the gumption to rise up against them, too.








 .

Michigan City, State Officials Thought Giving Children Lead Poisoning Is OK If It Saves Money

The nation's worst scandal, lead poisoning due
to Michigan government ineptitude or worse,
is not getting enough attention

UPDATE:

Under mounting pressure MIchigan Gov. Rick Snyder requested the Obama administration declare a federal state of emergency in Flint over the poisoned water crisis.

Obama quickly made that declaration Saturday.

Of course, it was the Snyder administration's actions that ultimately led to the mass lead poisoning of Flint's children because of the bad water, as Snyder and his minions were trying to save money.

Of course, "saving money" led to this tragic and expensive disaster.

The emergency declaration will free up $5 million to federal aid, which would go toward trucking clean water into town and distributing water filters in the hopes that will help.

Obama was forced to deny Snyder's request for a disaster declaration which would have freed up more money to rescue Flint from its bad water.

However, disaster declarations can only be made if there was a natural disaster. This was man made. Flint would have been better off, in one sense, had a big tornado trashed the city. Instead, conservative politics trashed the city, with Ma Nature havng nothing to do with it

I'm all for Obama's decision to declare a federal emergency in Flint, The people there need all the help they can get. But as a taxpayer, I resent the politicians who, in trying to demonstrate how "fiscally conservative " there are, ended up costing taxpayers like me and you all this money to help Fiint.

Meanwhile, Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders said Snyder should resign from his position as governor because of the Flint Water Crisis.

Said Sanders in a statement: "There are no excuses. The governor long ago knew about the lead in Flint's water. He did nothing. As a result, hundreds of children were poisoned. Thousands may have been exposed to potential brain damage from lead. Gov. Snyder should resign."

The nationwide anger at Snyder is really - finally - building now. This has become a national story, and the pressure on the Snyder administration is intensifying, which is great.

Saturday, when Sanders first Tweeted his desire for Snyder to resign, I retweeted and responded. "...or face criminal charges."

I don't think I've ever gotten so many retweets and likes from any comment I've ever made on Twitter.  This is out of about 17,500 Tweets I've posted since June, 2011.

I do think there will be a lot of investigations into Snyder and the managers he appointed to ruin run Flint.

I hope justice is served, and if there was indeed criminal wrongdoing by Snyder or anyone in his administration, they go to jail for a long, long time.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION FROM JAN. 7:

There's been an unfolding scandal in Flint, Michigan that I can't believe hasn't gotten more attention than it has.

An unknown number of children have suffered lead poisoning due to apparent incompetence and a potentional cover up by the ironically named Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

This bad acting might go up all the way to the Michigan Governor's office.

Luckily, the media - and the nation - are finally paying more and more attention to this crisis and scandal, but still not enough is being done.

They were involved in what was to be a money saving move to stop buying expensive drinking water from Detroit and take the water from the Flint River instead.

The only problem is the Flint River is wicked polluted and those pollutants are corrosive. So the corrosive water wore down lead pipes in the Flint water system, and people were drinking water heavily laced with lead for months.

The basic questions are: Did politicians know that kids and families in Flint, Michigan were being poisoned by high levels of lead in drinking water? And did they do nothing because it would have cost money to fix the problem? And would spending money ruin their conservative bonafides? And were those conservative bonafides more important than the health of Flint's children?

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder finally apologized for the fiasco over the New Year's holiday, but was he culpable in this, too?

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into this, and Dan Wyant, the head of the Michigan Department of Environment Quality (MDEQ) has resigned. The federal Environmental Protetion agency is also investigating.

The MDEQ continuously denied there was a problem for most of 2015 even as evidence mounted that there was a dangerous problem with Flint's drinking water.

None of this would have come to light had it not been for some dogged heroes. One was the Flint Journal and its parent media company, MLive, which pursued the story relentlessly. (Pulitzer Prize for them?)

MLive has a handy dandy chart that cuts through the complexity of this thing and gives you a flow chart of who were the good guys and who were the bad guys here.

There were major heroes to this story as well.  Michigan Public Radio kept at this, too.

A huge assist came from ACLU of Michigan, which kept hammering away to get documents proving the problem. Virginia Tech researcher Marc Edwards got involved and proved there was indeed a crisis with lead and contaminated water.

Other hereoes include Erin Brockovich, who used her fame to try to broadcast the problem to a larger audience. There were Flint residents like Melissa Mays who would talk about this to anyone who would listen.

Unfortunately, there were also a large number of villians here that covered up the problem as long as they could.

From 2011 to April, 2015, Flint city government was under the control of an emergency manager appointed by Snyder, rather than local government. This was because Flint's city budget had ballooned to $19 million.

No matter what the reason for the budget deficit - local incompetence, circumstances beyond anyone's control or a combination - the emergency managers were pretty undemocratic.

The managers reported directly to the governor, and not the people of Flint. The voters of Flint basically couldn't hold anybody accountable for their actions, since the mayor and city council were essentially just there for window dressing.

That lack of accountability helped lead to the debacle, many observers believe, since Flint residents had little ability to demand change or create change in leadership through the ballot box.

Potential villians, then, in this case include Snyder, who only belated came on board to say Flint's water was dangerous. There's Darnell Early, who advocated to switch the water source to the Flint River. He also says it's the Flint City Council's fault, but there's no record of that council deciding to take water fron the Flint River.

Then there's the guy who just resigned from his directorship at MDEQ, who kept saying for months Flint's water was safe, even as evidence mounted that it wasn't. The MDEQ spokesman, Bradley Wurfel, who also recently resigned, kept attacking the credibility of Edwards and his fellow Virginia Tech researchers, even though it turns out they were exactly right.

Were these potential villians just in denial, sticking to their original proposals because they made them and they "had" to be right?  Or was this an attempt at a coverup, trying to prevent word from getting out that the water was unsafe?  Preventing, that is, until they could come up with a Plan B, or figure out a way to shift blame to somebody else?

In any event, documents uncovered showed indications of high levels of lead in the drinking water by July. Yet, this information was suppressed until at least September, and people kept drinking the dangerous water.  Officials tried to poo-poo the situation as a harmless "seasonal change" whatever that is.

Was this situation a "missed opportunity" to release information as one state official said, or was it a coverup?

"Everyting they looked at, they found a problem, and they never told anyone," Edwards said of the MDEQ, according to MLive.

It's certainly not over for soe of Michigan's leaders who might be culpable in this fiasco.

Even celebrities have gotten involved. Filmmaker and Flint native Michael Moore is asking U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate Gov. Snyder. 

Cher actually Tweeted that Gov. Snyder should be executed over this, which definitely seems a little over the top.

What's way, WAY more over the top is how elected leaders could know something is wrong with the water, that children were being permanently damaged by lead and possibly other contaminants in the drinking water, and still drag their heels.

Again,  it smells like elected officials, including Snyder, might have made their political futures with a fiscal conservative brand more important than the children of Flint, Michigan.

Snyder is refusing to say what he knew and when he knew it in regards to Flint's water, says NBC News. 

If this isn't a scandal of immense proportions, I don't know what is.

Let's hope the Justice Department investigation actually gets some answers, and here's hoping that MLive, Michigan Public Radio and other media outlets- local, national and international - keep the pressure on to get completely to the bottom of this.

Even worse than all this, Flint's water is still dangerous and nobody is really doing anything about it.

True, they're not taking water from the Flint River. They've switched back to Detroit. But the corrosion in the pipes from the previous Flint River water is still very likely leaching lead into the drinking water supply.

You'd think with an emergency declared, you'd get something like big National Guard tankers full of water in Flint to distribute clean water, Red Cross and other big volunteer groups helping, and people going door to door making sure people were drinking safe water.

But, nope. Flint is full of people who are in and near poverty. The economy has been very rough on Flint. In this nation's political world, poor people don't matter, so the residents of Flint, and their children, are still drinking dangerous water that is injuring them.

It's not like they can afford to drive to a suburban Big Box store and buy cases of bottled water. They have no cars and no money to do this.

I guess Snyder's administration's message to Flint is go screw yourselves.