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Michigan Silently Gave Clean Water To State Employees For Months Before Flint Crisis Broke
Addicting Info
Thu January 28, 2016
Area: Flint, Saginaw, Bay City
Starting an entire year ago in January of 2015 - long before the Flint water crisis broke into mainstream public awareness - the Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget determined that state employees needed an alternate source of clean drinking water. They began stocking water coolers on each floor of their offices for employee use.
Flint residents were sent a notice that the level of trihalomethanes, which can cause liver and kidney problems, were exceeding federal limits - yet the city insisted the water was still fine and no actions needed to be taken to correct it. The notice followed two separate boil advisories in August and September of 2014. Despite assuring the citizens of the city that the water was safe, officials at the capitol gave state employees clean water to drink from coolers, instead of municipal sources like fountains and faucets.
According to documentation, the coolers were to remain for employees to use "as long as the public water does not meet treatment requirements."
The residents of Flint, as you know by now, did not deserve such consideration. It took nearly an entire year for them to start being taken seriously by the state government. This came only after the story finally broke loose in the national media in a huge and embarrassing spectacle for state Republicans. If the media had not forced state Republicans' hands on this issue, people would still be drinking poison today. Water only started being distributed in January of 2016 in any kind of substantial way in the city, by the national guard.
Even the excuse of "saving money" which was given by the Governor has been called into doubt. Recent emails which were released by Governor Rick Snyder under intense pressure by the media show that if Flint had simply stayed with Detroit water the city would have saved as much, if not more money, anyway.
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