Lessons of Flint

[TBF]

No one can doubt that a similar public health crisis would never have been allowed to happen in Grosse Pointe, Forest Hills, West Bloomfield or other more affluent Michigan communities. A poisoned water supply and public officials who refuse to lift a finger to do anything about it are part of the price Flint residents pay for being poor and black.

The Baltimore Sun Editorial Page

The lessons of Flint 1-23-16 (sic - either mistyped date or they are printing this on Saturday but already posted online)

It's been nearly two years since residents of Flint, Mich., began noticing that the water from their taps was brown and carried a foul odor. People got rashes and sores from drinking it. Some people's hair fell out, others threw up after swallowing it. Worst of all, doctors noticed an alarming rise of lead levels in the blood of city youngsters — enough to cause irreversible brain damage and other serious health and behavioral problems.

Yet it wasn't until last month that state officials in Michigan, who had taken over managing the community's water supply after the city fell into receivership in 2011, finally stopped insisting that the people of Flint — a majority black city where 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line — were all crazy and that their water was perfectly safe. Until then, their advice had been, more or less, "Drink up, and stop complaining!"

Now, with the release last week of hundreds of emails detailing state officials' responses to citizens' complaints about the situation, it turns out that the water in Flint was anything but safe. In fact, not only was it safe, but it contained enough toxic chemicals to melt the lead solder out of the city's ancient water pipes and poison the drinking water in a city of 100,000 residents. Worst of all, state officials appear to have known about the problem all along, yet they did nothing. Given the state's indifference to the alarms that had been raised over the safety of Flint's water supply, it took some gall on the part of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to ask President Barack Obama on Wednesday to declare the city a federal disaster area ...

More here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-flint-water-20160123-story.html

[PatrickforO]

1. The people who are responsible for this need to be put on trial.

This is just despicable. And that isn't nearly a strong enough word, but it's all I have.

[Sherman A1]

2. Agreed

and I would like to see after appropriate due process, them sentenced to paying back the citizens of Flint, MI for the harm that was done to them. I know that much of that is not reversible, but I think this crowd would do well having all their assets seized and sold off to make some compensation.

[TBF]

3. It's absolutely appalling. nt

[TBF]

4. Op ed from NYTimes this morning ("depraved indifference") -

(TBF note: This makes me so incredibly angry. This guy should be behind bars. There is no excuse.)

The Opinion Pages | Editorial
Depraved Indifference Toward Flint
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD - JAN. 22, 2016

The 274 pages of emails released under pressure on Wednesday by Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan show a cynical and callous indifference to the plight of the mostly black, poverty-stricken residents of Flint, who have gone for more than a year with poisoned tap water that is unsafe to drink or bathe in. There is little doubt that an affluent, predominantly white community — say Grosse Pointe or Bloomfield Hills — would never face such a public health catastrophe, and if it had, the state government would have rushed in to help.

At every juncture when state officials could have avoided or reduced the harm in Flint, they ignored public pleas and made every effort to dismiss the truth.

The newly released emails show that members of Mr. Snyder’s administration consistently mocked and belittled the complaints of Flint residents and the evidence gathered by independent researchers. Outrage is the only sensible response to this man-made disaster, in which inexcusable decisions, by the state and emergency managers appointed by Mr. Snyder to oversee the city’s finances, led to corrosion of the water pipes and high levels of lead in the water and the blood of city residents. Thousands of children were exposed to water with lead, which could cause long-term health and developmental problems.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/opinion/depraved-indifference-toward-flint.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0