While rural poor whites occupy a federal building in Oregon and the 2016 presidential race heats up there’s a national disaster going on in Flint. The people are being poisoned by their water and it’s a direct result of the actions taken by the Michigan state government.
This is a national issue and an embarrassment for the state of Michigan. It’s a crisis that has been almost two years in the making and will irreparably affect the people of Flint. A lot has been said about who’s at fault but the answer is clear: the responsibility and blame for this crisis lies at the feet of Governor Snyder.
It was Snyder’s crony, Darnell Earley (appointed with the help of the governor’s undemocratic emergency manager law), who made the decision to switch the city’s water source from Detroit to the Flint River. Despite concerns that the water needed extensive treatment before the switch could be made Earley went ahead by citing the amount of money that the city could save.
It turns out that those concerns were justified; the city soon had to issue boil advisories to deal with the high levels of bacteria that were found in the water. All the while Earley and Flint Mayor Dayne Walling continued to deny any problems with the water quality.
In response to the high levels of bacteria the city began treating the water in an effort to clean it. Turns out the chemicals used contaminated the water further and resulted in the city violating the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. As a result the city had to send out letters to residents notifying them of the violation and warning them not to use the water.
Detroit offered to reconnect the water system and start selling to Flint again, but the city’s new Emergency Manager Jerry Ambrose said that it was incomprehensible for the city to pay for Detroit’s water when the Flint River was perfectly safe. As city and state officials continued to deny the problem the corrosive river water began to strip the lead from pipes.
Soon scientists began to detect dangerously high amounts of lead in the Flint water system and in blood samples taken of residents. That is not good. High amounts of lead can cause skin problems, damage internal organs and cause irreparable damage to the central nervous system and brain. After months of outcry from citizens and city officials the state finally announced plans to reconnect Flint to Detroit’s water system.
Now Governor Snyder has declared a state of emergency and has begged the people to focus on fixing the problem without playing the blame game. That’s a convenient thing to say especially coming from the man who is ultimately responsible.
The Department of Justice is now looking into the matter and while it might be too early to say, they’ll likely find something. The city and state didn’t take proper measures in determining the quality of the Flint River water and if they genuinely didn’t know the severity of the problem then they’re guilty of criminal incompetence.
The situation in Flint represents a failure of government on every level. But it was local democratically elected officials who first started acknowledging the problem and proposing the solution; state officials including the Department of Environmental Quality, Snyder and his emergency managers did everything in their power to deny, delay and excuse action in the crisis.
When children are poisoned with lead it is absolutely fair for the people of Flint, of Michigan and of the entire country to play the “blame game.” The situation in Flint can’t be solved as long as those responsible for causing it are still in power. When the governor says we should focus on fixing the problem instead of finding those at fault what he’s really saying is, “Please don’t hold any of us legally accountable.”
-By Greg Horner
