Meanwhile, there’s enough blame to go around and there are a lot of folks passing the buck. Michigan’s Gov. Rick Snyder is facing calls for his resignation. He claims he got bad information from environmental officials and didn’t move fast enough to fix the problem.
It’s a pretty weak excuse. And I’m not buying it.
“I’m sorry and I will fix it,” Snyder said last week during his speech to state officials. “You did not create this crisis, and you do not deserve this. Government failed you at the federal, state and local level. We need to make sure this never happens again in any Michigan city.”
That’s too little, too late for the 8,177 children who could experience health problems for the rest of their lives because Flint officials wanted to save money.
It begs the question: would state officials have put a greater emphasis on fixing the problem if Flint wasn’t a predominantly Black, poor city?
“I spent a lot of time last week being outraged by what’s happening in Flint, Michigan and I think every single American should be outraged,” Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner for president said last week during the presidential debate. “We’ve had a city in the United States of America where the population which is poor in many ways and majority African-American has been drinking and bathing in lead contaminated water. And the governor of that state acted as though he didn’t really care.”
LeeAnne Walters, a mother from Flint, set a series of investigations in motion. In April 2014, she noticed that her son got a rash every time he played in the swimming pool at their home in Flint. By December, she had stopped letting any of her children drink the water coming out of her tap. She called local authorities to complain and subsequently exposed the lead outbreak in the water system.
Last week, a hospital in Flint reported that low levels of Legionnaires’ disease bacteria were discovered in its water system. Legionnaires’ disease is a respiratory bacterial infection usually spread through mist that comes from a water source, officials said.
I last drank water from the tap in Flint 40 years ago. But I feel sadness for the children of Flint who have been drinking the tainted water since 2014.
What do you think?
(Photo: Associated Press)
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Flint Water Crisis: It’s Personal was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
