Emails prove Michigan governor knew about lead contamination of Flint water, but covered it up while children were poisoned

Sunday, January 31, 2016 by: L.J. Devon, Staff Writer
Tags: Flint Michigan, contaminated water, Snyder

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(NaturalNews) Day after day, month after month, the people of Flint, Michigan, were poisoned by increasing amounts of lead and other toxins coming from the city's water supply. The poisoning began in April 2014, when the source of the city's drinking water was switched from Detroit to the Flint River. The switch was to be a temporary one, as the city prepared to get its water from Lake Huron. During the switch, Flint city officials cut corners and knowingly allowed corrosive water to leach lead from the inside of water pipes for thousands of households across the city.

A memo sent out to Governor Rick Snyder in February 2015, proves that Flint city and the state of Michigan knew about the water crisis but did nothing about it, sometimes mocking the severity of the problem. The memo made it "clear that folks in Flint are concerned about other aspects of their water – taste, smell and color being among the top complaints." In fact, the memo discussed the water quality problems in detail, bringing attention to a contaminant called total trihalomethanes, which can lead to liver and kidney problems.

City officials mocked residents' water concerns, emails show

The memo, included among 274 pages of emails detailing the water crisis, clearly showed that the government did not care that people were being poisoned. The city's then chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, condescendingly wrote in an email to the governor on September 26, that the "anti everything group" believed that people were being poisoned by lead. Chief of staff Muchmore pointed his finger at the people of Flint, mocking, "of course, some of the Flint people respond by looking for someone to blame."

State dismisses the Flint water crisis

In one email, then mayor Dayne Walling called out for state assistance, but was written off because the state believe he had "seized on public panic ... to ask the state for loan forgiveness and more money for infrastructure improvement." The Rick Snyder administration dismissed the problems continuously, believing that they would eventually "fade in the rearview."

"Another key thing to remember is that once the city connects to the new [water] system in 2016, this issue will fade in the rearview" said Flint city officials in a February 1st memo to Governor Snyder. Governor Snyder's administration continued to downplay the water crisis, and remarked that the Safe Drinking Water Act "does not regulate aesthetic values of water," and that exposure to contaminates such as trihalomethanes are not a "top health concern."

The cocky responses from the state dismissed "the brown water that angry residents were holding up in jugs for media cameras last week," and said that "discoloration is not an indicator of water quality or water safety, but we recognize that nobody likes it."

And, in an email to an EPA official, the state said that "[Flint] city has bigger issues on their agenda right now."

As the crisis was swept under the rug, thousands of children were being poisoned – their brains damaged by corrosive lead and other organ damaging toxins.

Michigan governor tries to save face

After nearly two years of arrogantly dismissing the water crisis and putting thousands of families' health at risk, Governor Snyder took full responsibility in January in his state of the state speech. The city will spend $12 million switching its water source from Flint back to Detroit, and an additional $28 million will be used to expedite the recovery efforts in Flint. The state will also get assistance from the National Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The real question is, "Will anyone be held accountable for the crisis that poisoned an entire city?"

On a grander scale, "Will we as a people begin to take the poisons in the water supply more seriously?"

The Flint, Michigan, water crisis is the first of many revelations, as people throughout the US and the rest of the world learn that their water is tainted, poisoned by pharmaceutical runoff, herbicides, pesticides, plastic chemicals, arsenic, fluoride byproducts, aluminum and other heavy metals that damage the body.

Visit WaterFilterLabs.com to find a suitable home water purifier that can remove toxins like lead, to protect your brain and other organs. There's no reason to trust the authorities to keep the water clean.

Sources include:

TheGuardian.com