This week Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder testified for the first time before Congress about lead poisoning in the water supply of Flint, Michigan, which began after he appointed an unelected emergency manager who switched the source of the city’s drinking water to the corrosive Flint River. Snyder testified along with EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Flint’s former emergency manager, Darnell Earley, who refused to appear at last month’s hearing despite a subpoena from the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Nayyirah Shariff and Melissa Mays talking:
it was interesting, because the governor has not yet spoken or come to Flint to speak to residents in a public setting. So it was very interesting for him to go down there. And we sent over 150 people from Flint down to the hearing.
The only thing that was different was this was the first time that he even slightly admitted that he knew anything was wrong with the water in 2014. He has tried to stand by the “I didn’t know anything until October of 2015,” but then he said, “Well, there were ‘issues’ with the water—discoloration and foul smell,” like that was OK, just because there wasn’t lead in it. However, the test results show that there was lead in 2014, as well.
the biggest thing, I think, that the hearings are showing is that we matter. For two years we’ve been yelling and screaming about the water, and we didn’t matter, no one listened. So here it is on a national scale. It’s in front of Congress. And that just shows that what happened to us is indeed a crime, it’s wrong, we’re not crazy. And so, we’re hoping that this will further any criminal investigation. I mean, they were both sworn in. There were lies told. We sat there and just screamed in the audience. But if he resigns, obviously he’s not going to do anything to help. But he’s doing very little being in office as he is. So the only thing that we can hope for is that whoever follows him behind actually steps up, takes responsibility and fixes our city.
because we were under a state of emergency management, meaning he appointed one person to run our city. That one person made all of these decisions as for switching our water source and to ignore us. And that one person reported back only to the governor and treasurer. So this is on the state. They knew that there were problems in 2014, and they let us continue to drink the water for 18 months.
in April of 2014, they switched the water supply of Flint that, what, Flint had for like 50 years the Detroit water supply, to the corrosive Flint River.
It was soon after. We started smelling open sewer coming out of our taps, and our water started turning yellow. And we just—I mean, we knew it wasn’t going to be great. We thought it was a joke that we were going to the Flint River. But as soon as the discoloration happened and the foul smells and then the rashes started, we knew it was bad. And they just told us, “It’s hard water. It’s safe. You’ll be fine.”
Miguel Del Toral is part of the water division, and he’s an expert as for, you know, water treatment. And he asked—in February of 2015, he asked the state Department of Environmental Quality, “Are you using corrosion control?” because he saw the high lead levels already occurring. And he said, “Are you using corrosion control?” And they said yes. They lied to the EPA. Well, he didn’t believe them, because we were turning in more and more test results that showed high lead, so he kept digging into it. In June, he released an interim report saying that there’s problems, they’re not doing their job at the state level.
Hedman Said that it wasn’t finished, it wasn’t finalized, it was full of errors, and that they did not back him. They did not back him. And then, we weren’t allowed to speak to him for weeks.
Flint needs a full-on humanitarian effort, because Snyder has said that all levels of government have failed Flint. Really, there was only one level, and that was because of the emergency manager law. We did not have access to local democracy. We did not have agency. And we really need—this is a public health disaster. We—at the state sites, we can only get one case of water per day. And that is not enough to meet the needs of the community.
We need a public health disaster declaration by President Obama.
Rick Snyder did what we thought he was going to do. He danced around, gave the long answers, gave the positive PR spin that he was going to do. But a few things did come out, like he mentioned he was aware of water issues in 2014. He had never said that before. So, we’re getting deeper and deeper into it. So there was little bits and pieces that were good.
Michigan is one of the only states in the US where you can’t FOIA, get under Freedom of Information Act—information from the Michigan Governor’s Office.
The overall picture is that no one cared. They all knew about it. They were more worried about like covering their legal issues and their legal possible responsibilities and just brushing us off. I mean, Susan Hedman’s email said that Flint isn’t a community that she’d go out on a limb for.
Susan Hedman being one of the heads of the EPA, who has resigned. With that email right there, she should have been fired as an example. She said to other members of the EPA that Flint is not a community that they’d go out on a limb for.
EPA staff scientist Miguel Del Toral wrote what he found, that laws were being broken, they weren’t adhering to the Lead and Copper Rule, that there was a widespread lead problem. He had already tested several homes that came back very high. And he sounded the alarm that this is an issue and it’s probably the entire city. And they squelched it, saying it was incomplete, that—you know, the MDEQ referred to him as a rogue employee. And then we didn’t hear from him for weeks after that. We couldn’t communicate, and we had to fight. We still had to fight with it.
saying that it was nothing to worry about, yes. So, again, her resigning was not heroic. I’m sorry, Gina McCarthy, it was not heroic that she did that. She should have been fired. She should have been disciplined, because look what happened as a result of her actions. Gina McCarthy, the head of the EPA.
We sat down with her to discuss the new water results that are coming from several homes, including my own. We’re still having rashes. People are breaking open, their skins bleeding, and nobody can tell us why. The CDC is testing and can’t figure it out.
A large part of the community, different races, backgrounds, ages. And we’ve had them since, you know, 2014. They burn. They peel off. It feels like your skin’s just ripping off. And hair is still falling out. And no one can address it. So we got connected with Mark Ruffalo and Scott Smith from Water Defense, who has been testing water heaters and bathtubs, the way you would normally use water, and we’re finding all sorts of scary things.
It’s a byproduct of too much chlorine and whatever else is in our water. And that’s the scary part, is we just don’t know.
Unfortunately, the Flint River, the 18 months it was on it, absolutely corroded the entire infrastructure. So we’re dealing with main breaks, bacteria, all the corrosion that lives and feeds off of—the bacteria that feeds off of that corrosion. And we’re breathing it in in the shower, because most of us can’t afford to bathe in bottled water. And like Nayyirah said, they give you a case. That’s not enough.
Many people cannot afford to go around town to cobble together the bottled water for their basic needs. So the state—at the state distribution sites, which are at the fire stations, residents are only limited to one case of water per day.
Ice Mountain water Made by Nestlé Waters. two hours away, bottled by them, taken essentially for free from Lake Michigan, bottled, and then the people of Flint have to pay for it if it’s beyond the case that you get.
so it’s about 24 to 40 bottles, depending on the brand. So, at the state-distributed fire stations, it’s one case of water per day. that’s one per household. because people are cooking—need it for cooking. According to the EPA, pregnant women and children under six should only use bottled water. And so you have people making value judgments based on what to cook, what to eat, how to shower, how to bathe, based on how many bottles of water they have in their homes per day.
There’s actually two recall efforts, one by Flint resident Quincy Murphy and then another one by Detroit Pastor David Bullock. And they’re going—it’s going to launch later on in the month, but they need nearly a million signatures in 60 days to put it on the ballot. If people vote yes on it, then Governor Snyder will be recalled, and we will have a special election to elect a new governor.
we have Flint resident Quincy Murphy, and then we have another recall effort by a Detroit pastor, David Bullock. And they’re right now in some sort of unity session. So we’re going to figure out which one is going to move forward.
this water crisis is because we have a democracy crisis in Michigan, and it’s the emergency manager law. And when you look at Flint, which we’re still paying a premium price for poison water, and in Detroit, where they’re still having shutoffs, this is—this is like a tool for privatization and to take away and wrest away municipal water systems away from the hands of the people and turn it over to either regionalized efforts or to privatized, transnational corporations like Veolia.
Veolia is a for-profit water system—water company, and they do transportation. And they’re in the water business.
We’ve been asking for a very long time. We went and did, of course, the private testing with—the independent testing with Virginia Tech, proved that there was a lead and copper problem. But now that everybody’s so focused on that, they’re not really digging into what’s causing the rashes. So we found that there’s a ton of different industrial solvents, sewage runoff, chloroform, as well as so many different damaging carcinogens in our water right now. So we’re able to work with Water Defense, which is testing for everything in our water. And hopefully we have the answers as to what’s causing the rashes. We delivered these results to Gina McCarthy, and I explained how the testing was done and that she needed to work with Water Defense to get this information out to the citizens.
They are in Flint right now with the CDC. And I said, “This needs to be done, because people are in pain, they’re bleeding, and the state’s ignoring us still.”
Melissa has three kids. Eleven, 12 and 17. In 2014, we started getting rashes on our arms, our backs, our faces. And you couldn’t put lotion on it. We would get the expensive eczema cream, oatmeal scrubs, all these things to try to soothe the pain, and nothing worked. And also, in about August or September, we started losing our hair by the handful, all five of us, including my husband. Just you would just wipe your hair out and just have a handful of hair sitting there. And I said, “OK, maybe I’m stressed out. Maybe it’s stress. And maybe the kids aren’t getting enough vitamins. So maybe that’s why we’re all tired.” And it’s all these excuses you make in your head, because you never want to think that the water is actually poison. And, of course, the city and state’s telling us, “It’s just harder water because it’s river. That’s the only thing. It’s perfectly safe. You’re fine,” even though we had E. coli boil notices, so we had fecal coliform in our water. “It’s fine. It’s safe. Just boil it.”
But there were signs on the side of the road that said, “Don’t boil your water, because it concentrates the lead when you evaporate off the water.”
And so then you’re ingesting more metals. And also, all the other contaminants, like the cancer-causing byproducts, are released in the steam, so you’re inhaling all of that. So by telling us to boil the water to get the bacteria out put us more in danger. So, again, the state had no idea what they were doing and should have never have been in control of the water, because it was a complete disaster from day one. And so, now here we are facing long-term lead and copper exposure. We have high aluminum in our water, which of course is terrible for your brain. I’m having seizures, tremors. I just had polyps removed from my stomach, which are caused by bacteria in the water, last week, and as well as diverticulosis, osteoarthritis. My sons are now starting to fail. My oldest, he’s so smart, he tested into a dual enrollment school where he’s taking college courses at the same time so he can graduate
He’s 17—and so he can graduate with a diploma and associate’s degree. He’s got a D average. He’s in daily tutoring now. He was smart enough to test in, and now he’s completely sidetracked. And my sons, their bones hurt. They can’t play sports. They get tired too easy. They’re anemic. Their white—my youngest, my baby, his white blood cell count is four.
Ten to 14 for a healthy child, which is what he was before all this. And we’re told that the long-term effects of heavy metals, you know, exposure is not see for up to five years. So, here we are. We’ve got three, four more years to wonder what’s going to happen to the kids, what’s going to happen to us. My husband is sick constantly, and he’s never been sick. He’s that big Brutus guy that never gets sick, and here he’s constantly sick. He’s constantly dizzy, passing out. It’s just things that you never would have expected, and we totally took our water for granted. And now we fight, because just the way that they treat water as a commodity can kill people. People have died.
The Legionnaires’, they didn’t tell us it was in the water. They told us it was no big deal. All these people, including my son, had pneumonia in the summertime. My youngest had pneumonia in the summertime. They said, “Oh, it’s just pneumonia. It’ll be fine.” Well, what the state knew and didn’t tell, as well as our county health department, that Legionnaires’, which is—it’s a bacteria. Legionella is in the water. It’s released into steam, so when you shower, you inhale it. Ten people died. They said it was no big deal, it didn’t exist. There were 87 confirmed cases. And because the state never told the doctors to test for it, we don’t know how many unconfirmed cases, like my son. And my son could have died if he wasn’t treated properly. But there were 10 confirmed cases of people dying of Legionnaires’ disease.
we don’t need Darnell Earley’s apologies. In late October, he sent—he had an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press basically slamming our local—our local City Council and saying that they approved the switch and he had no culpability or responsibility in that. So that is totally offensive. And he lied in Congress. And he’s never lived in Flint.
Under Public Act 4 and then PA 436, once an emergency manager comes into your city, the local mayor and the city council’s salaries are zeroed out. And through executive orders, the emergency manager determines their salaries and their job responsibilities. So, basically, they get—they receive job descriptions.
The City Council voted to go to the Karegnondi Water Authority in 2016, so later this year—had nothing to do with going to the Flint River in the interim. That was a decision by the emergency managers and held up by the emergency managers, Earley and Ambrose. We went to them. We screamed, “Our water is bad! We’re getting sick! We need help!” And we were told that the decision was incomprehensible, just too expensive.
In March of 2015 They voted seven to one to return to the Detroit water supply. And the next day, the new emergency manager at the time, Jerry Ambrose, as you said, called this decision “incomprehensible” and refused. When he ultimately was taken out—no more emergency manager in Flint—is it true that he said, “The one decision that must remain in place for a year after I leave is remaining on the Flint River”
Actually, all of his decisions, all of his orders, nobody could overturn them for one year, which is absolutely ridiculous, because look how many people got sick. But we fought and fought. And even after he left, we were put—had to deal with an emergency—or a city administrator, who was basically a mini emergency manager, who, again, had control over the entire city. And then, of course, we’ve got the Receivership Transition Advisory Board, and so we still have state control in Flint. After the state poisoned us and completely abandoned us, we still have to answer to them.
for poisoned water now the highest water bills in the US. That changed. They were lowered a bit. But people are still being forced to pay for your poisoned water. My bill never went down. They were supposed to lower our bills, because it was found that they were illegally raised, several times. My bill never went down. It actually went up 20 bucks. My balance right now for three months plus an adjustment that they put on is $1,812.81.
That is my bill. And I am no way going to pay that, because, one, my family’s sick. It’s destroyed—I mean, I’ve spent that much money in water heaters that we’ve gone through. And yeah, so, the bills are not suspended. The mailing of them is not suspended, because the governor, in his great wisdom, knowing just how much water we actually use, decided to give us a “credit” towards future purchase of poison water. He said, “Well, we figured people used about 65 percent of the water, you know, to drink and cook. The other 35 percent was flushing the toilet and doing laundry.” Even though our water was 100 percent contaminated since April of 2014, he’s giving us a 65 percent credit—not on the service fees, not on the sewer usage, only on the water part, which is the lowest part of the bill.
And so, it’s going to be put on people’s bills only if you’re current. So a lot of people who cannot afford the water or who just stood up and said, “I’m not paying. You’re poisoning my family,” are not going to get the credit. We’re not. And if you measure out the credit, it’s only a couple of hundred dollars towards these gigantic bills for future payments. And my thing is, we paid real money for our bills. Why are we not getting real money back? So, there’s all these loopholes, and so every time he, the governor, says, “I’m doing something heroic to save Flint,” there’s always a caveat, and it always ends up just hurting us.
Kevin Cotter, who’s the speaker of the House in the state of Michigan, says that there’s not going to be any more supplemental funding or supplemental appropriations until the budgeting process is over. So, we need money now. And all of this political games like need to stop, because we need a full-on humanitarian effort. And that $55 million is only for the lead service line replacement. It does not even begin to—which is going to be in the billions and billions of dollars of psychological damage, the long-term medical needs and wraparound services that this community needs. We need lifetime Medicare for all to cover like the medical needs of Flint residents long term.
we support our mayor Mayor Karen Weaver. What she’s doing is fantastic. She’s actually worked with the city of Lansing to find a cheaper, more efficient way to replace the lead service lines, because, overall, the galvanized need to be replaced, as well as the copper. All the metals are just too corroded. They need to be replaced, as well as interior plumbing and water heaters. So, we are demanding that the president declare this a—not an emergency, but a disaster area, so it will open up funding, so we don’t have to sit here and wait on the state, because they’re obviously not helping us.
As for moving, we’ve thought about it. I love my house. I love my house. We fought to get it. I love our lives here—aside from the water. But who’s going to buy my poison water house? And there is no way I am going to get anywhere near what I owe on it. We’re seven years into a mortgage. Nobody’s going to swoop in and buy this house for what I owe. So we would lose so much. And then, again, we wouldn’t pass inspection. We wouldn’t pass inspection to get the mortgage. And on top of it, the mortgage companies aren’t lending, because we’re in a state of emergency, so they’re not lending funds towards the homes in Flint. So we can’t move out. And then, on a moral standpoint, I can’t be like, “Come buy my house. It’s beautiful, four bedrooms, two bathrooms. It poisoned us. Hopefully you’ll be OK.” So, as much as we think about moving, we can’t, financially. Legally, we can’t. And then, on the other hand, I don’t want to leave the people we’re fighting with. So we’re stuck.
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Melissa Mays
a Flint activist and founder of Water You Fighting For?
Nayyirah Shariff
a coordinator with the Flint Democracy Defense League.
— source democracynow.org, democracynow.org