Snyder legacy will be Flint water crisis Rochelle Riley, Detroit Free Press
Columnist It has come to this: Gov. Rick Snyder's lasting legacy will not be
balanced budgets or his efforts to make sure everyone is swimming in a 'river
of opportunity. It will not be 'relentless positive action. Rather, he will
be defined by inaction and another river, the Flint River. He will be known
from this time forward as the governor whose team poisoned potentially thousands
of children with lead. The ravages of lead poisoning ' which affects mental and
physical development ' linger for years and are irreversible. The tragedy
began in April 2014 when the City of Flint switched from the Detroit water
system to the Flint River. It was a cost-saving measure decreed by one
state-appointed
emergency manager and implemented by another. Because of the river's high salt
content, the water corroded the pipes, causing lead to leach into the water.
Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards, who had been testing Flint's water, said
the problem could have been fixed for about $100 a day, according to an
NBC News report. But no officials ' neither state nor city ' took any action,
despite residents' complaints. Edwards obtained, through a Michigan Freedom
of Information Act request, an e-mail from Snyder's then-chief of staff, Dennis
Muchmore, NBC News reported. That e-mail is as much a smoking gun as ever
there was. "I'm frustrated by the water issue in Flint," Muchmore wrote in the
'now widely reported e-mail. "I really don't think people are getting the
benefit of the doubt. Now they are concerned and rightfully so about the lead
level studies they are receiving. "These folks are scared and worried about
the health impacts, and they are basically getting blown off by us (as a state
we're just not sympathizing with their plight). Edwards told NBC that "there is
no question that if the city had followed the minimum requirements under
federal law that none of this would have happened. The negligence didn't stop
there. When a Flint pediatrician, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, learned about later
tests in February 2015 that showed high levels of lead in the water at one
Flint home, she did her own study and found that lead levels in many children
had doubled, and in some cases, tripled, since the move to the Flint River.
It took 16 months from the initial complaints before the state switched Flint
back to the Detroit water system in October. It took two more months to
December before Flint began adding phosphates to the water to coat the pipes
and prevent leaching. And the entire crisis, which resulted in the governor
apologizing and one state official resigning,'would not have occurred had
anyone heeded the warning of that respected pediatrician, city officials and
parents who didn't just blow whistles. They sounded alarms. They screamed. They
offered proof. First, city officials were ignored. Then the pediatrician was
ridiculed. Now the U.S. attorney is investigating. No one has claimed that
Snyder or his team decided with malice and aforethought to ignore complaints
from Flint residents about the water. I'm sure they didn't hope that children
would be poisoned. It seems they just didn't care. Negligence is defined
as “failure to use reasonable care, resulting in damage or injury to another. “
That is the definition the lawsuits will use. It will take years for doctors
to determine how much damage has been done to the children of Flint and for the
state todetermine how much this tragedy will cost taxpayers. And it will
cost taxpayers. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said Thursday that it could cost as
much as $1.5 billion to repair the city's damaged water system. No one can
estimate what it will cost to treat the developmental problems of possibly
thousands of children. What happened in Flint would never have happened in Grand
Rapids or Muskegon or Alpena. But it did happen in a poor community with a
state-appointed emergency manager. It's easy to ignore people when they aren't
your business constituents or aren't contributing to GOP campaigns. But the
GOP-controlled state capital will not be able to ignore the consequences of
this tragedy and what it has done to the children in an entire city. And Rick
Snyder will never be able toleavethis off his r'sum. Contact Rochelle
Riley:'rriley99@xxxxxxxxxxxxx. Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley. Follow her
on Facebook at'https://www.facebook.com/rochellerileythewriter.
