{"id":16575,"date":"2016-01-17T09:30:47","date_gmt":"2016-01-17T14:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16575"},"modified":"2016-01-17T09:31:23","modified_gmt":"2016-01-17T14:31:23","slug":"budget-cuts-and-negligence-poisoned-the-drinking-water-in-flint-mich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16575","title":{"rendered":"Budget Cuts and Negligence Poisoned the Drinking Water in Flint, Mich."},"content":{"rendered":"

Budget Cuts and Negligence Poisoned the Drinking Water in Flint, Mich.\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/h6>\n
\n
\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder in 2011.\u00a0(Michigan Municipal League<\/a>\u00a0\/\u00a0CC BY-ND 2.0<\/a>)<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Calls for the resignation of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder are intensifying in the face of evidence that he allowed 100,000 residents of the city of Flint to continue cooking, drinking and bathing in water known to be contaminated with lead.<\/p>\n

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is among those demanding that Snyder leave office.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no excuses,\u201d Sanders said in a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0released Saturday. \u201cThe governor long ago knew about the lead in Flint\u2019s water. He did nothing. As a result, hundreds of children were poisoned. Thousands may have been exposed to potential brain damage from lead. Gov. Snyder should resign.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[F]amilies will suffer from lead poisoning for the rest of their lives,\u201d Sanders continued. \u201cChildren in Flint will be plagued with brain damage and other health problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reports say\u00a0the problem began<\/a>\u00a0in spring 2014, when the cash-strapped city switched water sources, hoping to save money. Corrosive water drawn from the Flint River stripped lead from pipes, resulting in high levels of the toxic metal appearing in the blood of children. Subsequently, the city switched sources again.<\/p>\n

Julia Lurie at Mother Jones magazine\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that cases of Legionnaires\u2019 disease in the area have spiked over the past year and a half, with 10 people dying out of a total of 87 cases. Marc Edwards, a scientist at Virginia Tech who helped expose the water\u2019s lead contamination,\u00a0told the Detroit Free Press<\/a>\u00a0that there\u2019s a \u201cvery strong likelihood\u201d that the change in water supply enabled the disease\u2019s recent surge.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/b>\u00a0reports:<\/p>\n

In the last three weeks, a panel appointed by Mr. Snyder reported that state officials had for months wrongly brushed aside complaints about the contamination. The governor apologized for the state\u2019s performance, Michigan\u2019s top environmental regulator resigned, and federal agencies announced that they were investigating.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Budget Cuts and Negligence Poisoned the Drinking Water in Flint, Mich.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder in 2011.\u00a0(Michigan Municipal League\u00a0\/\u00a0CC BY-ND 2.0) Calls for the resignation of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder are intensifying in the face of evidence that he allowed 100,000 residents of the city of Flint to continue cooking, drinking and bathing in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[6566,11077,11079,11080,11768,11078,1921,11621,8738,866,4845],"class_list":["post-16575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","tag-budget-cuts","tag-flint","tag-lead","tag-lead-poisoning","tag-legionnaires-disease","tag-michigan","tag-new-york-times","tag-rick-snyder","tag-truthdig","tag-water","tag-water-contamination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16576,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16575\/revisions\/16576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}