Michigan governor's advisers warned about Flint water crisis months before disclosure
Source: The Guardian
Michigan governor's advisers warned about Flint water crisis months before disclosure
Rick Snyder’s advisers suggested to stop using corrosive river and buy residents
bottled water before contamination ‘gets too far out of control’, emails reveal
Ryan Felton in Detroit
Friday 26 February 2016 14.07 GMT
Nearly a year before Michigan governor Rick Snyder publicly admitted his knowledge of the city of Flint’s lead-contaminated water crisis, advisers in his office had advocated moving Flint back to its prior drinking water source “before this thing gets too far out of control”, newly released emails reveal.
And nearly seven months before Snyder’s announcement in October 2015, his former chief of staff had internally proposed purchasing bottled water for Flint’s residents – even as the governor’s administration publicly rebuffed any characterization that Flint’s water wasn’t safe to drink.
Those are some of the revelations in a batch of 550 emails newly released by Snyder’s office to the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, a small slice of 8,000-10,000 emails expected to be released on Friday. Flint’s water became contaminated in April 2014 after the city, run by a governor-appointed emergency manager, switched its drinking water source to a corrosive local river. The city wasn’t required by Michigan’s environmental agency to treat the water with anti-corrosion agents that would have prevented lead from leaching off pipes and flowing into households.
It’s unclear why the governor’s office chose to release only a select number of emails ahead of Friday’s expected release. A message requesting comment was not immediately returned.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/26/flint-water-crisis-rick-synder-advisers-emails-michigan
