Flint water tragedy

[outsider]

10 Things They Won't Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy. But I Will
By Michael Moore
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44124.htm

'News of the poisoned water crisis in Flint has reached a wide audience around the world. The basics are now known: The Republican governor, Rick Snyder, nullified the free elections in Flint, deposed the mayor and city council, then appointed his own man to run the city. To save money, they decided to unhook the people of Flint from their fresh water drinking source, Lake Huron, and instead, make the public drink from the toxic Flint River.

When the governor's office discovered just how toxic the water was, they decided to keep quiet about it and covered up the extent of the damage being done to Flint's residents, most notably the lead affecting the children, causing irreversible and permanent brain damage. Citizen activists uncovered these actions, and the governor now faces growing cries to resign or be arrested.

Here are 10 things that you probably don't know about this crisis because the media, having come to the story so late, can only process so much. But if you live in Flint or the state of Michigan as I do, you know all to well that what the greater public has been told only scratches the surface.

1. While the Children in Flint Were Given Poisoned Water to Drink, General Motors Was Given a Special Hookup to the Clean Water.

A few months after Gov. Snyder removed Flint from the clean fresh water we had been drinking for decades, the brass from General Motors went to him and complained that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. The governor was appalled to hear that GM property was being damaged, so he jumped through a number of hoops and quietly spent $440,000 to hook GM back up to the Lake Huron water, while keeping the rest of Flint on the Flint River water.

Which means that while the children in Flint were drinking lead-filled water, there was one -- and only one -- address in Flint that got clean water: the GM factory...........'


Read the whole article - it is a damning and almost unbelievable snapshot of the 'Rulers' attitude to the ordinary citizens.

But also, be sure to check Michael Moore's Twitter account, where he has a chart of Bernie Sanders', Hillary Clinton's and the Republicans' stance on important issues:
https://twitter.com/MMFlint/status/694986332758761473

[outsider]

'Flint’s lead-poisoned water had a ‘horrifyingly large’ effect on fetal deaths, study finds':
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/21/flints-lead-poi soned-water-had-a-horrifyingly-large-effect-on-fetal-deaths-study-find s/?

'The fertility rate in Flint, Mich., dropped precipitously after the city decided to switch to lead-poisoned Flint River water in 2014, according to a new working paper.

That decline was primarily driven by what the authors call a “culling of the least healthy fetuses” resulting in a “horrifyingly large” increase in fetal deaths and miscarriages. The paper estimates that among the babies conceived from November 2013 through March 2015, “between 198 and 276 more children would have been born had Flint not enacted the switch in water,” write health economists Daniel Grossman of West Virginia University and David Slusky of Kansas University.

In April 2014, Flint decided to draw its public water supply from the Flint River, a temporary measure intended to save costs while the city worked on a permanent pipeline project to Lake Huron. Residents immediately began complaining about the odor and appearance of the water, but well into 2015 the city was still assuring residents that the water was safe to drink....'

Shades of EPA head Christine Todd Whitman's 'The air is safe to breathe' after 9/11.

[outsider]

'Key Woman in Flint Lawsuit Murdered in Same Week City Water Foreman Mysteriously Drops Dead':
https://www.activistpost.com/2016/04/key-woman-in-flint-lawsuit-murder ed-in-same-week-city-water-foreman-mysteriously-drops-dead.html

'As Michigan residents watch the scapegoats thrown to the lions to take the blame for the higher ups who are ultimately responsible for the mass poisoning that is taking place in Flint, behind the scenes are some disturbing events unfolding.

Earlier this week it was announced that the Flint water crisis will be investigated and prosecuted as a crime. Immediately after that announcement, the man who ran the city’s treatment plant and two state environmental officials were arrested and charged with felonies on Wednesday for allegedly misleading regulators about the poisoned water.

After the arrests, prosecutors promised that there would be more charges coming.

The news of arrests has managed to pacify the nation for the moment. However, it is far from enough. As Truth-Out reports, Governor Snyder has yet to be even questioned on the matter.

The charges come as Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder said he has not been questioned by prosecutors in connection with the crisis. Protesters have called for Governor Snyder to resign over his handling of the Flint water crisis, which began when the city’s unelected emergency manager, appointed by Governor Snyder, switched the source of the city’s drinking water from the Detroit system to the corrosive Flint River, and the water corroded Flint’s aging pipes, causing lead to leach into the drinking water.

In March, Gov. Snyder, along with a number of other current and former state employees were named as defendants in a slew of lawsuits relating to the poisoning of thousands. In response to the lawsuits, Snyder quickly used taxpayer funds, to the tune of $500,000 to hire attorneys to defend himself.

As the corruption begins to seep out of all levels of the Michigan government, some surprising deaths have happened as well.

Just two days before the arrests were made of Michigan officials, the woman at the center of the lawsuit against the state was brutally gunned down inside her own home.

Sasha Avonna Bell was one of the first of a growing number of people to file a lawsuit in connection with the Flint water crisis after she claimed that her child had been lead poisoned, reports mlive.

On Tuesday, Bell and her friend Sacorya Renee Reed were found shot to death in her home and, while police say they have someone in custody, no charges have been filed.

The reason Bell’s case was so important is it determined the future of more than five dozen lawsuits that were in danger of being transferred to a U.S. District Court on a motion of one of the defendants, engineering company Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam (LAN)......'

'....What’s more, in an entirely off-the-wall coincidence, LAN, aside from being implicated in multiple lawsuits, also has ties to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and provides free PR for the Clinton Global Initiative, reports Claire Bernish, writing for the Antimedia.org.

As if the death of the of the key player in what can be called one of the most corrupt cases in recent American history wasn’t shocking enough, only days before Bell was murdered, a foreman at the Flint water treatment plant mysteriously dropped dead.

Matthew McFarland, 43, of Otter Lake died suddenly on Saturday, April 16, according to his obituary.

According to the Lapeer County Sheriff’s Department, a friend found McFarland unresponsive inside his home......'