Michigan drops all criminal charges over Flint Water Crisis. For now.
Read original article:
Michigan drops all criminal charges over Flint Water Crisis. For now.
Tag Archives: flint water crisis
Here’s what 3 Newark residents had to say about the city’s lead crisis
Four years after lead was discovered in Flint’s drinking water, a similar public health crisis is playing out in New Jersey’s most populous city, Newark.
Residents of Newark say over the past year and a half, top city and state officials assured them that their water supply was safe. But as early as 2016, state-run tests that showed elevated lead levels at local schools.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, together with the Newark Education Workers’ Caucus, filed a lawsuit against the city in June, accusing it of violating federal safe drinking water laws. The suit alleges Newark both failed to treat its water properly to prevent lead from leaching off old service pipes into residents’ drinking water and failed to notify residents about the elevated lead levels.
For most of 2018, Newark’s website read: “NEWARK’S WATER IS ABSOLUTELY SAFE TO DRINK,” according to the New York Times. Since the lawsuit was filed, the city has sprung into action, giving away 40,000 water filters across the city of 285,000 people and telling parents their children should not drink the water.
The situation has drawn parallels to the Flint water crisis. “The actual facts of what happened in Flint may not be the exact same, but the overall arc of what happened is,” Mae Wu, an attorney and water expert at the NRDC, told Grist.
The revelation of this potentially widening public health crisis has angered many Newark residents. Here are three community members’ experiences, as told to Grist reporter Paola Rosa-Aquino. Their statements have been edited for length and clarity.
Though the city of Newark is distributing water filters, like these, for residents to mitigate lead levels in their homes, residents say there are not enough for those who need them. Image courtesy of Shakima Thomas
Debra Salters, community activist
I live in a building in the East Ward. We didn’t get water filters. The people who had something to say about it — the activists — we were turned away. We’re actually meeting with our building’s owners next week to find out what the situation is and if they can get the water tested.
Even now, not everyone who lives here knows about the lead in the water. More and more people are finding out, from family members out of state and other cities. Not only are we drinking the water, we’re bathing in it. We’re brushing our teeth in it. We’re washing our hair with it. It’s affecting our entire life here and no one seems to care, until the lawsuit, until they were made to care.
None of the top officials have really done anything to make the public aware of the public health crisis. They denied there was a problem when we, the citizens, were digging up information and bringing it to them to make sure. First, we found out about the lead in schools, and they tried to tell us the water was OK to drink at home. If you’re saying the water is not good in the schools, then how is it fine in our homes, if it’s all coming from the same source? We were shooed away like gnats at a barbecue.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (left) looks on as Senior Aide Andrea Mason (center) speaks to residents at a town hall concerning the city’s lead problem.Image courtesy of Shakima Thomas
Yvette Jordan, teacher and member of Newark Education Workers Caucus
My concern as well as other educators who I have spoken with, of course, is our students as well as small children and those most vulnerable, including elderly and women who are pregnant. We felt we represented a cross-section of our city and especially of those who would be impacted. A couple of us who were homeowners or parents of small children — we felt emotional about this. We could really speak to it with some credibility. My own home’s water was found to be 42.2 parts per billion which is over the federal threshold for lead.
Our teachers’ group was approached by the Natural Resource Defense Council and they asked if we could join them in a lawsuit against the City of Newark. We asked, “Why?” They said, “Well, your water actually rivals Flint, Michigan.” We were alarmed. We said we’d join them.
I mentioned it in my classroom with my students. Some students have heard something and others don’t know what I’m talking about. I feel it’s a failure of public trust in coming forward and saying exactly what is happening.
I think a lot of times people who are affiliated with those who are in power try to downplay what is going on. They try to say to those who are speaking out about it are being irresponsible, that we shouldn’t say anything because it will scare the public. Well, guess what? They should be scared.
Shakima Thomas’s son, 4, bathes in water in Newark, New Jersey.Image courtesy of Shakima Thomas
Shakima Thomas, social worker
I pay for water and it’s really confusing for me that I have to pay for toxic water. What I’m paying is not adding up to the service that I’m getting. I don’t appreciate it, especially as a hard working person. Even as a mom, I have to protect my son, who’s a four-year-old. He’s okay and doesn’t have any elevated levels of lead in his bloodstream, but this still is a public health disaster.
It’s people’s lives. Who wants to have lead in your bloodstream? Who wants that? None of us. We were just exposed to this toxic water. It’s horrible. I think it should be a federal class action lawsuit against this city. That’s what I would think. And I think that we should be reimbursed from the time that administration knew about the lead in the water up until now. From 2016 to now, I feel as though my fees for water should be waived, because I was buying poison, and it wasn’t even consensual. I’m not just going to go out there willingly purchasing poison. I’m just not gonna do that. So, that’s what makes this even more of a scandal.
The mayor keeps saying that this isn’t like Flint. It is the same as Flint in the way that they tried to cover it up. It’s the same thing. We were victimized by this administration. They gamble with our health. They put politics first before justice.
Original post:
Here’s what 3 Newark residents had to say about the city’s lead crisis
Flint’s mayor, who promised to clean up its water problems, faces a recall election today.
At a hearing on the federal response to the 2017 hurricane season, New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler questioned the EPA’s decision to declare water drawn from the Dorado Superfund site OK to drink.
In 2016, the agency found that water at Dorado contained solvents that pose serious health risks, including liver damage and cancer. Yet after CNN reported that Hurricane Maria survivors were pulling water from the site’s two wells, the EPA conducted an analysis and found the water fit for consumption.
When Nadler asked Pete Lopez, administrator for Region 2 of the EPA, why his agency changed its position, Lopez responded that the chemicals are present in the water, but are within drinking water tolerance levels.
The EPA’s standards for drinking water are typically higher than international norms, John Mutter, a Columbia University professor and international disaster relief expert, told Grist. Nonetheless, he believes it is unusual for the EPA to declare water safe to drink just one year after naming it a Superfund site.
At the hearing, Nadler said the situation was “eerily similar” to the EPA’s response after 9/11 in New York. One week after the attacks, the agency said the air in the neighborhood was safe to breathe. But since then, 602 people who initially survived the attack have died from cancer or aerodigestive issues like asthma, and thousands more have become sick.
“The [EPA’s] history of making mistakes makes you feel like perhaps they should be challenged,” says Mutter, citing the water contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan.
Source:
Flint’s mayor, who promised to clean up its water problems, faces a recall election today.
Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Wiley
Tagged columbia, flint water crisis, jerrold-nadler, justice, michigan, nadler, news, nonetheless, Ona, professor, water, wiley
Comments Off on Flint’s mayor, who promised to clean up its water problems, faces a recall election today.
Remember that money Congress approved to rebuild Flint’s water system? Some of it is finally on the way.
According to the cover article in today’s issue of the journal Nature, the iconic reef off the coast of Australia suffered unprecedented coral die-off after last year’s record-breaking bleaching event. Now, as the Southern Hemisphere hits late summer temperatures, central and southern sections of the reef — areas which avoided the worst of last year’s bleaching — are in trouble.
“We didn’t expect to see this level of destruction to the Great Barrier Reef for another 30 years,” coral researcher Terry Hughes told the New York Times. Hughes led the team that conducted aerial surveys to document the bleaching last year, as well as subsequent surveys to assess just how much of that bleaching turned into dying.
Bleached corals don’t always turn into dead corals — some are able to recover when temperatures drop. Er, if temperatures drop. If water temperatures stay high and corals stay bleached, they will eventually starve to death. Without coral building reefs, whole ecosystems may disappear, along with the food, tourism, and jobs they support.
Hughes and his coauthors found that even corals in pristine, protected water were likely to be suffering from heat stress, meaning the only thing left to do to protect corals is, you know, address climate change.
Read this article:
Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized
Tagged anchor, congress, flint water crisis, great-barrier, hughes, nature, radius, reef-off-the, team, without
Comments Off on Remember that money Congress approved to rebuild Flint’s water system? Some of it is finally on the way.
Undocumented immigrants still face unique obstacles in Flint’s water crisis.
Australian architect James Gardiner wants to use 3D-printing technology to build structures for coral to grow on in places where reefs are decimated by disease, pollution, dredging, and other maladies (looking at you, crown o’ thorns).
Right now, artificial reefs are built out of uniform, blocky assemblages of concrete or steel. Those are cheap and easy to make, but don’t look or work like the real thing — for starters, because “the marine life that colonizes these reef surfaces can sometimes fall off,” one biologist told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Gardiner worked with David Lennon of Reef Design Lab to design new shapes with textured surfaces and built-in tunnels and shelters. The computer models are turned into wax molds with the world’s largest 3D printer, and then cast with, essentially, sand. It’s a cheap and low-carbon way to manufacture custom, modular pieces of reef.
Reef Design Lab installed the first 3D-printed reef in Bahrain in 2012 — and, eight months later, it was covered with algae, sponges, and fish.
Mandatory disclaimer: Rebuilding all of the world’s coral reefs by hand is impossible, and climate change is still the biggest threat facing coral reefs, so let’s not forget to save the ones we’ve got.
Read the article:
Undocumented immigrants still face unique obstacles in Flint’s water crisis.
Posted in alo, Anchor, Crown, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized
Tagged first, flint water crisis, g & f, herald-gardiner, james-gardiner, lead poisoning, lennon, pollution, Real, sydney
Comments Off on Undocumented immigrants still face unique obstacles in Flint’s water crisis.
Republicans and Democrats spread the blame around at Flint water crisis hearing
Republicans and Democrats spread the blame around at Flint water crisis hearing
By Xian Chiang-Warenon 17 Mar 2016commentsShare
Finger-pointing was the name of the game during a congressional oversight committee hearing on Thursday that, in theory, was meant to hone in on which level of government was at fault in Flint, Michigan’s public health emergency. After hearing from the two star witnesses, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy, the answer appears to be (spoiler alert) all of them are to blame.
Lower-level officials both in the EPA and Snyder administration have already resigned over the mishandling of Flint’s water crisis, including former EPA midwestern regional head Susan Hedman and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Director Dan Wyant. But politicians’ calls for officials higher up the chain — as high as Snyder and the head of the EPA — to resign reached a fever pitch on Thursday. Democratic lawmakers repeatedly called for his resignation after his administration’s spectacular failures in Flint. Republican lawmakers also ramped up the pressure on McCarthy throughout the long-anticipated, frequently terse House Committee on Oversight and Government Regulation hearing on the Flint water crisis.
“If you want to do the courageous thing, like you said Susan Hedman did, then you, too, should resign,” House Oversight Chair Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told McCarthy, his voice rising during a heated exchange in which he frequently cut off the EPA head’s attempts to explain state-level restrictions to EPA action.
Advertisement – Article continues below
During a particularly tense exchange between Chaffetz and McCarthy, the committee chair grew frustrated with McCarthy, saying that she had the ultimate power to do something about Flint. “So why do we even need an EPA?” Chaffetz asked.
Usually Republicans say that to suggest that the EPA isn’t necessary, and that the EPA only exists to burden businesses and its responsibilities should be handed to the states. Today, Chaffetz made a rare case that the EPA failed Flint because it didn’t do more than the law required of the agency.
But Chaffetz still had a point about the EPA’s failure to act — an irony wasn’t lost on some Democrats. “Republicans have been slamming the EPA for overreaching at every possible turn, then they criticize the EPA for not doing more when Governor Snyder fell down on the job,” Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) said.
Flint’s lead problems began in April 2014 when a Snyder-appointed emergency manager switched the city’s water supply from Detroit — sourced from the Great Lakes — to Flint River, historically a highly polluted industrial dumping ground. City and state officials assured residents the water was safe to drink until last fall. Though EPA water expert Miguel Del Toral noted as early as February 2015 that Flint’s water supply was no longer being treated for lead and that the tests showing the water was safe were inaccurate, it wasn’t until November that the EPA shared that information with the public, though the agency privately expressed concerns to Michigan officials in the interim months.
Though Snyder and McCarthy at times found themselves attacked from both sides of the aisle (“I am not on your side,” Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth told McCarthy), most lawmakers hewed to party lines. Congressional Republicans chose not to focus on Snyder when he apologized for his administration’s failures but cast primary blame on “career bureaucrats.” McCarthy, for her part, stuck firmly to the line that her agency was blocked, repeatedly, by the state government. “I wish we had gone further, I wish we had gone farther, I wish we had yelled from the treetops,” McCarthy said. “But there is no way that my agency created this problem, or there was ambiguity in the existing law that wouldn’t’ve done the same thing that the governor said, which was let them know, use your common sense, don’t put people at risk.”
According to published emails on the administration’s response to Flint, the EPA and Snyder administration were locked in a debate over state officials’ misreading of the federal lead and copper rule, with the state insisting that the water did not need certain chemical treatments when it switched water supply. It was the state’s responsibility to follow the rule, and the EPA’s to ensure Michigan followed it correctly.
Please
to view the comments.
Find this article interesting?
Donate now to support our work.
Get Grist in your inbox
Originally posted here –
Republicans and Democrats spread the blame around at Flint water crisis hearing
Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Jason, LAI, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized
Tagged article, department, flint, flint water crisis, government, great, politics, radius
Comments Off on Republicans and Democrats spread the blame around at Flint water crisis hearing
