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Black Voters Are Going to Be Pissed When They Hear About This

by BeatricNevarez Posted on March 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Well, crap. Dinesh D’Souza has somehow uncovered the secret history of the Democratic Party: Not only were we once the party of slavery, but racism among prominent Democrats continued “well into the 20th century.” Can you imagine? But we’ve been working feverishly for decades to keep our shameful past swept under the rug, so virtually nobody knows this anymore.

Well, some of us knew it. It so happens that I’m part of the inner circle, so I knew it. But the rest of you sheeple didn’t, and that’s the way we intended to keep it. Unfortunately, someone ratted us out. I guess we should have kept D’Souza locked up longer on that bogus campaign finance violation. The foreign oligarchs who have been funding our propaganda efforts are not going to be pleased.

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Black Voters Are Going to Be Pissed When They Hear About This

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How You Can Be Green in the Office

by WendyWWQHcs Posted on March 5, 2016

I have a nine-to-five job, spending most of my day in front of the computer and far removed from any Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) property. I will likely not be doing hands-on conservation on any given work day. Sometimes, cubicle dwellers like me need to think hard about how we can contribute in environmentally positive ways in our workplace.

Recently, the NCC national office in Toronto opened a can of worms in hopes of closing the loop with our organic wastes. Up until November 2015, there had been no organic waste collection in our building. That all changed when a vermiculture start-up contacted NCC about composting our food waste through Green Bins Growing.

Owner and operator of WasteNot Worm Farms, Jocelyn Molyneux, is just about the most enthusiastic person Ive seen about red, wriggly worms. Over a lunch and learn, Jocelyn introduced our group to the important roles worms play in agriculture, the differences between traditional (hot) composting and worm composting and their fertilizer by-products. Of about a dozen attendees, only one had experience with worm composting and that was from the college she attended that had adopted this practice.

So whats the point of all this, and is it worth it?

Worms are the soils natural nutrient recycling squad and they are quite apt at this job. They eat decaying matter and produce nutrient-rich biofertilizer. By signing on for an office worm composting system, were looking to divert our organic waste away from landfill to a process that feeds back into our food system.

Jocelyn told us one pound of worms can eat up to one pound of food waste each day. The resulting manure material is called worm castings a dense, nutrient-rich humus that sequesters carbons, feeds soil with beneficial microbes that kick-start the soil food web and provides natural plant growth stimulators.

Compare this to conventional fertilizers, which are generally made from petroleum products: conventional fertilizers damage the natural soil ecosystem, reducing soil fertility by killing soil microbes and creating a dependency on further chemical fertilizer applications. Check out this fertilizer buying guide published by National Geographic.

Even when compared to traditional composting, worms come out on top. Traditional composting produces a low-grade soil mulch where the high heat treatment has killed most beneficial microbes and much of the carbon and other nutrients have broken down, Jocelyn says.

The price difference is telling, too. Worm castings weigh in at $400 U.S./cubic yard versus $30 U.S./cubic yard for compost.

A big incentive with WasteNot Worm Farm is that we receive 25 percent of our years castings to give out to employees or donate to a community garden. A good deal, compared to buying it at $5/lb, if you ask me!

Meeting our worms

Red wigglers are small but have a big appetite (Photo by NCC)

After receiving the 101 on worm composting, we had the chance to introduce ourselves to the red wigglers we had just employed. To our surprise, these are thin, spindly worms about two to four inches long; nothing like the big plump earthworms (night crawlers) some of us encounter while working in our gardens.

A brave few held their hand out to meet the worms, but were told not to handle them for too long as worms are photosensitive and can go into spasms under prolonged exposure to light.

We will not however actually have a worm bin in our kitchen, and for good reason! WasteNot Worm Farms collects our food wastes weekly, reducing the risk of fruit flies and limiting the waft of bad odors. Composting at a central farm facility (about 80 kilometres outside of Toronto) is more efficient for a small operation like WasteNot Worm Farms. Like the worms themselves, WasteNot Worm Farms is small but has a big appetite.

Ontario sends three million tonnes of organics to landfill each year, mostly because it’s cheaper to landfill in Michigan than it is to compost in Ontario.

Canadians are hungry for sustainable solutions, and worm farming is a simple, inexpensive biotechnology that recycles waste nutrients back to our soil. With early adopters like the Nature Conservancy of Canada leading the way, I’m confident that vermicomposting is on the verge of becoming a popular Zero Waste industrial recycling solution, says Jocelyn.

Trashing out then and now

Green Bin Growing (Photo by NCC)

It has now been four months since we started using the green bins and I can already see a drastic diversion of wastes. In the past without organic waste collection services, we had no choice but to dump our food scraps into the same bin as our non-recyclables. Since we signed on with WasteNot Worm Farms, our staff have been diligent in correctly sorting their organic, compostable items, recyclables and trash.

Our hope is that by paying a small premium for Green Bins Growing, we are supporting a waste management practice that promotes environmental sustainability. We are looking forward to seeing the volume of worm castings our wastes can generate over the year, ensuring were doing our part to cycle those nutrients back into our soil.

This post originally appeared on Land Lines and was written by Wendy Ho, editorial coordinator with the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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How You Can Be Green in the Office

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14 debate questions for Sanders and Clinton on climate, justice, and Flint

by MilfordEdgell Posted on March 4, 2016

14 debate questions for Sanders and Clinton on climate, justice, and Flint

By on 4 Mar 2016commentsShare

It’s not that expectations were very high for the Republican debate in Detroit on Thursday night. Even so, the debate hardly paid attention to the city’s troubles with lead poisoning. Aside for brief comments from Marco Rubio (in which he defended Republican Gov. Rick Snyder), the GOP brushed the issue aside, while standing a mere 70 miles from Flint. Instead, we heard about more pressing topics — like presidential penises.

Democrats have their own debate in Flint on Sunday, when environmental justice activists have higher hopes for a substantive discussion on both race and the environment.

“If Flint is not the place that this happens, it probably is not going to happen in a controlled format with two presidential candidates, ever,” Anthony Rogers-Wright, policy and organizing director of Environmental Action, told Grist.

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A coalition of groups partnering with Environmental Action delivered a petition with 85,000 signatures that calls on the Democratic National Committee to focus solely on racial and environmental justice. Sierra Club, the NAACP, and local community leaders are holding their own event Sunday to draw attention to other “Flints” around the country.

Both Environmental Action and Sierra Club gave Grist separate lists of sample questions they’d like to hear answers to — the topics include hydraulic fracturing, the future of fossil fuels, and equitable policy to help communities of color.

Here’s what Environmental Action wants answers on:

1. Robert Bullard, known as the “father” of environmental justice in America, has said that climate change impacts communities of color “first and worst.” As president, what specific steps would you take to make sure your policies to fight global warming better protect communities of color on the front lines of this global crisis?

2. Secretary Clinton, you just released a bulletin that calls for more use of natural gas as well as carbon capture and sequestration. But wouldn’t this plan mean increased fracking across the country and the potential for drinking water sources to be tainted as it is right here in Flint? Is there a safe way to frack, and if so, what steps would you take to ensure safety and minimize disproportionate impacts to communities of color?

3. Last December, nearly 200 world leaders signed an agreement you both support to cap global warming at 1.5-2 degrees Celsius. To accomplish that goal, scientists tell us we must leave 80 percent of proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground. As president, what specific policies would you implement to limit new oil, gas, and coal development and keep America under this “carbon budget”? Secretary Clinton, will you support Sen. Sanders’ plan to ban drilling and mining on public lands and waters, the so-called “Keep It In The Ground” act?

4. Sen. Sanders, how will you enforce a ban on fossil fuel extraction without the support of Congress — which has voted in favor of the Keystone pipeline, oil exports, gas exports, and other fossil fuel extraction in the last six months?

5. Solutions to climate change such as electric cars and efficient lightbulbs are predicated on economic resources that are unavailable to many low-wealth communities of color. What climate change strategies would each of you implement to ensure that people of all income levels can take part in and benefit from living sustainably?

6. Policies like President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 12898, created to address environmental racism, have been never been ratified or implemented as a national law. If elected, how would you overcome political obstacles that stand in the way of equitable and efficient environmental policy?

7. Secretary Clinton, your past statements, referring to men of color as “super-predators,” and past polices that you supported that resulted in the mass incarceration of largely Latino and African American [men] have caused some to question your commitment to racial justice. Do you regret your previous statement and support of that policy, and how would you correct it as president?

8. The GI Bill, New Deal, and favorable housing policies created generational wealth for white Americans. These programs were largely not made available to people of color, which in part contributes to the vast wealth disparity between white people and people of color. What are some specific policies you would implement to not only increase incomes for people of color, but also allow them to generate similar generational wealth as their white counterparts?

9. Native Americans who live on sovereign land have seen treaties broken time and time again, which has exposed them to toxic air and water as well as unequal protection and due process. As president, what commitment will you make to ensure tribal sovereignty and that treaties are respected and maintained?

10. Free trade agreements like NAFTA have not only contributed to increased carbon emissions, but they have also had significant impacts on jobs in communities like Flint, Detroit, Cleveland, and others. Some studies have shown that communities of color were hit the hardest from jobs shipped overseas as a result of these agreements. Where do each of you stand on free trade agreements, and if you advocate for them, how will you ensure they have environmental standards and do not result in the loss of American jobs essential to maintaining the middle class?

11. Should immigration enforcement should be suspended until the 1,000+ undocumented people in Flint get the services and help they need, should the Border Patrol should continue setting up in and around the city while this crisis is ongoing?

Sierra Club added three questions of its own that its members on the ground in Michigan want answered:

12. Do you think emergency manager laws, like the one in Michigan, are compatible with democratic ideals?

13. How should the government ensure that rebuilding after a disaster like Flint provides good paying local jobs that help lift up the community?

14. How should the federal government get involved when a crisis like Flint occurs?

Hold out some hope that CNN, which is moderating the debate, is listening. Rogers-Wright spoke to a network representative earlier this week about the questions the network should ask on Sunday, so a couple of these may indeed get prime-time attention.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders hopefully won’t need too much prompting, though: Ahead of Michigan’s primary next week, Clinton has drawn attention to Flint’s problems as a main focus of her campaign, and Sanders has also called on Snyder to resign.

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14 debate questions for Sanders and Clinton on climate, justice, and Flint

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Ted Cruz holds Flint water crisis money hostage

by MistyBrookman68 Posted on February 26, 2016

Ted Cruz holds Flint water crisis money hostage

By on 25 Feb 2016commentsShare

Stage fright is a real affliction that affects us all in different ways. For Ted Cruz, on the eve of a presidential debate in his home state of Texas, stage fright apparently involves withholding disaster funding for a community that’s endured an enormous injustice.

On Thursday, the Senator from Texas and Republican presidential candidate put a so-called “soft hold” (a temporary delay) on the aid package meant to deliver $850 million in aid to help the victims of the water crisis in Flint, Mich. The money would go to repairing faulty water infrastructure in Flint and other cities, namely those facing similar lead crises. Politico reports that Cruz said he needed more time to study the proposal’s details, while Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) also confirmed that the deal was on hold, just hours before the GOP presidential debate.

Senate Democrats involved with the proposal were irked by the holdup, saying that they had made several cuts to appease Republicans and push the program through. The bipartisan bill, reportedly supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, would devote $100 million in loans to address drinking water emergencies, $70 million in credit subsidies for upgrades to water infrastructure, and $50 million for public health and education efforts. Some Republicans, Cruz likely among them, fear the bill could set an expensive standard for how the government deals with other crises, like the Zika virus outbreak.

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Cruz in particular has been intentionally, unabashedly selective in his distribution of aid to the victims of Flint’s poisoned water. Last month, after publicly stating that “every American is entitled to have access to clean water,” Cruz’s presidential campaign began handing out water bottles to Flint’s thirsty residents — well, those who visited one of the city’s four crisis pregnancy centers, which are essentially just anti-abortion organizations. It was a PR stunt meant to call attention to what Cruz’s Michigan campaign leader Wendy Lynn Day called a demonstration of “the pro-life values of Senator Cruz.”

But to judge by history, Cruz isn’t against using federal aid to help communities facing environmental disasters at all — at least, not when that use can benefit him politically. In 2015, Cruz asked for federal money to help people in his home state of Texas after a series of damaging floods. When it came to aiding his own constituents, he said, “the federal government’s role, once the Governor declares a disaster area…[has] statutory obligations in stepping in to respond to this natural disaster.”

Lead poisoning, which causes neurological, behavioral, and physical impairments, is already rampant in Flint. It’s shocking that Cruz continues to block a remedy for a dire situation — but then again, coming from a man who contributed less than 1 percent of his income to charity, perhaps it shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

But withholding disaster relief funding may come at a cost for Cruz. The Republican presidential primary in Michigan on March 8 is fast approaching, and residents without clean water in Flint now have one candidate on whose padded shoulders to squarely place the blame.

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Ted Cruz holds Flint water crisis money hostage

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Clinton’s Pitch to New Hampshire: Electing a Woman Is the Real Revolution

by MiraWolford Posted on February 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton had some company at a rally for campaign volunteers in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Friday afternoon: four Democratic women who serve as US senators, and a fifth, New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan, who wants to join them next January. As she makes her final push in a state whose first-in-the-nation primary she won eight years ago, Clinton is traveling with a group of prominent women politicians who are saying explicitly what she dances around—that electing the first woman president would be a big effing deal, and you should absolutely think about that when you go to the polls.

“This is the torch that must be passed on, that you’ll be passing on when you’re out there door-knocking—you know how important this historical moment is for us,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. She told a story about a photo of her late mother with Clinton that she keeps on her desk, and related an anecdote about a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee on the subject of paid maternity leave. “A male Republican across the table says, ‘Well, I don’t know why that’d be mandatory, I never had to use it,'” Klobuchar recalled. “Without missing a beat, Sen. Debbie Stabenow said, ‘I bet your mother did!'” The audience ate it up.

Stabenow, from Michigan, used her five minutes to tear into the sexist standards female candidates are subjected to—something that flared up recently when the Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward (among other male pundits) suggested the former secretary of state shouted too much. Stabenow was blunt:

Anyone see the movie Sufragette, yeah? You need to see that if you haven’t. We’re almost at the 100th anniversary of the women’s right to vote. But there’s always a message we get about we’re too this or too that. Wait your turn. You smile too much, you must not be serious. You don’t smile enough, you must not be friendly! You talk too much and you’re too serious and you know, I wouldn’t want to have a beer with you—or I would want to have a beer with you but you can’t run security for your country. Your hair! You know, that—Donald Trump’s hair! What about that hair! Come on! So let me say this, and I say this particularly to the women. Guys, you can listen, but the women: Don’t do this. Don’t do this. This is the moment.

“When folks talk about a rev-o-lu-tion,” she said, elongating the final word in a brief Bernie Sanders impression, “the rev-o-lu-tion is electing the first woman president of the United States! That’s the revolution. And we’re ready for the revolution.”

The presence of Klobuchar, Stabenow, and Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire had another effect: It reminded voters that, notwithstanding her claim to not be a member of the Democratic establishment, Clinton has the backing of almost all of Sanders’ colleagues in the Senate Democratic caucus. And they’re not shy about explaining why.

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Clinton’s Pitch to New Hampshire: Electing a Woman Is the Real Revolution

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The Bernie vs. Hillary Fight Is Kind of Ridiculous

by BellaMaughan6 Posted on February 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Michigan senator Debbie Stabenow supports Hillary Clinton: “I think Bernie’s terrific as an advocate. There’s a difference between a strong community advocate and being someone who can get things done.” Martin Longman says this is an example of how nasty things are getting: “Breaking out the Sarah Palin talking points isn’t smart. Talk about how people view socialism all you want, but don’t dismiss community organizers or advocates. This isn’t a Republican campaign.”

I had to laugh at that. Nasty? I’d rate it about a 1 on the Atwater Scale. Toughen up, folks.

And speaking of this, it sure is hard to take seriously the gripes going back and forth between the Hillary and Bernie camps. Is it really the case that we can’t even agree on the following two points?

Sanders is more progressive than Clinton.
Clinton is more electable than Sanders.

I mean, come on. They’re both lefties, but Sanders is further left. The opposing arguments from the Clinton camp are laughable. Clinton is more progressive because she can get more done? Sorry. That’s ridiculous. She and Bill Clinton have always been moderate liberals, both politically and temperamentally. We have over two decades of evidence for this.

As for electability, I admire Sanders’ argument that he can drive a bigger turnout, which is good for Democrats. But it’s special pleading. The guy cops to being a socialist. He’s the most liberal member of the Senate by quite a margin (Elizabeth Warren is the only senator who’s close). He’s already promised to raise middle-class taxes. He can’t be bothered to even pretend that he cares about national security issues, which are likely to play a big role in this year’s election. He wants to spend vast amounts of money on social programs. It’s certainly true that some of this stuff might appeal to people like me, but it’s equally true that there just aren’t a lot of voters like me. Liberals have been gaining ground over the past few years, but even now only 24 percent of Americans describe themselves that way. Republicans would tear Sanders to shreds with hardly an effort, and there’s no reason to think he’d be especially skilled at fending off their attacks.

I like both Sanders and Clinton. But let’s stop kidding ourselves about what they are and aren’t. Republicans won’t be be swayed by these fantasies, and neither will voters. We might as well all accept it.

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The Bernie vs. Hillary Fight Is Kind of Ridiculous

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What Flint’s Dirty Water and Detroit’s Angry Teachers Have in Common

by TawnyaSherwood Posted on January 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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Michigan is having a rough year, to put it mildly. Flint is reeling from the news that its water supply was contaminated with lead for 17 months. In Detroit, teacher “sick-outs” have been shutting down schools; 88 of the city’s 104 schools were closed on January 21. These two seemingly unrelated episodes are joined by a common policy: Both Detroit’s school system and Flint’s water system have been under the control of emergency managers, unelected officials who are empowered to make sweeping decisions and override local policies in the name of balancing budgets.

What’s an emergency manager? Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was elected in 2010 on a platform of fiscal austerity. Snyder, the former head of Gateway computers and a darling of the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, promised to run the state like a company, complete with “outcomes” and “deliverables.” In 2011, he introduced a signature piece of legislation, Public Act 4, which expanded the state’s authority to take over financially troubled cities and school districts. Similar laws exist in about 20 states, but Michigan’s is the most expansive: Emergency managers picked by the governor have the power to renegotiate or cancel city contracts, unilaterally draft policy, privatize public services, sell off city property, and even fire elected officials.

Since 2011, 17 municipalities or school districts in Michigan have been assigned emergency managers. The majority of them are in poor, predominantly African-American communities that have been hit hard by depressed economies and shrinking populations. Some EMs have worked with communities to generate local buy-in, but their outsider status, lack of accountability, and propensity for cutting public services to save money have generated harsh criticism. As Michael Steinberg, the legal director for the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said a recent statement, “Flint is Exhibit A for what happens when a state suspends democracy and installs unaccountable bean counters to run a city.”

So what does this have to do with Flint? Flint was one of the the first cities to be assigned an emergency manager, in 2011; it would have four EMs in as many years. In 2013, its city council voted to build a pipeline to Lake Huron that would free the city of its dependence on Detroit’s water system by 2017. Ed Kurtz, the then-emergency manager, signed off on the plan, and the question became where Flint would source its water in the intervening years. According to a recent Daily Beast investigation, Kurtz rejected the idea of using Flint River water based on conversations with Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality. Longtime Flint residents were also skeptical of the idea: General Motors, which calls Flint home, had used the river as a dumping ground for years.

Yet in 2014, under emergency manager Darnell Earley, the city switched water sources to the Flint River. It remains unclear what led authorities to believe that Flint River water was safe to drink; Earley maintains the decision was supported in a vote by the city council, though there is no record of such a vote. Howard Croft, the former director of public works for Flint, told the ACLU that the decision was financial, had been reviewed by state authorities, and went “all the way to the governor’s office.”

In March of 2015, after months of residents reporting unusual health symptoms and foul-smelling, tainted water coming from their taps, the Flint City Council voted to “do all things necessary” to switch back to Detroit’s water system. Then-acting emergency manager Jerry Ambrose nixed the vote, calling it “incomprehensible.”

And what about Detroit? For the past few weeks, Detroit teachers have been protesting with coordinated sick days that have caused dozens of temporary school closures. The sick-outs, the teachers say, are in response to disgraceful school conditions, from black mold and dead rodents in classrooms to class sizes of more than 40 students.

The Detroit Public School system has been under the authority of an emergency manager since 2009, when the beleaguered system of roughly 100,000 students was mired in debt. Today, after six years under four emergency managers, the number of students has shrunk by about 50 percent while the system’s debt has ballooned to $515 million. It risks going bankrupt by April. Over the past five years, every public school employee has taken a 10 percent wage cut.

“Emergency management is not working,” Ivy Bailey, the president of Detroit Federation of Teachers, told CNN. “If the goal was to destroy DPS, emergency management has done an excellent job.”

Governor Snyder’s latest pick for DPS emergency manager was Darnell Earley, the same official who oversaw Flint’s transition to corrosive river water. On January 21, the day 88 schools were shut down, the school system filed a restraining order against the protesting teachers meant to stop them from calling in sick. The motion was denied. On January 23, Earley posted new rules requiring teachers to submit a written report to him if they learn about their fellow employees organizing a strike. “Failure to immediately comply with this order may be grounds for discipline up to and including termination,” the rules read. Earley’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

What’s next for Michigan’s emergency managers?

There are currently no Michigan cities with emergency managers, though three school districts still them. But they remain unpopular with many Michiganders. Democratic legislators say they will introduce a bill to repeal the EM law. Voters already overturned the EM law in a November 2012 referendum, but a month later, the Republican-led state legislature passed a nearly identical law attached to an appropriations bill that is immune to voter referendum.

“Appointing an emergency manager is the last thing I ever want to do,” wrote Snyder in a 2012 blog post entitled “Why Michigan Needs Its Emergency Manager Law,” written just before the voter referendum. “But if worse comes to worse, the state has a responsibility to protect the health, welfare and safety of its citizens. We can’t stand by and watch schools fail, water shut off, or police protection disappear.”

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What Flint’s Dirty Water and Detroit’s Angry Teachers Have in Common

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Meet 5 Everyday Heroes of Flint’s Water Crisis

by CyrusZkeafejh Posted on January 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Long before Flint’s water crisis made national headlines, there were plenty of people raising hell about the tainted water or working to lessen its burden in this impoverished, majority-black city of nearly 100,000 people.

Also read:
1. Meet the mom who helped expose Flint’s toxic water nightmare
2. A toxic timeline of Flint’s water fiasco

The saga began in April 2014, when the city’s water source was switched from Detroit’s water system (whose source is Lake Huron) to the Flint River. For more than a year, government officials assured residents their water was safe, despite evidence to the contrary. After more than a year, state leaders finally conceded that the city had a serious public health crisis, and in October 2015 Gov. Rick Snyder announced that Flint would go back to using Detroit’s water.

Now, as Flint residents fret about potential long-term effects of lead—especially on the thousands of young children exposed—accusations are flying over who knew what, and when. But let’s not forget the heroes of Flint, those who donated time and money and muscle to assist others—not to mention the residents, researchers, and even one “rogue” EPA employee who helped bring the crisis to the world’s attention. Here are five notables.

William Archie/Detroit Free Press/ZUMA

The mom: In the summer of 2014, LeeAnne Walters, a stay-at-home mother of four, saw firsthand the effects of the state’s decision to switch water sources, as her toddlers developed weird rashes and family members’ hair fell out. Over the next few months, she joined a cavalcade of Flint residents complaining to city leaders of foul-smelling brown tap water and health effects ranging from hair loss to vision and memory problems. Lots of people protested, but Walters also raised hell with the Environmental Protection Agency, leading health researchers to investigate further. “Without her, we would be nowhere,” says Mona Hanna-Attisha, a local doctor (see below). To read more about Walters’ personal battle, click here.

Jake May/The Flint Journal-MLive.com/AP

The pastor: Though he was hardly the only church leader offering aid in the middle of Flint’s man-made disaster, Pastor Bobby Jackson has been distributing clean water to locals since September 2014. Jackson, who runs an independent homeless shelter called Mission of Hope, stores donated bottled water at five sites in his Flint hometown, and his volunteers estimate they distribute to at least 200 families daily. “We’re looking at maybe a couple of years before we drink tap water again,” Jackson told ThinkProgress. “We want to make sure that we can do the best we can until help arrives.”

Screenshot: ABC News

The EPA guy: In February 2015, Miguel Del Toral, a manager for the EPA’s Midwest water division, received a call from LeeAnne Walters (see above). Scouring city documents, Walters noticed the city wasn’t treating its water with standard corrosion control chemicals used to prevent old pipes from leaching lead into the water. Del Toral confirmed her suspicions and relayed his concerns to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. The next month, he visited Walters’ house to collect samples. In a June memo later leaked to the American Civil Liberties Union, Del Toral warned his bosses that the Flint River water had not been properly treated, and he called the lack of corrosion controls “a major concern.” (EPA division chief Susan Hedman, who dismissed Del Toral’s report as premature, would later resign.) But it wasn’t until after much bureaucratic wrangling that the state admitted it had made a mistake. “I never imagined that this would happen in the first place,” Del Toral told ABC News.

HashtagFlint/YouTube

The prof: Last spring, Marc Edwards, a professor of environmental engineering at Virginia Tech University and a former MacArthur Foundation genius grant recipient, also got a call from Walters, courtesy of the EPA’s Del Toral. More than a decade earlier, Edwards had helped uncover lead in Washington, DC, drinking water and corroded pipes in its sewer system. But after testing Walters’ water, Edwards was “shocked” to discover lead levels more than twice what the EPA qualified as hazardous waste. Accompanied by a team of student researchers, Edwards traveled to Flint and conducted more tests, shelling out $150,000 of his own money. His results, released in September, were key: He determined that Flint’s tap water was 19 times more corrosive than Detroit’s—Flint’s original source—and estimated that one in six Flint households had lead exposure levels higher than the threshold required for the EPA to take official action.

Ryan Garza/Detroit Free Press/ZUMA

The doctor: Last August, after hearing rumors of lead contamination in the water, Mona Hanna-Attisha, head of the pediatric residency program at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, began looking at the blood lead levels of children in Flint before and after the city switched its supply from Detroit’s water system to the Flint River. As a control, she looked at children who lived elsewhere in Genesee County. It turned out the rate of elevated lead concentrations in the blood of Flint kids under five years old had doubled—and in some areas, tripled—since the switchover. When Hanna-Attisha released her findings, state officials dismissed the results as “unfortunate,” and that was tough to take—”How can you not second-guess yourself?” she told the New York Times. But within a month, the state changed its tune. Gov. Snyder has since praised her efforts.

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Meet 5 Everyday Heroes of Flint’s Water Crisis

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Raw Data: Lead Poisoning of Kids in Flint

by BiancaBlackwood Posted on January 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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I wanted to get a read on historical levels of lead poisoning of children in Flint, Michigan, so I put together the chart on the right. There’s no consistent data available for the entire 20-year period, but I think I made fairly reasonable extrapolations from the data available.1 What you see is very steady and impressive progress from 1998 to 2013, with the number of children showing elevated blood lead levels (above 5 micrograms per deciliter) declining from approximately 50 percent to 3.6 percent.

Then Flint stopped using Detroit water and switched to Flint River water, which corroded the scale on their lead pipes and allowed lead to leach into the water. The number of children with elevated lead levels rose to 5.1 percent and then 6.4 percent.

In late 2015, Flint switched back to Detroit water. Preliminary testing suggests that this had a beneficial effect: the number of children with elevated lead levels dropped back to 3.0 percent. However, these numbers are still very tentative, so take them with a grain of salt.

1Here are my data sources and extrapolations. For early years, only data for children above 10 m/d was available, but later years showed both 10 m/d and 5 m/d, which suggests a rough factor of 6x between the two. Also, some years only show data for Genesee County, but other years show both Genesee and Flint, which suggests that Flint levels are about 1.6x higher than Genesee.

1998-2000: From Michigan Department of Health & Human Services chart here, extrapolated from Michigan —> Flint (factor = 0.87) and 10 m/d —> 5 m/d (factor = 6x)
2001-2004: From 2005 MDHHS report here, page 54, extrapolated from 10 m/d —> 5 m/d
2005-13: From MDHHS data here.
2014: From Hurley Medical center data here, adjusted for Genesee —> Flint (factor = 1.6)
2015: From Hurley Medical center data here, slides 10-11, adjusted for Genesee —> Flint.
2016: From preliminary MDHHS data for post-switch levels here.

Full spreadsheet here.

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Raw Data: Lead Poisoning of Kids in Flint

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Are there firefighting foam chemicals in your drinking water?

by Myrna Posted on December 21, 2015

A special report digs deep and uncovers a massive mess of PFCs in the environment. View this article: Are there firefighting foam chemicals in your drinking water? ; ; ;

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Are there firefighting foam chemicals in your drinking water?

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