CORRECTION: The column excerpt at the end of this story should have been attributed to Ian Shetron, a part-time Flint resident and a researcher for Luntz Global Partners, not freelance writer Dennis Lennox.
*****
The ongoing political battle for the high ground in Flint, a circus-like, hyper-partisan blame-game between Republicans and Democrats, is long overdue for a truce.
When
Michael Moore and Cher and Fox News and Congress each throw in their two cents,
what we have is a skirmish that doesn’t make a dime’s worth of difference for
the victims of this man-made crisis – the residents of Flint.
Both
sides have made their points. Both have produced timelines and documentation
that refutes some of the “facts” stated by the opposition. But both have to
concede that how and why Flint began using the Flint River as a drinking water
source is a different topic from what happened and why after the problems with
the tap water surfaced.
The
foot-dragging and the cover-up after brown, smelly water turned into something
much more disturbing – water used for drinking, bathing and cooking with high
lead levels -- is a scandalous chronology with tentacles that reach into state and federal government agencies.
The
partial release by the governor of internal emails regarding the crisis remains
insufficient. Some would say it’s about as transparent as a glass of Flint
water.
But
the reasons why Flint temporarily switched to the city’s river water were far from sinister. City officials supported the move. As the transition to the Flint River was celebrated, the former mayor called it "an important day." The river had been a backup source of drinking
water in case of emergency for many years and it played that role in routine testing four times annually.
Those
who portray the governor and his administration as heartless government ruffians
forcing the river water down the throats of Flint children are merely playing
political games.
A
price must be paid by those who let the lead-tainted water continue to flow for
several months after the dangers were discovered.
But
I’m convinced that, in the end, the main Flint water story will not be about bureaucratic
intransigence or criminal negligence but rather incompetence at the heart of
the matter – at the Flint water plant.
Ian Shetron, a part-time Flint resident and a researcher for Luntz Global Partners, has written a column for the conservative Daily Caller website in which he
offers a bit of an insider’s perspective on the interim switch to river water:
“…
The city has considered the Flint River a backup water source for decades. I was in meetings in 2008, two years before Rick Snyder was first elected, where community leaders of all political stripes backed the Flint River option as Detroit continued to raise rates -- the reason Flint and surrounding areas had decided to build their own pipeline in the first place.
“And the blame rests with more than just elected officials. Unelected bureaucrats and city workers responsible for providing clean water
were clearly negligent from start to finish. Ignored emails to city and county departments from the state bear that out. For their unresponsiveness to complaints from citizens, and their inability to
adequately clean the water in the first place, many of them deserve to lose their jobs, be investigated and, if necessary, face prosecution.”
“And the blame rests with more than just elected officials. Unelected bureaucrats and city workers responsible for providing clean water
were clearly negligent from start to finish. Ignored emails to city and county departments from the state bear that out. For their unresponsiveness to complaints from citizens, and their inability to
adequately clean the water in the first place, many of them deserve to lose their jobs, be investigated and, if necessary, face prosecution.”
Can't agree with this vein of articles in the last few days/seeks that administrators were not "sinister" or acted in good faith without a per-conceived agenda. The agenda was political and financial taken from the ALEC playbook of state usurping control from locals. Here's a statement about caution needed for using Flint Rv as a benign backup from the 1M member Clean Water Action group: " We also keep hearing about the dirty Flint River. It's true that this river suffers the burden of decades of lack of regard for our precious water resources. But it’s not the river’s fault. I would leave it to our nation’s dedicated water professionals to discuss how water like that in the Flint River might be made an acceptable drinking water source. But a perfect storm of bad decisions and lack of oversight led to a situation where modern water chemistry and engineering were not put to work to make the Flint River an appropriate source.
ReplyDeleteTo compound the problem, after the decision to set up a temporary water system it appears that decision-makers chose not to follow experts’ advice to control for corrosion in water pipes and otherwise run a modern drinking water treatment plant. State officials appear to have been unaware of both the law and the realities of water treatment.
Water treatment and distribution is a profession because its practitioners are highly trained and are ideally updating their knowledge constantly. The science of drinking water is not fixed – we learn new things every day – and it’s not simple. The cascade of irresponsible decisions and activities in Flint must be a wake-up call to government at every level and indeed to all of us about what is at stake when we make decisions about water." http://www.cleanwateraction.org/feature/thoughts-flint-putting-drinking-water-first-back-basics