Years after the emergency, the Michigan city is yet to replace all lead pipes and affected families are still awaiting justice
Earlier this month, Brittany Thomas received a call that her 11-year-old daughter Janiyah had experienced a seizure at school.
“She’d been seizure-free for about two years now,” said Thomas, a resident of Flint, Michigan. “And they just came back.”
The call took Thomas back to April 2014, when, to save money, the City of Flint switched to a water source that exposed more than 100,000 residents – including up to 12,000 children – to elevated levels of lead and bacteria. Thomas’s family drank bottled water at the time, but they cooked with and bathed in the tap water.
Soon after the switch, Thomas and her two children developed rashes on their skin. Then the children began experiencing frequent seizures that sent them in and out of the hospital. Blood tests revealed they had lead poisoning.
“I didn’t know how to feel,” she said. “I’ve been depressed, I’ve been frustrated, stressed out – can’t catch a break.”
Studies later showed that after officials changed Flint’s water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River, the percentage of children with elevated levels of lead levels in their blood doubled – and in some parts of the city, tripled. The switch also exposed residents to the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease, leading to as many as 115 deaths.
Democrats blunders are the reason Michigan is a swing state and not solid blue by now. No one in Flint is going to forget Obama patronizing their struggles with a publicity bit, and no one in Dearborn is going to forget Bidens actions now.
No one in Flint is going to forget that the emergency manager appointed by Rick Snyder ® was the direct cause of the crisis.
Nor should they.
But if they’re tallying the mistakes and blunders made by elected officials, and voting based on that, people should peruse the many volumes of the Donald j Trump Malfeasances Record Department - either building - and reassess why they’re red at all.
The slim folder containing the Biden and Obama fuckups can maybe be used as a fan. It gets hot in those buildings if you’re not in the sub-sub-sub basement with the 2016Jan-2016March section.
You’re mostly right, but I would say that Obama is not who people remember here when it comes to the water crisis. It was a ridiculous overreach by a Republican Governor and as someone who has lived in the area since before the crisis I still hear Rick Snyder and the emergency managers overwhelmingly. Obama barely gets mentioned