{"id":181862,"date":"2016-02-26T19:14:00","date_gmt":"2016-02-27T00:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/02\/26\/emails-flint-water-warnings-reached-govs-inner-circle\/"},"modified":"2016-02-26T19:14:00","modified_gmt":"2016-02-27T00:14:00","slug":"emails-flint-water-warnings-reached-govs-inner-circle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/02\/26\/emails-flint-water-warnings-reached-govs-inner-circle\/","title":{"rendered":"Emails: Flint water warnings reached gov’s inner circle"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Another email dump, and now we have proof that the Governor’s senior staff knew of the problems with Flint’s water over a year before they acknowledged the problem<\/a><\/p>\n

Two top advisers to Gov. Rick Snyder urged switching Flint back to Detroit\u2019s water system in October 2014 after General Motors Co. said the city\u2019s heavily chlorinated river water was rusting engine parts, according to governor\u2019s office emails examined by The Detroit News.<\/span>

<\/span>Valerie Brader, then Snyder\u2019s environmental policy adviser, requested that the governor\u2019s office ask Flint\u2019s emergency manager to return to Detroit\u2019s system on Oct. 14, 2014, three weeks before Snyder\u2019s re-election.<\/span>

<\/span>Mike Gadola, then the governor\u2019s chief legal counsel, agreed Flint should be switched back to Detroit water nearly a year before state officials relented to public pressure and independent research showing elevated levels of lead in the water and bloodstreams of Flint residents.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cTo anyone who grew up in Flint as I did, the notion that I would be getting my drinking water from the Flint River is downright scary,\u201d Gadola wrote. \u201cToo bad the (emergency manager) didn\u2019t ask me what I thought, though I\u2019m sure he heard it from plenty of others.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Brader\u2019s email alludes to festering concerns about how the chlorine used to kill the bacteria outbreak was causing the formation of a harmful disinfection byproduct known as trihalomethane, a carcinogen that can increase the risk of cancer, liver, kidney and central nervous system problems.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cSpecifically, there has been a boil water order due to bacterial contamination,\u201d Brader wrote. \u201cWhat is not yet broadly known is that attempts to fix that have led to some levels of chlorine-related chemicals that can cause long-term damage if not remedied (though we believe they will remedy them before any damage would occur in the population).\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>Two months later, the Department of Environmental Quality issued a Safe Drinking Water Act violation to Flint for the high levels of trihalomethanes in the water. Flint violated the law twice more until coming into compliance on Sept. 2, 2015, state records show.<\/span>

<\/span>Despite the staff concerns about the city\u2019s brownish water quality, Snyder\u2019s staff never took a recommendation to him that Flint be switched back to Detroit water until the following October.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Governor was not told because he made it clear that he did not want to be told.<\/p>\n

We need to see some depraved heart murder prosecutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another email dump, and now we have proof that the Governor’s senior staff knew of the problems with Flint’s water over a year before they acknowledged the problem Two top advisers to Gov. Rick Snyder urged switching Flint back to Detroit\u2019s water system in October 2014 after General Motors Co. said the city\u2019s heavily chlorinated …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1052,1079,969,1009,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crimes","category-environment","category-evil","category-government","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}