“We saved hundreds of dollars, and all we had to do was poison an entire city with corrosive leaded water,” said a caricature of Gov. Rick Snyder in a cartoon drawn by Brian McFadden in “The Strip” that appeared in last Sunday’s New York Times.
If the rest of the nation missed “The Strip” they may have heard a reaction to the water crisis in Flint, Mich., called “Skinflint” in McFadden’s strip, from Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders during their debate Sunday evening from Charleston, S. C.
“I spent a lot of time last week being outraged by what’s happening in Flint, Michigan,” Clinton said, “and I think every single American should be outraged. We’ve had a city in the United States of America, where the population, which is poor in many ways and majority African- American, has been drinking and bathing in lead-contaminated water. And the governor of that state acted as though he didn’t really care.
“He had requests for help that he basically stonewalled. I’ll tell you what, if the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there would’ve been action.”
Sanders agreed with Clinton, and added “and what I did, which I think is also right, is demanded the resignation of [the] governor. A man who acts that irresponsibly should not stay in power.”
Joining the outcry is filmmaker Michael Moore, a former resident of Flint, who has called for Snyder to be arrested. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, appearing in the city, expressed his disgust, describing Flint as a “crime scene.”
Monday, Snyder, a Republican, charged that Clinton and Moore are “politicizing” Flint’s water emergency for personal gain. “People can draw their own conclusions, but that’s what it appears to me,” the governor told the Detroit News after addressing an audience during a Martin Luther King Day Breakfast at the University of Michigan-Flint.
Now that the crisis in Flint, a city nearly 60 miles from Detroit with a population of approximately 100,000, has gained national attention, Snyder is hustling to tamp down the furor and pump up the resources to curtail the crisis. On Jan. 5 he declared a state of emergency in Flint and deployed the Michigan National Guard to aid efforts to distribute bottled water, home filters and water-testing devices to residents.
Thus far, the National Guard has visited more than 16,000 homes and distributed more than 26,500 cases of water, 50,200 filters and 4,700 water-testing kits.
This effort comes too late for thousands of children who may have lead poisoning from the water from the Flint River. And there are reports that a number of people may have contracted legionnaire’s disease from consuming the contaminated water.
The problem began in 2014, when Snyder appointed an emergency manager, now in charge of the financially beleaguered school system, who, to save money, switched water sources. Rather than continuing to take water from the Detroit system that draws its water from Lake Huron, the emergency manager chose to flow water in from the Flint River.
The switch, according to some accounts, was to be temporary while the city works on connecting a direct pipeline to Lake Huron.
A federal emergency declaration from the Obama administration is also in effect, which should bring $5 million in aid to the troubled city, but FEMA denied the governor’s request to declare a major disaster and provide $96 million in assistance.
“It is disappointing because we could use the additional resources,” the governor said. He said he would appeal the decision.
Several families affected by the contaminated water have filed a class-action lawsuit, insisting their health problems resulted from the water.