Category: Water Crisis

Michigan governor will be called to congressional hearing on Flint water crisis


Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and other officials will be called to testify next month to a congressional panel about the crisis over lead-contaminated water in the city of Flint, a congressional office said on Thursday.

U.S. Representative Brenda Lawrence, a Democrat, requested the Feb. 3 hearing of the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week, said her communications director, Tracy Manzer. The invitation will be specifically for the governor and he cannot send a representative on his behalf, Manzer said.

Susan Hedman, administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 5 office in Chicago, and Dan Wyant, former director of Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality, are among the other invitees. Wyant resigned in December over the growing crisis in Flint.

http://news.yahoo.com/michigan-governor-invited-congressional-hearing-flint-water-crisis-203804728–business.html

Obama Says if He Were a Flint Parent, He’d Be ‘Beside Myself’


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Commenting for the first time on the lead contamination in the drinking water of Flint, Mich., President Obama said Wednesday that he “would be beside myself” if he were a parent in the city.

Mr. Obama said that in a White House meeting on Tuesday with Flint’s mayor, Karen Weaver, “I told her that we are going to have her back, and all of the people of Flint’s back, as they work their way through this terrible tragedy.”

The long-running crisis, which has poisoned dozens of Flint residents, at least, and left tens of thousands of others unsure about what ill effects they may have had, “is a reminder of why you can’t shortchange basic services that we provide to our people, and that we, together, provide as a government,” Mr. Obama said. He did not wade into the blame-laying and finger-pointing that have occupied much of Michigan politics since the contamination became public knowledge last fall.