The Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget responded to a notification from the City of Flint on their drinking water standards by providing clean water to their employees almost an entire year before they started providing clean water to their residents.
In a facility notification the DTMB advised staff that the City of Flint sent a notice regarding “violations to the drinking water standards” so they would be providing water coolers for employees to drink from. The notice also says that the City of Flint “states that corrective actions are not necessary.”
This echoes the city’s statements in August and September of 2014, when the level of trigalomethanes (TTHMs), which are linked to liver and kidney problems, exceeded federal limits. During this time as well officials in Flint states no corrective actions were needed. It wasn’t until September and October of 2015, 9 months after employees at the DTMB started receiving clean water, that a lead advisory was issued and residents were told not to drink the water. Clean water didn’t begin to be distributed to residents until this month when the National Guard was called in, a full year after the state employees at the DTMB were provided with clean drinking water.
This is just another contradiction to Michigan Governor Snyder’s claims that he didn’t know about the water contamination until recently. The Snyder administration has been accused by the EPA of “resistance” to working with federal regulators to make the water safe. And Synder’s original emergency manager, Ed Kurtz, dismissed the idea of switching the water supply to the Flint River way back in 2012 after speaking to environmental regulators.
It was announced this week that Governor Snyder will not be called to testify at a committee hearing on the Flint water crisis.
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