Tag Archives: Contaminated Water

Lawsuit over Flint water crisis says 17 children have high lead levels

(Reuters) – A group of Flint, Michigan, parents and their children filed a class action on Monday alleging that gross negligence by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and others caused the city’s drinking water to become contaminated with lead.

The lawsuit was filed in Detroit federal court and seeks damages for a proposed class of “tens of thousands” of Flint residents and property owners who have suffered physical or economic injuries. The named plaintiffs are seven residents and their 17 children who lawyers say have heightened lead levels.

The state’s slow response to the water crisis drew sharp rebukes from Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on Sunday. Both called for Snyder’s resignation. A spokesman has said the Republican governor has no intention of stepping down.

Flint, a predominantly black city of 100,000, was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager when it switched its water source in April 2014 to the Flint River from Lake Huron. The more corrosive river water caused lead to leach from city pipes and into the drinking water.

The city switched back last October after tests found high levels of lead in blood samples taken from children, but the drinking water has not returned fully to normal. Flint began replacing lead pipes running to homes on Friday.

Attorneys Hunter Shkolnik and Adam Slater allege in Monday’s lawsuit the governmental defendants failed to take measures required by federal law to eliminate the dangers and downplayed the severity of the contamination to residents.

Children are especially vulnerable to lead exposure, as even small amounts can stunt development, leading to lifelong academic and behavioral problems.

Current and former officials and workers in Michigan and Flint are named as defendants, along with engineering firm Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam, which was hired to assess the feasibility of using Flint River water.

A firm representative said the lawsuit mischaracterized its role and it would vigorously defend its position in court.

The lawsuit accuses the governmental defendants of gross negligence, which is an exception to the immunity that shields federal and state governments and employees from lawsuits over their official duties. The strength of the immunity defense has kept many leading plaintiffs’ lawyers away from filing lawsuits over the Flint crisis.

The families seek payment for past and future health costs and monitoring as well as compensation for lost property value, replacement of pipes and reclamation of contaminated property.

(Reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Editing by Anthony Lin and Matthew Lewis)

Water service restored to 2 million Syrians after 48-day shutdown

Millions of people living in and around the Syrian city of Aleppo were without a source of clean water for 48 days before a key facility came back online last week, UNICEF announced Sunday.

The al-Khafseh treatment plant resumed taking and treating water from the Euphrates River last Thursday, the United Nations children’s organization said in a news release, marking the first time the plant had done so since it was “deliberately” closed on January 16.

UNICEF did not assign blame for the roughly month-and-a-half shutdown, which left about 2 million people in or near Aleppo without their only means of accessing clean drinking water.

Rather, the organization noted the incident was the latest in a line of troubling attacks on water supplies across Syria, saying “all sides” involved in the nearly five-year conflict have used water as “a weapon of war” to deprive civilians of the clean water that is necessary for everyday life.

UNICEF said about 5 million people in Syria faced water shortages that could have killed them last year, as various combatants either shut off water, targeted facilities with airstrikes or ground attacks or prevented civilians from doing the work required to repair and operate the systems.

The organization said civilians sometimes turned to untreated water sources, which left them prone to contracting waterborne illnesses. That was the case in Aleppo, where people were forced to rely on groundwater. About half of them were children, who were particularly at risk.

However, this wasn’t the first time that Aleppo’s water supply — or the plant — was offline.

According to UNICEF, about 2 million people were temporarily without water after an airstrike hit the plant last November. That came months after a summer that saw “opposition groups” turn off the water more than 40 times, affecting 1.5 million people. One outage lasted two weeks.

Damascus, Dar’a and Salamiyah have also seen disruptions in their water service, UNICEF said.

In a statement, UNICEF Representative in Syria Hanaa Singer said the al-Khafseh development was “lifesaving” and called for more to be done to ensure Syrians can always access safe water.

“Parties to the conflict must stop attacking or deliberately interrupting water supply, which is indispensable for the survival of the population. They should protect the treatment, distribution systems, pipelines and personnel who repair water installations,” Singer said. “Syria’s children and their families have a right to safe drinking water and clean water for hygiene and health.”

United Nations agencies say more than 250,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. Another 12 million are displaced, 4.8 million of whom are refugees.

Michigan governor issues appeal over Flint funds denial

(Reuters) – Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has urged federal officials to reconsider their denial for funds to help deal with the crisis caused by lead-contaminated water in the city of Flint, his office said on Thursday.

The contamination and the state’s long delay in addressing the problem have sparked outrage and drawn attention from U.S. presidential candidates.

In the latest appeal to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Snyder is requesting money to pay for food, water and other essential needs; the removal of health and safety hazards; activation of emergency operations centers; measures to avoid further damage; and homeowners’ repairs not covered by insurance.

A FEMA spokesman said Snyder’s appeal was under review by the agency.

The agency turned down an earlier request for financial help in January because the areas in which Snyder requested aid were deemed not appropriate, but has provided non-monetary support in the form of a FEMA coordinator.

Also in January, Snyder asked for federal declarations of emergency and major disaster. President Barack Obama approved the federal emergency declaration, but denied a major disaster declaration. Snyder appealed that decision and was denied.

Snyder said on Thursday that Flint needed continued local, state, federal and national efforts. “Assistance from our federal partners could go a long way in moving Flint forward,” he said.

Activists and some Democratic state lawmakers have demanded that Snyder resign, but a spokesman said the Republican governor had no intention of stepping down.

Snyder is scheduled to testify before a U.S. congressional committee on March 17.

Also on Thursday, Snyder said the federal government approved a waiver allowing for Medicaid coverage for children and pregnant women in Flint.

Flint, a predominantly black city of 100,000 about 60 miles northwest of Detroit, was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager when it switched the source of its tap water from Detroit’s system to the Flint River in April 2014.

The city switched back last October after tests found high levels of lead in blood samples taken from children.

Water from the Flint River, which was more corrosive than Detroit’s, leached lead from the city’s pipes, posing widespread health risks.

Experts have said it could take some time for anti-corrosive chemicals now being added to the water to re-coat pipes so that they will not leach more lead.

Meanwhile, Flint officials said they would begin replacing lead pipes running to homes with copper on Friday as part of a $55 million project.

(Reporting by Suzannah Gonzales; Editing by Ben Klayman, Tom Brown, Alan Crosby and Marguerita Choy)

Nanotechnology makes cheap, improved water filters

BERKELEY, CA (Reuters) – Researchers have developed nano-scaled membranes that could potentially filter contaminants out of water faster and cheaper than current methods.

Baoxia Mi, an assistant professor of environmental engineering at the university of California, Berkeley, is developing a water filter comprised of membranes made up of layers of graphene 100,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair.

“We made it from graphite, which is a material that we use in pencils for example, so it’s cheap and relatively abundant. So we can use that and the process that we use to make from the graphite to the graphene oxide is actually quite scalable,” said Mi.

By scalable, Mi means that these membranes could potentially be adapted to filter water from a household faucet, as well as large systems used to treat waste water on an industrial scale.

The membranes are much like a maze for water molecules. The water enters the maze and passes through a series of layers separated by spaces specifically designed to remove different types of contaminants.

“In order to remove different targeted molecules, the most direct way of thinking about it is to control the spacing that we have between the layers,” added Mi.

Another advantage to these graphene oxide filters is the rate at which water can pass through them, which Mi says is up to five magnitudes higher than conventional filters thanks to the unique properties of the carbon base membranes.

The researchers are currently fine tuning their filters. They hope their work in the lab will ultimately lead to real world solutions to the ever growing concerns surrounding access to clean affordable water, especially in the developing world.

Michigan governor’s aides urged switch away from Flint River

DETROIT (Reuters) – Quality problems prompted two of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s top lawyers to urge that Flint be moved back to the Detroit water system just months after a decision to draw water supply from the Flint River, according to emails released on Friday.

Several critics have called for Snyder to resign over concerns about the state’s poor handling of the crisis, and the governor said Friday he felt regret every day.

Flint switched its water supply from Detroit to the Flint River in April 2014 in a bid to cut costs when the city was under a state-appointed emergency manager.

While the city switched its water source back to Detroit in October 2015, corrosive water from the river had already leached lead from city pipes, posing a serious threat to public health.

Snyder’s aides discussed Flint’s water quality problems as early as autumn 2014, with one calling the situation “downright scary,” about a year before the switch back to the Detroit system was finally made. The Detroit Free Press and Detroit News earlier reported about the emails, which were released by the governor’s office.

“That’s where I’m kicking myself every day,” Snyder said after signing a $30 million supplemental bill to reimburse Flint residents for their water bills. “I wish I would have asked more questions.”

Snyder, scheduled to testify to Congress on March 17, has repeatedly apologized for the state’s poor handling of the crisis.

Liberal group Progress Michigan again called for Snyder to resign, citing the emails.

“There’s no reasonable person who can believe at this point that every top adviser to Rick Snyder knew that there was an issue, but Snyder knew nothing,” said executive director Lonnie Scott, who also called for Snyder’s resignation.

Valerie Brader, Snyder’s senior policy adviser, addressed problems over the quality of Flint River water in an email to the governor’s chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, and others on Oct. 14, 2014.

She argued Flint should be returned to the Detroit water system, citing bacterial contamination and reduced quality that prompted General Motors to switch away from the river due to rusted car parts.

Michael Godola, then the governor’s legal counsel, responded, calling the Flint River as a water source “downright scary.”

On Friday, State Representative Sheldon Neeley of Flint asked Attorney General Bill Schuette for his legal opinion on whether an official withholding information that leads to death or harm can be charged criminally.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum and Matthew Lewis)

Protesters in Flint demand new pipes in response to water crisis

FLINT, Mich. (Reuters) – More than 500 protesters led by civil rights activist Jesse Jackson marched to the Flint water plant on Friday to demand clean water and the replacement of corroding pipes in response to the city’s lead contamination crisis.

“This is a crime scene. Somebody lied. Somebody lied. Somebody covered up. We want water we can drink,” Jackson said.

As a cost-cutting measure in 2014, Flint switched its water system from Detroit to a local river. The more corrosive water from the river leached lead from water system pipes, leading to high levels of lead in hundreds of homes.

The lead contamination – which could have been prevented with anti-corrosion treatment of the water – has become a national political scandal as emails and documents have emerged showing that Michigan officials tried to play down the problem for months.

Jackson was accompanied by ministers from the group Concerned Pastors for Social Action; Judge Greg Mathis, a syndicated television personality; and Flint mother and activist Melissa Mays.

“Thank you for coming out to march with Flint, for Flint and for yourselves, because be aware that if it can happen here it will and is happening everywhere else,” Mays told the crowd before the march began.

Some people sold “Flint Lives Matters” T-shirts and handed out bottles of water to marchers.

Governor Rick Snyder asked state lawmakers last week to provide $195 million for health, nutritional, educational, water bill payment and infrastructure aid to Flint on top of $37 million already approved for the current and fiscal 2017 budget.

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver has said Snyder’s allocation of $25 million to remove lead pipes falls short of the estimated $55 million price tag. Snyder pledged an additional $2 million to remove lead pipes on Thursday.

The Republican governor, who has faced sharp criticism for his response to the problem, has been called to testify on the matter before a U.S. congressional committee next month. The issue has also become a focus of the U.S. presidential campaign.

(Reporting by Serena Maria Daniels in Flint; Writing by Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Michigan officials knew of Legionnaires’ outbreak long before warning

DETROIT (Reuters) – State government officials knew about an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease and its suspected link to contaminated water in impoverished Flint, Michigan, at least 10 months before a public announcement was made, documents released on Friday showed.

The disclosure of the documents, among thousands of pages of emails and other material released, comes as Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder faces pressure to resign over his administration’s handling of the Flint water crisis.

Michigan’s Genesee County, which includes Flint, had 87 cases of Legionnaires’ from June 2014 to November 2015, 10 of them fatal.

Flint’s water supply was contaminated by lead, a serious public health threat, after its water supply was switched from Detroit to the Flint River in April 2014 in a cost-cutting move when the city was under a state-appointed emergency manager.

Friday’s documents echoed previous disclosures showing that high-ranking state officials knew about an increase in Legionnaires’ disease in Genesee County and a possible link to Flint’s water 10 months before the governor said he got information about the outbreak.

Stephen Busch, a district manager in the drinking water division for Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, wrote in an email on March 17, 2015 that the city should take action to optimize water quality to help limit the potential for occurrence of Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’.

Emails also show Busch tussling with county health officials over the issue and saying it was premature to link the public water system with Legionella. Busch was suspended last month and his job status is currently on review, a state official said.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was approached by Genesee County health officials in February 2015 about an increase in reported Legionnaires’ disease cases, but state officials subsequently told the agency they would handle the investigation into the matter themselves, a CDC spokeswoman said.

In January 2016, state officials asked for the CDC’s help in the matter.

Liberal group Progress Michigan said Friday’s release of documents and emails was all for show, and called on Snyder to release those of his and his executive staff’s.

“If the governor is serious about wanting to be transparent, he will release every single document and communication regarding the Flint Water Crisis, including those of his executive staff,” Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan, said in a statement.

Flint, a predominantly black city of about 100,000 people, switched back to Detroit water in October after tests found high levels of lead in samples of children’s blood. Water from the Flint River was more corrosive and leached more lead from the city pipes than Detroit water did. Lead can damage the nervous system.

Snyder, who has apologized for the state’s poor handling of the water crisis, alerted the public to the Legionnaires’ outbreak on Jan. 13 and said he had only heard about it two days earlier.

“Gov. Snyder first became aware of the Legionnaires’ Disease outbreak in mid-January of this year,” his press secretary Dave Murray said. “He’s made it clear that he wants to be made aware of such issues more quickly, and already made some changes in some state departments.”

On Friday, a U.S. House of Representatives oversight panel said Snyder would testify on the Flint water crisis next month. Darnell Earley, who was Flint’s state-appointed emergency manager when the city switched from Detroit’s water system, will also testify.

Snyder said in a Friday statement in which the state released emails and other documents from several state departments that “all levels of government failed the people of Flint. This crisis never should have happened.” He said by making the documents public, anyone could review them.

The Legionella bacteria is found in certain plumbing systems, including hot tubs, humidifiers, cooling towers and hot water tanks. Legionnaires’ is spread by breathing in mist from water, and cannot be spread from person to person.

(Additional reporting by Dave McKinney, Fiona Ortiz, Karen Pierog, Karl Plume, P.J. Huffstutter and Justin Madden in Chicago, David Shepardson and Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Phil Berlowitz and Tom Brown)

House passes bill requiring EPA actions on lead-laced water

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday easily passed a bill requiring federal environmental regulators to act faster when lead contamination is found in drinking water.

The bill passed 416-2. It was crafted by Michigan Representatives Dan Kildee, a Democrat, and Fred Upton, a Republican, in the wake of Flint’s drinking water crisis.

The measure requires the Environmental Protection Agency to notify the public when concentrations of lead in drinking water rise above mandated levels and to create a plan to improve communication between the agency, utilities, states, and consumers.

In 2014, under a state-appointed emergency manager, Flint, a city of 100,000, switched water supplies to the Flint River, from Detroit’s system as part of a plan to save money in the poverty-stricken city.

The more corrosive river water leached lead from aging pipes. Thousands of children are believed to have ingested dangerous levels of lead, a toxin that can harm brains and cause other health problems.

The bill “wouldn’t have prevented Flint, but it would have caught it far sooner,” Kildee, who is from Flint, said after the vote. The measure must be passed by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama before becoming law.

Other measures in Congress to provide Flint with millions of dollars in aid to deal with the crisis face an uncertain future. Kildee has also introduced a bill to provide about $700 million in federal aid, with a match in funding from Michigan. That and other measures languished as Democrats and Republicans struggled to agree on where the funds would come from.

The Department of Agriculture said on Thursday it would temporarily allow Michigan to use funds from its Women, Infants and Children program for low income citizens to conduct lead testing. The department estimated some 3,800 people could get tested in this way.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Sandra Maler)

U.S. lawmakers chastise officials at all levels over Flint water crisis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers criticized environmental officials at a hearing on Wednesday for not acting sooner when they saw a report that drinking water in Flint, Michigan was polluted with dangerously high levels of lead.

“I never thought this could happen in America,” and in a state, “surrounded by fresh water of the Great Lakes,” Brenda Lawrence, a Democrat of Michigan, said at a House Oversight panel examining the water crisis in Flint, a city of 100,000.

The panel issued subpoenas to officials who did not show up to testify about water found to have lead levels that hamper brain development and cause other health problems. Thousands of children are believed to have ingested the polluted water in Flint, a mostly African American and Latino suburb near Detroit.

Lawrence asked Keith Creagh, head of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, why his agency did not act on a report by a federal Environmental Protection Agency expert that showed the water was polluted. She did not get a clear answer.

“We all share responsibility in the Flint water crisis, whether it is the city the state or the federal government, we all let the citizens of Flint down,” said Creagh, who took the job last month.

Marc Edwards, a water engineer who first raised the issue of Flint’s lead contamination, told the panel the EPA broke laws by not notifying the public about a report of tainted water. “If it’s not criminal, I don’t know what is.”

EPA water official Joel Beauvais said he did not know why his agency did not tell the public.

Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, complained that the Republican-led panel did not invite Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, to testify at the hearing.

Representative Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania criticized Snyder and his hand-picked emergency managers for Flint who were responsible for switching the source of Flint’s tap water from Detroit’s system to the Flint River, a dumping area, in April 2014.

Flint is grappling with the health and political fallout over the switch after the more corrosive river water leached lead from old pipes into the system.

“He got caught red handed poisoning the children of Flint,” Cartwright, a Democrat, said of Snyder. “There’s no two ways about it. That’s the headline here.”

A Snyder spokesman responded in an email: “It’s unfortunate when people who are not working toward a solution inject partisan politics and incendiary rhetoric into an emergency that can best be addressed by people working together.”

Snyder will ask state lawmakers in his next budget proposal to approve a $30 million water payment relief plan for Flint residents to keep their water service on and reimburse them for lead-contaminated water they cannot drink, his office said.

A busload of Flint residents traveled to Washington to attend the hearing. “We’re serious about making sure that the people responsible for this manmade disaster are held accountable,” said Bernadel Jefferson, a bishop.

Lawmakers also slammed the EPA for not sending Administrator Gina McCarthy to Flint until this week, even though the agency has known about the crisis for months. An EPA spokeswoman said the agency had formed a Flint task force last October, and has had a team there for weeks.

The head of the oversight panel, Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, a Republican, said he subpoenaed EPA’s Susan Hedman to appear at a deposition in Washington later this month.

Hedman, who announced last month that she would resign on Feb. 1, had played down the memo by the EPA’s Miguel del Toral that said tests had shown high levels of lead, telling Flint and Michigan administrators it was only a draft report.

The EPA has agreed to provide all of Hedman’s emails by the end of the week, Chaffetz said.

Chaffetz said his panel had also issued a second subpoena to Darnell Earley, who was Flint’s state-appointed emergency manager when the city switched from Detroit’s system.

A. Scott Bolden, Earley’s lawyer, said his client has not been given enough time to respond to the initial subpoena, which was served last night. Bolden said Earley is “not hiding anywhere” and will honor a subpoena issued with a reasonable response time.

Earley only implemented the plan to change the city’s water source that others had put in place before he started, Bolden said. “There was nothing put before him by the environmental folks, the water testers or anyone connected to ensuring the quality of the water to suggest in any way that a water disaster was looming.”

Political fallout over the crisis could also hold up a wide-ranging bill on energy. Democrats in the Senate threatened to block a bipartisan energy bill if it fails to include immediate aid for Flint.

Federal authorities including the FBI have started a criminal probe into the contamination.

(Additional reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit and Richard Cowan in Washington)

Schools in Ohio town closed for third day over lead contamination

CLEVELAND (Reuters) – Schools in the Ohio village of Sebring were closed for a third day on Tuesday after elevated levels of lead were found in pipes serving some homes and buildings, making it the second Midwestern region to be plagued by tainted water.

Three schools in Sebring, 60 miles northeast of Cleveland, have been shut down since Friday. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency hit the village with a violation notice last week requiring it to notify residents of the lead problem, after first warning about risks to pregnant women and children on Dec. 3.

The Sebring news follows weeks of controversy over high lead levels in the water of Flint, Michigan, which has led to calls for the resignation of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder.

An EPA report on Tuesday found that two samples from Sebring’s McKinley Junior/Senior High School had lead levels above federal standards.

“It has become apparent that our field office was too patient in dealing with the village of Sebring’s ‘cat and mouse’ game,” Ohio EPA Director Craig Butler said in a statement on Sunday.

No lead was found at the district’s middle school and athletic building, and lead found in water samples at the elementary school was below the federal allowable level.

Tests of the water plant confirm the village of Sebring’s water treatment plant has no detectable lead. However, water chemistry caused corrosion in piping leading to 28 homes and one school building, the EPA found.

The EPA said that it has reason to believe that Sebring’s water treatment plant operator falsified reports. The agency is requesting assistance from U.S. EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division.

The Ohio EPA has required continual water testing, bottled water distribution and filtration systems provided to homes where results are above the federal allowable level. The advisory will remain in place for a minimum of a year.

Village officials for Sebring were not immediately available for comment on Tuesday.

Lead is a neurotoxin that can damage brains and cause other health problems.

(Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Matthew Lewis)