"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."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's openness has been a major issue throughout the crisis of contaminated drinking water in Flint, which has caused lead poisoning of some children. One aspect of the openness issue is the ability of agency employees to speak with journalists; another is unfulfilled FOIA requests.
"An industrial chemical is showing up in trout from the Great Lakes. It’s called perfluoro-1-butane sulfonamide, or FBSA."
"The FBI is now investigating the contamination of Flint’s drinking water, a man-made public health catastrophe, which has left an unknown number of Flint children and other residents poisoned by lead and resulted in state and federal emergency declarations."
"The City of Milwaukee and 70,000 residential property owners are facing total costs of $511 million or more to remove all lead pipes delivering drinking water to those homes, and eliminate the risk of contaminating tap water with the toxic metal."
"In January of 2015, when state officials were telling worried Flint residents their water was safe to drink, they also were arranging for coolers of purified water in Flint's State Office Building so employees wouldn't have to drink from the taps, according to state government e-mails released Thursday by the liberal group Progress Michigan."
"SEBRING, Ohio — In a furor with echoes of the crisis in Flint, Michigan, parents in and around Sebring no longer trust the water coming out of their taps — or the explanations from community leaders — after learning just days ago that high levels of lead were detected in some homes over the summer."
"Michigan Governor Rick Snyder on Wednesday appointed a group of government officials, health and other experts to implement long-term fixes for Flint's lead-contaminated water system, which has become a national scandal."
"In Michigan, leaders talk about a "blue economy," everything from reviving waterfronts to lakefront tourism to new technology that cleans, treats or saves water. In Wisconsin, they're also linking water and economic revitalization. Nowhere are they testing the idea of a water tech economy more urgently than Milwaukee."
"Attorney General Bill Schuette on Monday appointed former Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Todd Flood to lead an investigation into the Flint water crisis, but some are questioning his impartiality due to past political donations, including to Gov. Rick Snyder."
