By Brady Dennis and Brittany Greeson
“Never again can we allow what happened in Flint, Michigan,” (click here) President Biden said on a sweltering Tuesday afternoon this August inside the East Room of the White House.
The admonition came as the president touted a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that had just cleared the U.S. Senate. He spoke of rebuilding the nation’s roads and bridges, boosting public transit and constructing electric vehicle charging stations.
And replacing pipes. Lots of pipes.
The legislation would set aside roughly $55 billion to repair and replace the nation’s aging water and wastewater infrastructure, including funds to eradicate lead pipes that remain buried in communities around the country. “Millions of lead pipes carrying drinking water to our homes and schools and day-care centers — they’re finally going to be replaced,” Biden said.
As he spoke, more than 500 miles to the northwest, Flint was already into its seventh year of wrestling with one of the most disastrous, high-profile water crises in the nation’s history....
The event in the American landscape was a major trauma to many in this country. It was real and happening and it was completely unbelievable that such a necessary commodity as water would become a poison and do such horrendous damage to residents of Flint, including the elderly that died of Legionnaires Disease and children accumulating lead in their bodies.
These issues were ancient. Lead in paint (click here) was tackled in the 1950s and even today is discussed when buildings change hands including and especially renters. And here it was in the very water everyone was drinking. The citizens of Flint were getting sick and no one cared about it. That is simply UNAMERICAN.
Legionnaires manifested in 1976 (click here) and the country was horrified at the deaths this bacteria caused. To have the nightmare happen all over again was surreal. This was somehow impossible.
So, the idea this event in Flint, Michigan happened at all left the people there stunned. Then to not have any attention to the cause and the end of such problems is unthinkable. It took an entire year of these people suffering and only then it became an issue to resolve after a Rachel Maddow show segment. I was in the audience and I was like, "What?"
The layers and layers of trauma that exist in a community with a high number of minorities is going to become legendary and will linger for a long, long time. This trauma turned the country into many that questioned if it could happen to them.
September 17, 2021
By Ron Fonger
Flint - A federal judge (click here) wants to know more about a bone-scanning facility that measured the lead in Flint residents’ bodies before making a final decision on whether to approve a historic $641-million civil settlement related to the city’s water crisis.
U.S. District Court Judge Judith Levy ruled Friday, Sept. 17, on a motion filed by Dr. Lawrence Reynolds which asked her to consider new evidence, including a state inspection of the facility that used modified, hand-held bone-scan devices that were never intended to be sold or leased for any diagnostic use, including the measurement of lead in human bones.
Although Levy denied Reynolds’ motion to allow him to file the information in a supplemental brief with the court, she directed Special Master Deborah Greenspan to “obtain and file as part of the record for purposes of the Court’s review of the settlement the complete file of the (Michigan) Occupational Safety & Health Administration inspection of the pertinent facility ... as well as any statements made by (MIOSHA) as soon as they are available.”...
I think the settlement will become void for several reasons, but, this bone scan mess is nothing but pure corruption. The lawyers pulled this boner without any consultation with people's personal physicians as to whether they would be adversely effected by such a scan. Never mind that it is completely ineffective in determining exposure to lead in the human body, this is unauthorized by any authority. It is more of the Michigan law that is of, by, and for the lawyer. The use of such a bone scan without consultation with physicians is endangering people to be exposed to not just lead now, but, some sort of idiotic scan.
I think the people exposed to lead in Flint that underwent this procedure need more than information from Michigan, they should be calling in OSHA to evaluate what occurred here.
It only takes one complaint about OSHA to respond. It is interesting the judge trusts Michigan agencies to carry out serious evaluations. I don't think any Michigan agency under the direction of the Snyder Administration should be involved in providing factual information to the judge. We already know Snyder's people erased cell phone records and what else did they do. The entire Michigan government structure was scrapped by Snyder's right-hand man and reorganized under one czar. The judge can ask Michigan agencies for information, but, there needs to be a federal review as well that accompanies any Michigan information. My guess is that a federal review of the information will find where Michigan's agencies were tampered with in reviewing this bone scan mess.
Here ya go, People are coming forward already because they are scared for others. Dr. Reynolds is scared for the people. This settlement won't go through. There are too many credible people coming forward to raise concerns.
September 9, 2021
By Ron Fonger
Flint - Before a federal court judge (click here) decides whether to give her final approval to a $641-million settlement of Flint water crisis lawsuits, a Flint doctor is asking her to consider new evidence about the use of bone scans to determine the levels of lead in city residents’ bodies.
Dr. Lawrence Reynolds, a member of former Gov. Rick Snyder’s Flint Water Advisory Task Force, filed a motion to supplement his previous objections to the settlement with the court on Tuesday, Sept. 7, saying new information about the controversial bone scan program has come to light since his initial filings with the court....
There was so much corruption during the Snyder Administration it overshadows the facts as they occurred. Records were tampered with and we know there was one man as concerned for himself as well as Snyder and he was doing everything he could to remove any evidence of guilt.
This sort of corruption can be cleaned up when people of conscience come forward to stop it. It will take honest judges to ask the right legal questions when arguments are made to be sure this is an honest record so decisions can go forward, but, it will get cleaned up.
People who have concerns and evidence have to be strong and work past any feelings of fear or inadequacy to make the hearings happen well. It isn't easy being a whistleblower. It isn't easy to have information that needs to be presented. But, at some point, people will feel some degree of purpose and safety and more and more truth will be told. That is the way corruption is defeated. It is replaced with the truth.
