Senate Democrats on Thursday touted four proposals they’re asking Congress to advance in response to the water crisis in Flint, Mich.
Led by Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the lawmakers pleaded with their colleagues across the aisle to agree to the emergency initiatives, but did not shy from pointing the finger at the hardline conservative policies that caused the catastrophe.
“If one of the governor’s supporters in a wealthy part of Michigan called up and said: ‘Our water looks like this. It smells. Our children are taking baths and getting rashes. People are losing their hair. Help us.’ I don’t think it would be very long at all before it was fixed,” Stabenow said. She was asked by a reporter if she believed race characterized the initial response to the problem (the majority of Flint’s residents are black).
Peters, meanwhile, focused on the state government’s relentless obsession with short-term cost-cutting. “When you only look at the bottom line, and not the welfare of the people in the community, this is what you get,” he said. “For $100 a day, this would not have happened.”
Drinking water in Flint became highly poisoned in the spring of 2014, after the city’s emergency financial manager, appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder (R), sought to save money by switching water sources in a plan that included interim sourcing from the highly-suspect Flint River. Although the Environmental Protection Agency had been warning the Snyder administration since February 2015 that the city’s drinking water was unsafe due to chemical reactions caused by the introduction of Flint River water into the city’s aging plumbing system, Michigan did not declare a state of emergency until a few weeks ago. By then, 100,000 people lacked access to safe running drinking water and an entire city was exposed to lead poisoning.
Proposals Democrats are offering to relieve Flint include: $400 million in infrastructure repair, which Michigan will be required to match; the establishment of a Center of Excellence on Lead Exposure, which would be run for a decade by the Department of Health and Human Services at the cost of $20 million annually, and mandated loan forgiveness for the city, through federal-to-state loan programs that aim to bolster state water infrastructure.
The law would also expand the EPA’s authority to inform the public, if state and local officials fail to respond to a health crisis.
“They believe there was ambiguity that prevented them from going public even though they saw some of these test results,” Peters said. “Well that’s simply unacceptable.” He said the legislation would require the EPA to go public with information of a major health crisis within 15 days of receiving it.
Stabenow would not guess how many of the proposals will end up advancing, but said she has spoken to Senate energy committee Chair Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and that the Republican leader is supportive of some.
“We are doing something that is reasonable,” Stabenow said. “It makes sense. It’s responding to an incredible emergency, and I hope we get strong bipartisan support.”
