For all intents and purposes, Rick Snyder’s tenure as governor of Michigan may have ended on Thursday night. Via a raft of state emails, we now know that state workers based in Flint got access to purified water in January 2015–ten months before Snyder admitted that Flint’s water supply was contaminated with toxic levels of lead.
Progress Michigan obtained a series of emails that were sent in early January that document a devious and cynical double game on the part of state officials in Lansing. As early as January 2015, Flint residents were complaining that their water tasted and smelled bad, and may have been making them sick. Publicly, state officials maintained that the water was safe. But apparently it was saying something else to state workers in the area.
According to the emails, state officials were taking steps to ensure that the water in Flint’s State Office Building was safe. Read them here.
On January 7, the state Department of Technology, Management, and Budget, which is responsible for state office buildings, announced that it was distributing coolers of purified water to each floor of the State Office Building. This came after the city of Flint was informed about a drinking-water standards violation. According to DTMB, while city officials didn’t believe there was any cause for alarm, the coolers were being sent out “so you can choose which water to drink.” The coolers would be in place as long as Flint’s water supply “does not meet treatment requirements.” As it turns out, they’re still in place today.
According to DTMB spokesman Caleb Buhs, his bosses decided to provide coolers in response to a contamination issue that came up in late December or early January. While city officials maintained that the problem had been solved, the state kept the coolers in place because more red flags came up “as we went along.”
The timing of this is critical. It wasn’t until October that Snyder finally acknowledged that Flint’s water had been contaminated. And yet, based on these emails, state workers had another option for water for almost ten months before then. This is obscene. This is outrageous. This is criminal.
Earlier this week, I noted that Flint’s then-emergency manager ruled out switching Flint’s water source to the Flint River–only to be overruled by someone in the governor’s office. Given the circumstances, this moved the water crisis firmly into “what did they know and when did they know it” territory. Now, in light of this disclosure, the only plausible conclusion that can be drawn is that even if Snyder didn’t personally know about the state of Flint’s water, he should have made it his business to know–and didn’t.
Snyder recently hired a public relations team to help him manage the crisis. But if state workers got access to clean water well before the rest of the city did, no amount of spin can save him. When a governor sits and watches while his administration deceives his own people, it’s time for that governor to go while he can still do so decently. Sign this petition telling Snyder that if he has anything left in him, he will resign and resign now.
