The EPA's Hush-Hush Response to the Flint Water Crisis

[Octafish]

It seems the government really doesn't give a damn about the citizens any more -- the non-rich ones, anyway.



The EPA's Hush-Hush Response to the Flint Water Crisis

'At that point, you do not just have smoke, you have a three-alarm fire and should respond immediately,' charges water researcher

by Lauren McCauley, staff writer
CommonDreams, Jan. 13, 2016

Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for months knew about the poisoning of the Flint water supply and, rather than raise alarm and stop residents from drinking the lead-tainted water, took a backseat on the matter.

The Detroit News reported late Tuesday that federal officials began making inquiries in February and the region's top EPA official, Susan Hedman, confirmed to the newspaper this week that as early as April the agency knew about the lack of corrosion controls in the water system.

According to the reporting:

An EPA water expert, Miguel Del Toral, identified potential problems with Flint’s drinking water in February, confirmed the suspicions in April and summarized the looming problem in a June internal memo. The state decided in October to change Flint’s drinking water source from the corrosive Flint River back to the Detroit water system.

Critics have charged Hedman with attempting to keep the memo’s information in-house and downplaying its significance.

Federal officials for months engaged in a bureaucratic, behind-the-scenes "battle" with Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) "over whether Flint needed to use chemical treatments to keep lead lines and plumbing connections from leaching into drinking water," the paper reports. Hedman argued that it was not the "role" of the federal agency to regulate local water operations.

CONTINUED w/links...

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/01/13/epas-hush-hush-response-flint-water-crisis

[JudyM]

1. Politics before public health: a well-functioning system. (Sarc). Nt

[Octafish]

3. They let New Orleans drown. They irradiated children. ''They'' being, of course, the US government.

It goes back a ways, though.

Inhuman Radiation Experiments

by JOHN LAFORGE
CounterPunch, APRIL 12, 2013

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the declassification of top secret studies, done over a period of 60 years, in which the US conducted 2,000 radiation experiments on as many as 20,000 vulnerable US citizens.

Victims included civilians, prison inmates, federal workers, hospital patients, pregnant women, infants, developmentally disabled children and military personnel — most of them powerless, poor, sick, elderly or terminally ill. Eileen Welsome’s 1999 exposé The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War details “the unspeakable scientific trials that reduced thousands of men, women, and even children to nameless specimens.”

The program employed industry and academic scientists who used their hapless patients or wards to see the immediate and short-term effects of radioactive contamination — with everything from plutonium to radioactive arsenic. The human subjects were mostly poisoned without their knowledge or consent.

An April 17, 1947 memo by Col. O.G. Haywood of the Army Corps of Engineers explained why the studies were classified. “It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans and might have adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits.”

In one Vanderbilt U. study, 829 pregnant women were unknowingly fed radioactive iron. In another, 188 children were given radioactive iron-laced lemonade. From 1963 to 1971, 67 inmates in Oregon and 64 prisoners in Washington had their testicles targeted with X-rays to see what doses made them sterile.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/12/inhuman-radiation-experiments/

"The Buchenwald touch," is how one scientist described it.

[JudyM]

4. Sometimes ineptitude, sometimes intention. Reagan and AIDS, for another example. Nt

[jwirr]

6. Corporations before people.

[JudyM]

7. Yes, that too.

[Wellstone ruled]

2. Got a hunch there are hundreds of these

worn out water systems out there. Like the story says,it is all politics. There seems to be a thread of do not push regulation because some one will be unhappy and will do a negative PR campaign on us and after all it is my paycheck here. Last few years we have been seeing more and more stories of failed Fed action when it comes to EPA needed timely actions. It is all about some one he or she getting reelected in their districts.

[Octafish]

5. Public Relations can handle anything.

Like Karl Rove said, they invent reality. In Flint Rove's man Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder appointed an "Emergency Manager" to supervise the city government, overriding Democracy to save a buck. But the story was kept under raps by the sophistry of magicians. An example of their work:

BURSON-MARSTELLER: PR FOR THE NEW WORLD ORDER

By: Carmelo Ruiz

The public relations (PR) business is one of the fastest growing industries in the global market economy. In order to face perils like labor unions, organized consumer activists and environmental groups, governments and corporations have come to rely more on slick PR campaigns. The peril to popular democracy posed by PR firms should not be underestimated. Using the latest communications technologies and polling techniques, as well as an array of high-level political connections, PR flacks routinely "manage" issues for government and corporate clients and "package" them for public consumption. The result is a "democracy" in which citizens are turned into passive receptacles of "disinfotainment" and "advertorials" and in which critics of the status quo are defined as ignorant meddlers and/or dangerous outsiders.

Burson-Marsteller (B-M) is the world's largest PR firm, with 63 offices in 32 countries and almost $200 million in income in 1994. Although its name is unknown to most people-- even to many in activist circles-- B-M is fast becoming an increasingly important cog in the propaganda machine of the new world order.

Human Rights, Anyone?

On the human rights front, B-M has represented some of the worst violators of our age. These include:

* The Nigerian government during the Biafran war, to discredit reports of genocide.

* The fascist junta that ruled Argentina during the 70's and early 80's, to attract foreign investment.

* The totalitarian regime of South Korea, to whitewash the human rights situation there during the 1988 Olympics.

* The Indonesian government, which got into power through a CIA- sponsored bloodbath. (It should be pointed out, however, that B-M denies that it is handling the issue of genocide in East Timor)

* Ideological barriers are no object. B-M also represented the late communist Romanian despot Nicolae Ceaucescu.

* Other third world human rights violators that have been represented by B-M include the governments of Singapore and Sri Lanka.

Doesn't this bother the consciences of B-M's executives? Not at all. Commenting on his firm's work for Argentina's fascists, B-M founder Harold Burson said that "We regard ourselves as working in the business sector for clearcut business and economic objectives. So we had nothing to do with a lot of the things that one reads in the paper about Argentina as regards human rights and other activities".

CONTINUED...

http://www.home.intekom.com/tm_info/ge_bm.htm

The reality Rove and company invents is the nightmare we live in, a world where "money trumps peace" and public health.

[Wellstone ruled]

8. Glad you did this repost of the facts.

And yes what you posted here is how the real system goes. Remember reading the Nixon tapes years back
and how he would have his people plant stories or have them call in favors at Newspapers and plant false stories. And how they would use a PR firm to create a charade to pull off some Political gain. Does the name Lee Attwater come to mind,and Rove and his brother did their training from this guy. Remember Rove made his mark by direct mailing and today that still one of the most powerful tools in a campaign. And that is totally uncontrolled as to facts and content.

[Octafish]

20. ''National Guard to Flint''...so far 7 (seven) total.

But 30 are expected by the weekend. Total.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/01/14/snyder-talks-obama-officials-over-flint-water/78817078/

Television has brainwashed a contaminated America. Evident in the lack of analysis of the problem by news media over the past two years -- and and the criminally negligent, at best, Michigan and Federal response.

[KoKo]

21. ...!

[GeorgeGist]

9. They run it like a business ...

i.e., hide the bad stuff from the customers.

[Wellstone ruled]

13. This all part and parcel

of the Rethug agenda of Privatizing essential Services with Public Funds and ordinances to fund these Services. We have this in Las Vegas,our Sewer Services ran by a Private Entity out of LA. They basically do the payment and billing and take the profit while the Tax payers pay for any improvements and repairs. Do not think we are alone.

[malaise]

14. Neo-liberalism on steroids

It will continue until there is a major public health disaster that affects the children or family of the 1%.

[librechik]

10. because government is the enemy of freedom

of corporations to help the people. And corporations have found a way through propaganda, corruption and so on to neutralize and weaken government's power so that it is no longer a refuge to the masses.

The EPA is like a whipped dog after generations of attack after attack.

HA! it was a conservative invention. They have come full circle.

[Octafish]

15. I'm so old I remember when government was We the People.

Younger DUers may not believe this, but at one time government actually protected us from polluted water, rather than feeding it to us.

Then, the government worked for us, too. Believe it or not.

[Omaha Steve]

11. WTF?

K&R!



OS

[Octafish]

16. We the People don't even fit into the equation during the wealthiest times in human history.

Weren't for Curt Guyette and the ACLU, it'd be like Democracy never happened, Steve.

[G_j]

12. yep

shameful disregard for the people's well being..

[Octafish]

17. EPA stayed silent on Flint’s tainted water

Jim Lynch, The Detroit News 11:30 p.m. EST January 12, 2016

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s top Midwest official said her department knew as early as April about the lack of corrosion controls in Flint’s water supply — a situation that likely put residents at risk for lead contamination — but said her hands were tied in bringing the information to the public.

Starting with inquiries made in February, the federal agency battled Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality behind the scenes for at least six months over whether Flint needed to use chemical treatments to keep lead lines and plumbing connections from leaching into drinking water. The EPA did not publicize its concern that Flint residents’ health was jeopardized by the state’s insistence that such controls were not required by law.

Instead of moving quickly to verify the concerns or take preventative measures, federal officials opted to prod the DEQ to act, EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman told The Detroit News this week. Hedman said she sought a legal opinion on whether the EPA could force action, but it wasn’t completed until November.

The state didn’t agree to apply corrosion controls until late July and didn’t publicly concede until October that it erroneously applied the federal Lead and Copper Rule overseeing water quality.

An EPA water expert, Miguel Del Toral, identified potential problems with Flint’s drinking water in February, confirmed the suspicions in April and summarized the looming problem in a June internal memo. The state decided in October to change Flint’s drinking water source from the corrosive Flint River back to the Detroit water system.

CONTINUED...

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/01/12/epa-stayed-silent-flints-tainted-water/78719620/

Remember the old days, G_j? When We the People meant We the People were the government? I don't remember signing off on it, but someone, somewhere, certainly has usurped our authority. The federal government knew in February. And didn't lift a finger.

[Rex]

18. This country seems to live on reduced standards year after year.

And worse, the PTB shrug it off like it is no big deal. It will be one day, when it is far too late to make any kinds of inroads into fixing the problems that were easily fixable if only someone would have cared to do their job.

Money trumps everything Octafish...until it doesn't and that day will be hell on earth for everyone.

[Octafish]

19. The greatest wealth in human history squandered on the friends of Reagan.

7/8 of all the wealth ever created was created in last 36 years and the lion's share ended up in the pockets of the 0.01-percent.



Calls for Michigan Gov. Snyder's Arrest as Flint Poisoning Scandal Implicates Top Staffers

'To poison all the children in an historic American city is no small feat'

by Sarah Lazare, staff writer
Common Dreams, Jan. 7, 2016

Calls for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder's ouster—and arrest—are growing after internal emails showed that his high-level staffers were aware of lead poisoning in Flint's public water supply six months before the administration declared a state of emergency.

According to the newly-released emails, which were obtained by NBC News, Snyder's chief of staff at the time, Dennis Muchmore, wrote to an unnamed high-level health department staffer: "I'm frustrated by the water issue in Flint."

"These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us (as a state we're just not sympathizing with their plight)," Muchmore wrote in the email, according to journalists Stephanie Gosk, Kevin Monahan, Tim Sandler and Hannah Rappleye.

"I really don't think people are getting the benefit of the doubt," wrote Muchmore. "Now they are concerned and rightfully so about the lead level studies they are receiving."

But it was not until this week that Snyder declared a state of emergency, following in the footsteps of the city's mayor. "The health and welfare of Flint residents is a top priority and we're committed to a coordinated approach with resources from state agencies to address all aspects of this situation," Snyder said on Tuesday.

Following the resignation of Michigan's top environmental official, as well as sustained community demands, the Department of Justice announced this week it is launching an investigation into the water crisis.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/01/07/calls-michigan-gov-snyders-arrest-flint-poisoning-scandal-implicates-top-staffers