Last week, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals told the state of Michigan to begin water deliveries to residents of Flint.
U.S. District Judge David Lawson has twice ordered the state to start the bottled water deliveries to all households that the state can't demonstrate has a properly installed and maintained water filter to remove lead contamination.
The state continues to fight Lawson's order and filed a new motion this week saying the water deliveries aren't needed because the unfiltered tap water in Flint now meets federal standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The City of Flint says in court filings it supports the state's request to stay Lawson's order.
It has been two years since the crisis in Flint’s water supply began, and officials have spent a considerable amount of time and energy and taxpayer dollars not doing what is right by the people they’ve been poisoning. Recently, six state employees were charged in relation to the Flint water crisis. In classic Republican fashion, they are crying about their inability to afford to clean up the mess their shitty leadership has created. Of course, Michigan’s Republican governor (and all around head of lead-poisoning children) Rick Snyder is costing taxpayers millions of dollars as he defends himself for legally atoning. Republicans continue to try to pass the buck by saying that activists should worry more about making sure filters are being installed correctly and that the water has returned to safe drinking levels.
In a dissent, Judge Jeffrey Sutton said it's not clear that the Flint drinking water is still in violation of federal law and ordering the water delivery could "do more harm than good."
Sutton said the state defendants should focus on "measuring current water quality and ensuring that each filter works," but "that most assuredly will not happen in the face of this order."
Of course, this argument is specious in that activists and scientists and residents are doing those things but the state has yet to sufficiently prove to anyone not white and living in Gov. Rick Snyder’s head that these fixes have been comprehensibly achieved. The reason they haven’t been able to do this is because when you drain the coffers of the most financially threatened communities in your state, and rip out reasonable infrastructure, you also lose the ability to quickly and efficiently handle emergencies when they arise—which they always do because you’ve destroyed the infrastructure.