The mayor of Flint, Michigan, threw down the gauntlet Tuesday, announcing she has a $55 million plan to remove lead pipes from the entire city in one year — and “shame on” Gov. Rick Snyder if he doesn’t support it.
“We deserve new pipes,” Mayor Karen Weaver said.
Weaver said that’s not good enough. The 99,000 residents of her impoverished city have been “emotionally traumatized” by the water crisis that has poisoned an unknown number of children and will never trust the water as long it flows through lead service lines.
She said the city has a plan to deploy 32 crews who will use a removal method pioneered by a public utility in Lansing, where Snyder’s office is located, to pull out 15,000 service lines that run between the main and the meter.
“I cannot imagine he would not support this plan,” Weaver said of Snyder. “If he doesn’t, shame on him.”
Snyder’s office had no immediate comment.
Experts including Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards — who has been hired by the city to run water testing — say biofilm from the phosphates should eventually seal the decayed pipes and end the contamination.
But Weaver said that doesn’t address the psychological problem.
“We can’t wait for that. We don’t trust that,” she said. “We will never be confident that the biofilm has built back up.”
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