"FLINT, Mich. — A task force appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder issued a hard-hitting report on the Flint drinking water public health crisis, slamming the catastrophe as a story of "government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction and environmental injustice."
"Michigan's government on Monday released goals to help the city of Flint recover from a health crisis caused by the lead contamination of its drinking water."
"In the first test of a landmark environmental law, Minnesota has compensated two beekeepers whose hives were severely damaged last spring by toxic dust that drifted off the fields of a neighbor planting corn."
"Since November, 54 people in Wisconsin have one by one fallen ill with an obscure kind of bacteria called Elizabethkingia. Fifteen have died from the infection."
SEJ’s WatchDog Project director Joseph A. Davis analyzes local and regional media's role in reporting — or not — the Flint water debacle.
"Members of a congressional oversight committee excoriated a former Environmental Protection Agency official on Tuesday for not responding more forcefully when she learned last year that Flint, Mich., was not adding a chemical to its new water supply that would have prevented the city’s pipes from corroding and leaching lead."
"At a town hall event in Ohio’s manufacturing hub on Sunday, Republican presidential candidate John Kasich criticized Secretary of State John Kerry for traveling to Paris to fight climate change, and said clean energy was too expensive for the region."
Renee Montagne interviews Gina McCarthy, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, about EPA's role in the Flint water crisis. McCarthy says Michigan's slow-walking response to the problem made it hard for EPA to intervene. McCarthy is one of several key witnesses to testify this week before the House Oversight Committee. Resigned Regional Administrator Susan Hedman will testify today.
As the Flint water crisis was being discovered, Michigan environmental officials tried to manipulate exemptions in the state's freedom of information law to keep secret emails that should have been subject to disclosure.
"Levels of hazardous flame retardants in most Great Lakes fish are declining – or at least researchers thought they were. But a new study shows that this isn’t the case for Lake Erie smallmouth bass, an important game fish. And the contaminated fish threatens the health of some of those who eat them."
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