Years before the complaints from Flint's citizenry about their water provoked action from the state, Governor Rick Snyder spent $440,000 to supply better water to the GM factory, where the new water supply was corroding the car parts on the assembly line.
The Flint disaster was caused because the governor's office decided to save $100/day on additives that would have prevented the corrosion in the lead pipes.
While the crisis was unfolding — and even today — the Pentagon was given a green light to conduct unannounced military exercises in Flint, literally bombing abandoned houses and conducting live-fire house-to-house fighting exercises next door to the already brutalized, already neglected population of Flint.
These three damning facts, and seven more, are presented by Michael Moore, who has been incandescent about the unfolding horror in his hometown.
1. While the Children in Flint Were Given Poisoned Water to Drink, General Motors Was Given a Special Hookup to the Clean Water. A few months after Gov. Snyder removed Flint from the clean fresh water we had been drinking for decades, the brass from General Motors went to him and complained that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. The governor was appalled to hear that GM property was being damaged, so he jumped through a number of hoops and quietly spent $440,000 to hook GM back up to the Lake Huron water, while keeping the rest of Flint on the Flint River water. Which means that while the children in Flint were drinking lead-filled water, there was one—and only one—address in Flint that got clean water: the GM factory.
Michael Moore: 10 Things They Won’t Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy, But I Will
[Michael Moore/Eco Watch]
(via Naked Capitalism)
