The last time we looked at Flint, the courts arraigned three bureaucrats over their roles in allowing lead-infused water to contaminate the municipal drinking water supply.
Now, in an apparent bid to regain some relevancy, one national group is filing a lawsuit over the water-crisis.
Another big name has surfaced in the tsunami of Flint water lawsuits: the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People], which is suing several state officials and two engineering firms, alleging they poisoned a city with toxic drinking water by failing to detect that something was wrong, pretending a problem didn’t exist and ignoring numerous red flags.”Just the color of Flint’s water should have led any reasonable engineer to the conclusion that Flint’s pipes were dangerously corroded,” the 103-page lawsuit states.The NAACP announced the lawsuit today, though it was filed on March 31 in U.S. District Court, where at least two dozen other Flint-related lawsuits are pending. This one blames Gov. Rick Snyder, several state officials and two engineering firms for the crisis, claiming they engaged in “gross negligence” and “outrageous conduct” that harmed many. Not only did officials fail to detect a water problem, the lawsuits says, but they made the problem worse by not properly treating the water. And even when they knew the water was tainted, the suit says, public officials repeatedly maintained that it was safe to drink, despite a deadly Legionnaires’ disease outbreak linked to the water.”All the while — despite public assurances of safety — government officials in Flint quietly switched to bottled water while the citizens and businesses of Flint continued to drink dangerously contaminated water,” the lawsuit states.
Personally, I am wondering why this group, in particular, needs to sue state officials. My reports clearly show the lead contamination was not limited by race.
And neither is the potential for political corruption. Here is Democratic mayor of Flint, Karen Weaver, talking about the situation and “broken trust.”
There is a lawsuit claiming that donations for Flint to help the victims was diverted to the mayor’s campaign fund.
There’s a lot of blame to go around for the Flint water crisis, but a federal lawsuit filed Monday against the city’s mayor claims even attempts to make things right have been fraught with mismanagement and corruption. The suit was filed by former city administrator Natasha Henderson, who alleges she was wrongfully fired from her post in February after she tried to initiate an investigation into Flint Mayor Karen Weaver after she learned Weaver was allegedly diverting funds earmarked for water crisis charities into a campaign account.
Diverting emergency funding for a re-election would damage civic trust, indeed.
It looks like the mess in Flint is still getting messier.
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