Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder will greet President Barack Obama at a Flint airport and talk to him about efforts to solve the city’s drinking water mess.
Spokesman Ari Adler says the Republican governor is pleased to try to seek more federal support for Flint during Obama’s visit Wednesday.
Snyder has repeatedly blamed his own regulators for the city’s lead-contaminated water, but he’s also pointed a finger at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Flint used the Flint River for 18 months but didn’t properly treat the water. Lead leached from old pipes and fixtures, and the crisis isn’t over.
U.N. experts say Flint residents may have had their human rights violated because of a lack of regular access to safe drinking water over the last two years.
Three experts working with the U.N. human rights office in Geneva called on authorities Tuesday to “map out a human rights complaint strategy” to make sure other parts of the U.S. don’t face events like Flint’s water crisis.
Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, decried the “high-handed and cavalier manner” in which decisions were made in Flint, alleging such choices wouldn’t have been made if its population “was well-off or overwhelmingly white.”
Snyder last week suggested he might not meet the president. He now says he didn’t want to talk about the Flint visit before the White House had confirmed it.
Associated Press
