Meet the Flint Official Whose Bid to Restore Safe Drinking Water Was Blocked by an Unelected Manager — Transcript

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1. 0:00what is Michigan's emergency manager Law
2. 0:03Public Act 436 which was pushed through
3. 0:06after a similar law pa4 was defeated in
4. 0:09a 2 to1 Statewide referendum we went to
5. 0:12City Hall to find out Eric May first
6. 0:15Woods city councilman for the city of
7. 0:18Flint I represent the First Ward which
8. 0:21is the farthest north in of the city of
9. 0:25Flint about
10. 0:2611,000 residents I would say it's
11. 0:31about
12. 0:3296% or so black and um you know we've
13. 0:37got all the issues high crime abandoned
14. 0:40houses so explain how the emergency
15. 0:43manager worked and how the decision was
16. 0:47made to switch to the Flint
17. 0:50River if you look at Public Act 436 and
18. 0:54even Public Act 4 whenever a city was in
19. 0:59socalled quote unquote or quote
20. 1:02emergency financial distress or
21. 1:06financial trouble unquote whoever
22. 1:08defined that and however the city got
23. 1:10there with a general fund budget
24. 1:13deficit um the governor would appoint a
25. 1:17review team and the review team might
26. 1:20recommend an emergency manager come in
27. 1:24in my opinion some of that was created
28. 1:27because the governor took Revenue
29. 1:29sharing away from cities and help create
30. 1:32financial distress about 55 million at
31. 1:35some point from the city of Flint wait
32. 1:37you're saying they take the money from
33. 1:39Flint and they send it elsewhere in
34. 1:41Michigan in this case our money was
35. 1:44taken from Flint Detroit and other
36. 1:47municipalities and the governor then
37. 1:49boasted in some cases a surplus for the
38. 1:52state and so that's why we say in some
39. 1:55cases the governor helped create the
40. 1:57deficit and then would send in a
41. 2:00emergency manager so explain what
42. 2:03happened how was the decision made in
43. 2:08about April of
44. 2:112014 I Got a notification that it was
45. 2:14some activity going on over at the water
46. 2:17plant and when I got there the emergency
47. 2:23manager was there down there early the
48. 2:25mayil was there Council people was there
49. 2:29my was one of them I seen other
50. 2:32officials there the police chief was
51. 2:34there and when I caught on what was
52. 2:38going on it was a countdown 10 9 8 7 6 5
53. 2:434 3 2 1 and then the button was pushed
54. 2:46and one light went on red and yet green
55. 2:49and you know it's recorded and
56. 2:51documented and so then after that there
57. 2:55was a gathering in the plant because
58. 2:57this button is pushed out side in the
59. 3:00back somewhere and then we walked from
60. 3:03there and then they did a toast and you
61. 3:07know the show we're drinking now river
62. 3:11water and because of the stigma of the
63. 3:14river I wouldn't really I held it up but
64. 3:17I didn't feel comfortable guzzling it
65. 3:20down with them and they was go ahead and
66. 3:22drink and I was like uh you know so you
67. 3:25know that's kind of what went down so I
68. 3:28was leer from the beginning but I had no
69. 3:31idea I knew nothing about um some of the
70. 3:34bacteria I knew nothing about
71. 3:37um tthms tryall me thingses I knew
72. 3:42nothing about lead and I knew nothing
73. 3:44about possible Legion so you introduced
74. 3:47a bill uh in March of 2015 to say return
75. 3:51to Detroit's water what happened to it I
76. 3:54put a motion on the floor and um that
77. 3:58motion passed seven ate the one to
78. 4:01return to the Detroit Water and I think
79. 4:06then president Josh Freeman was the only
80. 4:09nobot and so the emergency manager I
81. 4:13think it was then emergency manager
82. 4:16Ambrose I think he talked publicly like
83. 4:20that was not something that was smart or
84. 4:23shouldn't have been done he used some
85. 4:25distinct words he used the word it's
86. 4:28incomprehensible that your city council
87. 4:30voted 7 to1 to go back to Detroit's
88. 4:33order I have the quote of the emergency
89. 4:35manager Jerry Ambrose who said Flint
90. 4:38water today is safe by all us
91. 4:42Environmental Protection Agency and
92. 4:44Michigan Department of Environmental
93. 4:45Quality standards and the city is
94. 4:47working daily to improve its quality
95. 4:50it's incomprehensible to me that seven
96. 4:53members of the Flint city council would
97. 4:55want to send more than $12 million a
98. 4:58year to the system serving Southeast
99. 5:01Michigan even if Flint rate payers could
100. 5:03afford it Lake hon water from Detroit is
101. 5:07no safer than the water from
102. 5:10Flint well he was
103. 5:12wrong in my opinion he was wrong and it
104. 5:17was not meeting all the EPA standards we
105. 5:21found out Kurt gyet with the ACLU did
106. 5:25some good research and you know he
107. 5:28discovered to me that I'm um the city of
108. 5:31Flint was
109. 5:32submitting samples of water where they
110. 5:36had been pre flushing which you
111. 5:39shouldn't pre flush when you're testing
112. 5:41for certain things it water should set
113. 5:43at least for 6 hours and then you test
114. 5:47we found out they were testing maybe
115. 5:50certain places that didn't have lead
116. 5:52pipes and so there was some what we call
117. 5:56skew testing samples that was Flint city
118. 6:00councilman Eric Mays he sponsored the
119. 6:02legislation to switch Flint back to
120. 6:05Detroit Water half a year before the
121. 6:07governor finally allowed the city to
122. 6:09switch back