Town hall meeting held to discuss Water Crisis lawsuit

A big town hall meeting was held to talk about the effects of the Water Crisis in Flint.
Brown has been struggling since the Flint Water Crisis hit almost four years ago.
She said it’s time to take some legal action.
She’s just one of the hundreds of Flint residents that came out to learn more about water contamination lawsuits.
“Which is the right lawyers to be signing with and to just get more information,” Brown said.
The overall message of the town hall meeting is if you’re not sure if a lawsuit is right for you, you owe yourself to find out.
They said only 15,000 people have signed with lawyers so far.
“It’s very important for them to sign up with somebody,” Lindsey said.
“I think that if you hit them in their pockets that’s what hurts a person,” Brown said.
Copyright 2018 WNEM (Meredith Corporation).

Residents get updates on status of water contamination

Major General Greg Vadnais with the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs said all the agencies involved have been working to get a handle on the chemicals that may have have leached into the water from Camp Grayling.
Three were found to have potentially harmful levels of PFC’s and 20 others had lower levels of the chemicals in their tap water. Since then those numbers have gone up.
"There are four residential levels above the EPA lifetime health advisory," said Lindsay. "But there are as many as 83 total that had detection."
That’s why the residential wells need to continue to be tested, which someone will have to pay for.
"Just for the lab analytics to have the water wells samples to test it is approximately $400 per test," said Lindsay.
"I’ve been really grateful for the tremendous work that the state of Michigan has done in terms of stepping up to the plate and bringing all the resources and all the departments with expertise in the area to address the issue."
The plan for right now is to continue testing residential wells to get an idea of the size of the contamination area.

West Michigan town hall meeting yields more questions than answers about contaminated water

Uncertainty lingers in West Michigan following an informational town hall meeting about contaminated well water.
State and county health official know the toxic chemicals discovered in Belmont and Plainfield Township are often used in leather goods.
David O’Donnell is with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
“Then we can take the next step, which is what do we do with this, how do we provide people a permanent safe source of drinking water?” O’Donnell said.
Wolverine Worldwide is a shoe company that is believed to be the cause of the chemical leak.
Christopher Hufnagel, Senior Vice President of Strategy at Wolverine Worldwide, says the company is being proactive about the water issue.
“We’re committed to making sure residents are confident about the quality of their drinking water,” Hufnagel said.
Some residents are concerned about health issues connected to the water contamination.
It could take years of testing to find these things out," Busch said.
He says the county should be more transparent in its findings.

Town hall meeting in Courtland airs concerns about state rules

Town hall meeting in Courtland airs concerns about state rules.
COURTLAND — Legislators from Minnesota’s District 19 were in Courtland Saturday for a town hall meeting focusing on buffer strips.
Johnson and Frentz spoke on the importance of improving water quality, but wanting to make sure farmers were not hurt by the buffer law.
Assistant Director of Strategy and Operations for the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) Angie Becker Kudelka introduced a handout with alternative practices for areas where standard buffer laws would not work.
One concern brought up later in the meeting was how that would work as the effects and standards of the buffer strips were not well defined.
Steve Commerford, a New Ulm resident, brought up research going back as far as the 1970’s that indicated that buffer strips were not effective on water quality.
He argued buffers should instead be framed as an issue of pheasant habitat preservation.
Multiple people cited a Star Tribune story that reported research that indicated a lot of water pollution came from cities, primarily lawn fertilizer, pets and pavement runoff.
Joe Smentek, director of public affairs for the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association pointed to a phosphate study of the Minnesota River.
“You get to the city of Mankato, right after the city of Mankato it (phosphate levels) shot way up, they blame agriculture for that,” Joe Smentek said.

‘Our Water Campaign’ Taking On Lead Contamination Problems In City

‘Our Water Campaign’ Taking On Lead Contamination Problems In City.
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — More than 100 people turned out for a town hall meeting Tuesday to discuss the lead contamination in portions of the city’s water supply.
The group “Our Water Campaign” hosted the event at the Kingsley Association in East Liberty.
She told KDKA’s Kym Gable she believes there are similarities between Pittsburgh’s current situation and the large-scale public health crisis that made international news in Flint.
“The next step, hopefully, would be an emergency declaration to actually get more resources into the city to pay for a service line replacement program that doesn’t put people out of their homes,” said Shariff.
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Allegheny County Controller Chelsa Wagner has been an outspoken advocate for action.
She told the crowd, “We are the largest system in the country right now over the EPA lead limit, and that’s one thing that’s not out there.” Many property owners in the affected areas have already received their results from lead testing kits.
Tom Hoffman is one of them.
“I must say, I was pretty shocked.