Erin Brockovich Sounded the Alarm on Flint a Year Ago - Why Didn't Anyone Listen?

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/34947-erin-brockovich-sounded-the-alarm-on-flint-a-year-ago-why-didnt-anyone-listen

Over a year ago — nine months after the city of Flint, Michigan, began sourcing its water from a polluted local river, and 10 months before the national media began paying any attention to the crisis unfolding there — Erin Brockovich was sounding alarm bells.

"Dangerous Undrinkable Drinking Water," Brockovich wrote on Facebook in January 2015. "Everyone is responsible from the top down: USEPA, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, the State of Michigan and the local officials."

Brockovich is famous for her fight in the 1990s to hold Pacific Gas & Electric accountable for contaminating the groundwater in the town of Hinkley, California. The company was eventually forced to settle the direct-action lawsuit she brought against it for $333 million — at the time, the largest award for a suit of its kind. Julia Roberts famously portrayed Brockovich in the 2000 film about the suit.

Brockovich's early 2015 Facebook post turned out to be prophetic. Several months later, scientists from Virginia Tech confirmed that dangerously high levels of lead had been found in more than 40 percent of residents' homes, and some time after that officials admitted they'd stopped essential water treatments — the kind would keep from lead and copper from leaching into the water — after switching water sources.

[malaise]

1. They did - for their staff

but not for the poor of Flint

[randr]

2. Alarms have been going off on the Navaho Nation for years

"No One" is still listening.

[KamaAina]

7. A-yup.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027577736

[tk2kewl]

3. She's part of the lefty fring, not to be taken seriously?

She supports Senator Sanders and is therefore not realistic

[ladjf]

4. The personal greed of their leaders. nt

[dembotoz]

5. cause the anti science crowd is in too much power

in this country if you have an education you must be lying

that damn simple

from quack medical cures to climate change to evolution

ignorance is bliss and it is not the truth unless reported by fox news

[MisterP]

8. Brockovich's main opponents are what the biz calls "whitecoats for hire"

who, uh, cite quack cures and resistance to evolution as proof that *they're* right

[Crepuscular]

6. To be fair

in January of 2015, Brockovich was complaining about the problems related to the TTL levels, which were the direct result of the over-treatment of the municipal water with chlorine, in an attempt to mitigate coliform bacteria, her concerns had nothing to do with the lead in the water issue, which did not come to light until a month later. To say that nothing was being done about the TTL's or that it was being ignored is not really accurate. Both the City and the State were aware of the problem and were adjusting the chlorine levels to reduce TTL danger but they were somewhat between a rock and a hard place, in that the flip side of the TTL coin was increases in coliform bacteria and possible health threats that could result.