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10 Things You Don’t Know about the Flint Water Crisis

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The following was written on January 30, 2016, by filmmaker Michael Moore, a native of Flint, Michigan, and was published in Reader Supported News. I include it in this site about organic food and lifestyle because it perfectly shows what happens when the welfare of people and the environment—the beating heart of the organic movement—is ignored. Here’s Michael’s article. Be prepared to feel sick to your stomach.

News of the poisoned water crisis in Flint has reached a wide audience around the world. The basics are now known: the Republican governor, Rick Snyder, nullified the free elections in Flint, deposed the mayor and city council, then appointed his own man to run the city. To save money, they decided to unhook the people of Flint from their fresh water drinking source, Lake Huron, and instead, make the public drink from the toxic Flint River. When the governor’s office discovered just how toxic the water was, they decided to keep quiet about it and covered up the extent of the damage being done to Flint’s residents, most notably the lead affecting the children, causing irreversible and permanent brain damage. Citizen activists uncovered these actions, and the governor now faces growing cries to resign or be arrested.

Here are 10 things that you probably don’t know about this crisis because the media, having come to the story so late, can only process so much. But if you live in Flint or the State of Michigan as I do, you know all too well that what the greater public has been told only scratches the surface.

1. While the Children in Flint Were Given Poisoned Water to Drink, General Motors Was Given a Special Hookup to the Clean Water.

A few months after Governor Snyder removed Flint from the clean fresh water we had been drinking for decades, the brass from General Motors went to him and complained that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. The Governor was appalled to hear that GM property was being damaged, so he jumped through a number of hoops and quietly spent $440,000 to hook GM back up to the Lake Huron water, while keeping the rest of Flint on the Flint River water. Which means that while the children in Flint were drinking lead-filled water, there was one — and only one — address in Flint that got clean water: the GM factory.

2. For Just $100 a Day, This Crisis Could’ve Been Prevented.

Federal law requires that water systems which are sent through lead pipes must contain an additive that seals the lead into the pipe and prevents it from leaching into the water. Someone at the beginning suggested to the Governor that they add this anti-corrosive element to the water coming out of the Flint River. “How much would that cost?” came the question. “$100 a day for three months,” was the answer. I guess that was too much, so, in order to save $9,000, the state government said f*** it — and as a result the State may now end up having to pay upwards of $1.5 billion to fix the mess.

3. There’s More Than the Lead in Flint’s Water.

In addition to exposing every child in the city of Flint to lead poisoning on a daily basis, there appears to be a number of other diseases we may be hearing about in the months ahead. The number of cases in Flint of Legionnaires Disease has increased tenfold since the switch to the river water. Eighty-seven people have come down with it, and at least ten have died. In the five years before the river water, not a single person in Flint had died of Legionnaires Disease. Doctors are now discovering that another half-dozen toxins are being found in the blood of Flint’s citizens, causing concern that there are other health catastrophes which may soon come to light.

4. People’s Homes in Flint Are Now Worth Nothing Because They Can’t Be Sold.

Would you buy a house in Flint right now? Who would? So every homeowner in Flint is stuck with a house that’s now worth nothing. That’s a total home value of $2.4 billion down the economic drain. People in Flint, one of the poorest cities in the U.S., don’t have much to their name, and for many their only asset is their home. So, in addition to being poisoned, they have now a net worth of zero. (And as for employment, who is going to move jobs or start a company in Flint under these conditions? No one.) Has Flint’s future just been flushed down that river?

5. While They Were Being Poisoned, They Were Also Being Bombed.

Here’s a story which has received little or no coverage outside of Flint. During these two years of water contamination, residents in Flint have had to contend with a decision made by the Pentagon to use Flint for target practice. Literally. Actual unannounced military exercises – complete with live ammo and explosives – were conducted last year inside the city of Flint. The army decided to practice urban warfare on Flint, making use of the thousands of abandoned homes which they could drop bombs on. Streets with dilapidated homes had rocket-propelled grenades fired upon them. For weeks, an undisclosed number of army troops pretended Flint was Baghdad or Damascus and basically had at it. It sounded as if the city was under attack from an invading army or from terrorists. People were shocked this could be going on in their neighborhoods. Wait – did I say “people?” I meant, Flint people. As with the Governor, it was OK to abuse a community that held no political power or money to fight back. BOOM!

6. The Wife of the Governor’s Chief of Staff Is a Spokeswoman for Nestle, Michigan’s Largest Owner of Private Water Reserves.

As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein: “Follow the money.” Snyder’s chief of staff throughout the two years of Flint’s poisoning, Dennis Muchmore, was intimately involved in all the decisions regarding Flint. His wife is Deb Muchmore, who just happens to be the spokesperson in Michigan for the Nestle Company – the largest owner of private water sources in the State of Michigan. Nestle has been repeatedly sued in northern Michigan for the 200 gallons of fresh water per minute it sucks from out of the ground and bottles for sale as their Ice Mountain brand of bottled spring water. The Muchmores have a personal interest in seeing to it that Nestles grabs as much of Michigan’s clean water was possible – especially when cities like Flint in the future are going to need that Ice Mountain.

7. In Michigan, from Flint water to Crime and Murder to GM Ignition Switches, It’s a Culture of Death.

It’s not just the water that was recklessly used to put people’s lives in jeopardy. There are many things that happen in Flint that would give one the impression that there is a low value placed on human life. Flint has one of the worst murder and crime rates in the country. Just for context, if New York City had the same murder rate as Flint, Michigan, the number of people murdered last year in New York would have been almost 4,000 people – instead of the actual 340 who were killed in NYC in 2015. But it’s not just street crime that makes one wonder about what is going on in Michigan. Last year, it was revealed that, once again, one of Detroit’s automakers had put profit ahead of people’s lives. General Motors learned that it had installed faulty ignition switches in many of its cars. Instead of simply fixing the problem, mid-management staff covered it up from the public. The auto industry has a history of weighing the costs of whether it’s cheaper to spend the money to fix the defect in millions of cars or to simply pay off a bunch of lawsuits filed by the victims surviving family members. Does a cynical, arrogant culture like this make it easy for a former corporate CEO, now Governor, turn a blind eye to the lead that is discovered in a municipality’s drinking water?

8. Don’t Call It “Detroit Water” — It’s the Largest Source of Fresh Drinking Water in the World.

The media keeps saying Flint was using “Detroit’s water.” It is only filtered and treated at the Detroit Water Plant. The water itself comes from Lake Huron, the third largest body of fresh water in the world. It is a glacial lake formed over 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age and it is still fed by pure underground springs. Flint is geographically the last place on Earth where one should be drinking poisoned water.

9. ALL the Children Have Been Exposed, As Have All the Adults, Including Me.

That’s just a fact. If you have been in Flint anytime from April 2014 to today, and you’ve drunk the water, eaten food cooked with it, washed your clothes in it, taken a shower, brushed your teeth or eaten vegetables from someone’s garden, you’ve been exposed to and ingested its toxins. When the media says “9,000 children under 6 have been exposed,” that means ALL the children have been exposed because the total number of people under the age of 6 in Flint is… 9,000! The media should just say, “all.” When they say “47 children have tested positive”, that’s just those who drank the water in the last week or so. Lead enters the body and does its damage to the brain immediately. It doesn’t stay in the blood stream for longer than a few days and you can’t detect it after a month. So when you hear “47 children,” that’s just those with an exposure in the last 48 hours. It’s really everyone.

10. This Was Done, Like So Many Things These Days, So the Rich Could Get a Big Tax Break.

When Governor Snyder took office in 2011, one of the first things he did was to get a multi-billion dollar tax break passed by the Republican legislature for the wealthy and for corporations. But with less tax revenues, that meant he had to start cutting costs. So, many things – schools, pensions, welfare, safe drinking water – were slashed. Then he invoked an executive privilege to take over cities (all of them majority black) by firing the mayors and city councils whom the local people had elected, and installing his cronies to act as “dictators” over these cities. Their mission? Cut services to save money so he could give the rich even more breaks. That’s where the idea of switching Flint to river water came from. To save $15 million! It was easy. Suspend democracy. Cut taxes for the rich. Make the poor drink toxic river water. And everybody’s happy.

Except those who were poisoned in the process. All 102,000 of them. In the richest country in the world.

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NESTLE’S CHAIRMAN: HUMAN BEINGS DON’T HAVE A RIGHT TO WATER

What good is it to eat clean, wholesome, organic food if you don’t have clean, wholesome water to quench your thirst? Across the globe, the Nestlé corporation is pushing to privatize and control public water resources. We just found out that Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s chief of staff is married to a Nestle spokeswoman—not an enviable position given the Flint water crisis. But what about the corporation itself? Let’s check in with Nestle Chairman of the Board Peter Brabeck on this topic to see what he has to say.

Brabeck, has explained his position on the human right to safe water this way: “One opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by the NGOs, who bang on about declaring water a public right. That means as a human being you should have a right to water. That’s an extreme solution.”

Since that quote has gotten widespread attention, Brabeck has backtracked, but his company has not. Around the world, Nestlé is bullying communities into giving up control of their water. It’s time to tell Nestlé that we have a right to water and to stop locking up our resources.

At the World Water Forum in 2000, Nestlé successfully lobbied to stop water from being declared a universal right–declaring open season on local water resources by the multinational corporations looking to control them. For Nestlé, this means billions of dollars in profits. For the rest of us, it means paying up to 2,000 times more for drinking water because it comes from a plastic bottle rather than from a tap.

In countries around the world, Nestlé is promoting bottled water as a status symbol. As it pumps out fresh water at high volume, water tables sink and local wells become degraded. Safe water becomes a privilege for the wealthy and a necessity for poor people who fall deeper into poverty enriching companies like Nestle.

But clean water is a resource that should be available to all. It should be something we look after for the public good, to keep safe for generations, not something we pump out by billions of gallons to fuel short-term private profits. Nestlé thinks this opinion is “extreme,” but that’s simply a self-serving position to protect the obscene profits it realizes from the control, bottling, and sales of clean water under the Nestle label.

The bottom line is that wherever in the world there’s a significant source of clean, healthy water, there’s the Nestle Corporation, bottling it in plastic bottles and selling it to people who can least afford it. The corporation and its 1%ers grow rich while impoverished people grow poorer by paying 2,000 times more for water in plastic bottles than tap water guaranteed pure by enlightened municipal management and intelligent water infrastructure.

To say nothing of the vast island of floating plastic trash fouling the Pacific Ocean. Maybe Nestle should be forced to use some of its profits to clean up that mess.

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CONSUMERS CHOOSE HEALTH OVER CONVENIENCE WHEN BUYING FOOD

Food Business News reports that price, taste, and convenience hold less sway over consumer purchasing decisions than health, wellness, safety, social impact, quality of experience, and transparency, forcing food and beverage manufacturers and marketers to adapt.

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s not just the millennials or most affluent putting these evolving drivers in the mix,” said Jack Ringquist, a principal with Deloitte Consulting L.L.P. and global consumer products leader for the company. “Our research reveals that the preference for these attributes does not differ by generation, income level or region, but is pervasive across these groups. The U.S. consumer has changed in a fundamental and impactful way, and people’s preferences are becoming even more fragmented than the food industry may have anticipated.”

The research included a survey of 5,000 U.S. consumers and interviews with food and beverage industry executives from 40 companies. A report about the research effort titled “Capitalizing on the shifting consumer food value equation” was released Jan. 25.

Adding to the complexity of the new environment food manufacturers and marketers face is how consumers define each of the emerging purchasing influences. Health and wellness, for example, is no longer strictly associated with health and nutrition. It includes organic production, natural ingredients, and fewer ingredients perceived as artificial, according to the report. The situation is similar with the topic of safety, which applies to such product attributes as an absence of allergens and fewer ingredients as well as complete and accurate labeling.

Social impact relates to local sourcing, sustainability, animal welfare, and fair treatment of employees. Experience includes retail store layout and service as well as brand interaction and personalized engagement spanning pre-, during and post-purchase.

The study identified transparency as an “overarching” influence that includes such attributes as clear labeling, certification by trusted third parties and the access and trust of manufacturers.

Those consumers most susceptible to be influenced by the new drivers are those who are actively engaged in social media and digital channel use. The tools have disrupted the traditional reliance of manufacturers and retailers on traditional communication and marketing efforts, according to the company.

As a result of the emerging purchasing influences, the report predicts consumer tastes and preferences will continue to fragment, the retailer’s role in influencing purchases will continue to grow, smaller and newer companies will remain competitive as they leverage new technologies to earn consumer trust, and market success will be determined by those companies that can build purpose-driven competitive advantages.

Of concern to larger food companies is the level of distrust consumers have for such businesses. A social media survey conducted by Deloitte in 2014 found that consumers are 3.4 times more likely to have negative perceptions about food companies than larger companies in other industries.

“The tendency toward distrust appears particularly true of millennials,” the report said. “According to a recent Mintel report, 40 percent of U.S. millennials agree they do not trust large food manufacturers compared to just 18 percent of non-millennials. Concerns with trust were overwhelmingly reflected during our interviews with food and beverage industry executives who say the issue of trust represents a growing challenge.”

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PESTICIDE CONTAMINATION FOUND IN WATER, SEDIMENT, AND FISH

A recent study published in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment assessed the health risk to humans of waters contaminated with pesticides. Researchers quantified the levels of contamination in water, sediment, and fish for six different pesticides including endosulfan, carbofuran, cypermethrin, profenofos, triazophos, and deltamethrin. “The concentrations of endosulfan, carbofuran and deltamethrin were higher than the permissible limits for fish set by international agencies, and pose a potential ecological risk to the aquatic ecosystem and a consequent hazard to human health,” the authors reported.

A study published in the journal NeuroToxicology has found that prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos is linked to tremors in childhood and may indicate a negative effect on the nervous system. Results of the study suggest that children who were exposed to higher levels of the pesticide before birth were more likely to exhibit tremors. “This report adds to the body of evidence suggesting that prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos, at current standard usage levels, is associated with a range of persistent and inter-related developmental problems,” the authors conclude.

A study published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine has found that chronic exposure to specific pesticides is associated with end-stage renal disease in licensed pesticide applicators. Use of the herbicides alachlor, atrazine, metolachlor, paraquat, and pendimethalin as well as the insecticide permethrin were all associated with end-stage renal disease. “Our findings support an association between end-stage renal disease and chronic exposure to specific pesticides, and suggest pesticide exposures resulting in medical visits may increase the risk of end-stage renal disease,” the authors conclude.

A new study published in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety sought to address the impact of pesticide exposure on aquatic wildlife by assessing the impact that exposure to atrazine, chlorpyrifos and the two insecticides combined have on common carp. In laboratory experiments, the fish were exposed to insecticides and then allowed to recover in clean water. Results suggest that pesticide exposure has negative health effects and that breakdown and removal of the chemicals in fish is a long-term process.

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MONSANTO TRIES TO WIGGLE AROUND EU’S GMO RULES

The biotechnology industry, including Monsanto, is launching an assault on food and consumer safety in Europe by pushing new breeding techniques in order to circumvent the strict EU regulation on food products, according to a new report by the Corporate Europe Observatory.

“New genetic engineering technique that have emerged since Europe’s GMO law was introduced in 2001, are currently being applied by developers to food crops, trees, farm animals, and insects,” the report states. “If the industry lobby campaign is successful, new GM organisms and foods … could enter the environment and the food chain untested, untraceable and unlabeled.”

The European Commission is currently considering a list of new GM techniques, including oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis; zinc finger nuclease technology; cisgenesis and intragenesis; grafting; agroinfiltration; RNA-dependent DNA methylation (RdDM); and reverse breeding. The report argues that, like kids trying to manipulate their parents, companies specializing in genetic modification are resorting to calling their products “chocolate” rather than “candy” in a bid to fly under the EU regulators’ radar.

The CEO warns, “Dozens of patents have already been filed in this field by the big agrochemical corporations like Bayer, BASF, Dow Agrosciences, and Monsanto.”

In fact, the companies’ argument that these are not genetic modification techniques but “New Breeding Techniques,” was masterminded by Dutch lobby and public relations firm Schuttelaar & Partners. The same firm in 1995 was hired by Monsanto to secure a smooth introduction for the first imports of a GM crop—Monsanto’s herbicide-tolerant Roundup Ready soy—to Europe, according to the CEO report.

On the New Breeding Techniques Platform website, it explains that “most” NBT products would not currently be considered genetically modified organisms under EU law.

How likely is this tactic to work? The EC ruling is due in March, but there is additional pressure other than the biotech lobby, CEO reports.

“The ongoing negotiations around the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are an additional source of political pressure on European decision makers. In this context, industry lobby groups … (are) claiming that the innovative nature and competitiveness of the European plant breeding (read: biotech) sector is at stake.”

The directorate-general for Health and Food Safety in Europe has already publicly stated that “some will be pleased, others disappointed,” according to the CEO, indicating that at least one, perhaps more, but not all of the new techniques will escape regulation as a result of the Commission’s decision.

“If true this would—no matter how many techniques are concerned—be a serious attack on food and environmental safety, consumer choice and transparency in the food chain,” the CEO summarizes.

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