The state of Michigan moved Thursday to fight a court order to deliver bottled water to Flint residents such as Mari Copeny, 3 yrs old, pictured during a press conference in Washington, D.C., in March, because of concerns the "herculean" effort needed to so is too large an effort and may negatively affect work underway to fix the water system in the city. File photo by Molly Riley/UPI |
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FLINT, Mich., Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Last week, a judge in Flint, Mich., ordered the state to deliver water to city residents who can't use their tap water, but the state is fighting the order because the "herculean effort" needed to do so is too difficult for it to handle.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder on Thursday asked that U.S. District Judge David Lawson's order to deliver four cases of water to every Flint resident each week until the lead-contaminated water system in the city is usable be stayed, offering a list of reasons for refusing to comply with the order.
Lawson issued the order on Nov. 12, telling city, and other, officials they had to meet their responsibility of delivering safe water to residents of the city. Tap water in Flint has been unusable for two years and searches for bottled water equate to a full-time job because of limited access to lead-free water.
Flint residents started getting sick not long after the city changed its water supply in 2014 from Lake Huron to the polluted Flint River. The river water was not treated before entering Flint's water system, causing lead from plumbing and pipes to leach into the water coming out of faucets in the city.
"The herculean effort required by the court order would be on the magnitude of a large-scale military operation," said Anna Heaton, a spokesperson for Snyder. "The resources to accomplish this would only be available through the activation of the National Guard or the hiring of several logistics companies with the necessary equipment and personnel to achieve this unprecedented level of effort."
The effort will require 395,000 cases of water to be delivered to about 30,000 homes at a cost of roughly $10.5 million per month. The state would need to acquire 137 additional trucks and drivers and find warehouses to contain 11.4 million liters of water in order to get Flint residents the water they need.
Among the reasons the governor's office has given for trying to avoid delivering water to people without access to it: Millions of empty water bottles suddenly flooding the city's trash and recycling system; impacts on "the state's ability" to fix the water delivery system in the city; and efforts to employ Flint residents to maintain filters are being properly used at homes throughout the city may also suffer.
Heaton also said that decreasing the amount Flint residents use the tap water system could delay the improvement of pipes and could "hinder the long-term stability of the system."
For most, however, it appears the state is continuing to shirk its responsibility to deliver usable water to Flint residents and fix the system that was damaged by poor government decisions.
"The facts in this case are clear: The state is failing to deliver safe drinking water to the people of Flint," said a plaintiff in the court case, Henry Henderson, Midwest director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Seeking to delay the federal court order that the state immediately fix Flint's water crisis is an obvious insult to the people of Flint, whose tap water has been contaminated with lead for more than two years."
