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Gov. Rick Snyder
Here's another blemish for Gov. Rick Snyder.
Progress Michigan, a Lansing public policy group, released an email Thursday showing that a Snyder aide was notified in March -- more than nine months before Snyder said he learned of the problem -- that there was an increase in Legionnaires' disease in Genesee County and a county health official was attributing the change to drinking water taken from the Flint River, Paul Egan of the Detroit Free Press writes.
Brad Wurfel, then-spokesman for the state's Department of Environmental Quality, sent an email on March 13, 2015 to Harvey Hollins, who is Snyder's director of urban initiatives.
"More than 40 cases reported since last April," Wurfel said in the e-mail. "That's a significant uptick. More than all the cases reported in the last five years or more combined."
Wurfel said that Jim Henry of the Genesee County Health Department is "putting up the flare," and has "made the leap formally in his e-mail that the uptick in cases is directly attributable to the river as a drinking water source," the Freep reports.
A Snyder spokesman told the Associated Press Snyder was not informed of the e-mail.
The Freep reports of Legionnaires' disease cases:
There were at least 87 cases across Genesee County during a 17-month period, including nine deaths, but the public was never told about the increase when it was happening — even after an initial wave of more than 40 cases was known by early 2015.