Scenes from "Downtown Abbey" (2013) and "Peasants at Table" by Velazquez (1618).
We the people are embarrassed by a state that segregates drinking water by quality, with a purified source rushed in for state employees serving residents whose tap water was unfit.
That revelation Thursday by Progress Michigan, an advocacy group in the capital, shows that state office building workers in Flint were assured early last year that they'd have "a water cooler on each occupied floor, positioned near the water fountain, so you can choose which water to drink."
That Jan. 7, 2015 advisory (posted below) shows the action was a high priority: "The coolers will arrive today and will be provided as long as the public water does not meet treatment requirements."
Consider that frank admission from Lansing again: ". . . as long as the public water does not meet treatment requirements."
In other words: Let them drink sludge. We'll provide safe water.
A two-tier water supply evokes images of feudal landowners and peasants.
The optics are as foul as the Flint River. A two-tier water supply that puts civil servants ahead of taxpayers evokes images of royals and subjects, feudal landowners and peasants, plantation overseers and sharecroppers.
It shows us-and-them arrogance to the roughly 99,000 people in Michigan's seventh-largest city.
“While residents were being told to relax and not worry about the water, the Snyder administration was taking steps to limit exposure in its own building,” says Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan, in a statement. "This shows that the response was not only late and so far ineffective, but it was also unequal,”
A similar us-and-them approach surfaced last October, when Detroit Free Press columnist Nancy Kaffer called it out in a column headlined "MDEQ e-mails show stunning indifference to Flint peril." she wrote:
Lackadaisical and dismissive -- that's the tone of a Michigan Department of Environmental Quality spokeswoman's response to a July e-mail noting that a member of a second media outlet had made an inquiry about elevated lead levels in Flint's drinking water. And it's a perfectly tone-deaf representation of that agency's response to the public health crisis then brewing in that impoverished town. . . .
Frankly, it seemed some state officials thought dealing with inquiries about lead in Flint was a hassle. . . .
Karen Tommasulo, another MDEQ public information officer, wrote: "This is what Curt Guyette had been calling about, by the way. Apparently it's going to be a thing now." . . .
If there's such a thing as benign neglect, this was malignant indifference, on an institutional level.
Lansing overlords brushed off Flint peasants and media scribes. Hear the exasperated sigh about those pesky pollution questions: "It's going to be a thing now."
Here's our reply:
To: Snyder administration
Status: High Importance
Subj.: It's a thing now all right
We're Michigan, not Michissippi, and deserve much better than "let them drink sludge."
Notice to Flint-based workers from the Department of Technology, Management & Budget, which oversees state facilities. (Via Progress Michigan)
