President Barack Obama assured Flint citizens Wednesday their water is perfectly safe for young children to drink, but that it would probably be a good idea to test their children after they consume the city’s lead-tainted water.
Obama said to an audience in the Michigan town that it would take government officials nearly two years to replace the water supply. The president took sips of Flint water to illustrate the current supply was safe.
“I really did need a glass of water. This is not a stunt,” Obama said. “If you’re using a filter, if you’re installing it, then Flint water at this point is drinkable.”
After several local, state, and national government agencies tried and failed to solve the Flint water crisis, activists associated with the city aimed their protests at Obama.
Liberal documentarian Michael Moore criticized Obama on CNN Wednesday.
“We need President Obama to step up and do something right now, not just tell us how he’s got our back and he feels bad for us and look, I’ll drink a little sip of water here. That’s not what we need,” Moore said. “We need the Army Corps of Engineers in there. We need to be replacing these pipes.”
Moore continued his diatribe on Twitter after his CNN appearance, telling his followers, “actually, what he did was worse than nothing. He publicly asked for a glass of Flint water, sipped from it, & declared there was no problem.”
He went to Flint. Did nothing. Thousands depressed, mad. Here are my comments on CNN. It was hard for me 2 speak. https://t.co/RJZBhIdiEq
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) May 5, 2016
Other activists have begged Obama to fix the problem himself.
“It is time for the President to help bring this ugly mess to an end,” Flint activists Pastor Allen Overton and Rhea Suh wrote in a Monday editorial ahead of the president’s Flint trip. “And that means taking the fix out of the hands of the folks who made the mistake to begin with and have moved far too slowly to resolve it.”
Suh and Overton added the water in Flint is still undrinkable for young people. A great deal of the harm, they say, is actually due to the Environmental Protection Agency’s inability to address the problem.
“Our groups petitioned the EPA to use its emergency powers to secure lead-free drinking water for the city’s residents back in October,” they wrote. “Instead of acting, the agency initially balked — for many months, despite clear knowledge of the public health crisis at hand.”
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