City governments across America are poisoning children with lead and nothing is being done about it

Monday, September 12, 2016 by: Amy Goodrich
Tags: lead poisoning, water supply, incompetent government

---

(NaturalNews) One year ago, the first public rumors emerged about Flint's city water being contaminated with lead, after the city made the switch from fresh water coming from Detroit's Lake Huron to toxic water coming from the highly polluted Flint River. State officials failed to apply corrosion inhibitors, letting toxic lead from old pipes leach into the drinking water supply.

For months, state officials knew about the lead poisoning. Nonetheless, they kept silent and reassured residents that their drinking water was safe. The coverup affected thousands of children, leaving some with irreversible and permanent brain damage.

Tap water from all over the U.S. may be contaminated with heavy metals such as lead and other disease causing toxins. Children and adults alike shouldn't trust drinking water provided by the government unless it is filtered through a high quality water filtering system.

Will they escape their sentences?

While charges have been brought against eight past and current middle- and lower-level state employees, chances are the charges will be dropped.

As reported by Occupy, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said that, "Each of these individuals attempted to bury ... information that contradicted their own narrative... and their narrative was 'there's nothing wrong with Flint water.'"

The eight state workers, five from the Department of Environmental Quality and three from the Department of Health and Human Services, all face a misconduct in office charge which is a crime that can carry a five-year prison term.

A ninth government worker has pledged his cooperation in exchange for pleading no contest to willful neglect of his duty.

Writing for the Associated Press, David Eggert noted that there is no statute explicitly defining official misconduct. The Michigan Supreme Court has ruled that misconduct in office cannot be applied to all government workers, but to "public officers" only. Public officers include the governor, lawmakers, mayors and high-ranking appointees.

According to Peter Henning, a Wayne State University law professor and former federal prosecutor, Michigan is one of the few states to preserve common law criminal offenses. For this reason, the state courts are now struggling to find out who can be prosecuted, as most of these bureaucracies are staffed with non-elected or non-appointed officials.

Criminals walk free

As a result, these eight government workers may escape their sentences thanks to bureaucratic immunity. Both the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Health and Human Services are spending thousands of dollars on private attorneys for these employees.

According to Eggert, the Department of Environmental Quality has recently spent nearly $1.4 million on their defense, while the Health and Human Services Department has spent $246,000 on the lawsuit.

Andrea Bitely, Schuette's spokeswoman, said that the attorney general and special counsel Todd Flood "would not have charged these individuals if they did not have confidence in the charges. We will pursue this case in court."

"It's always the cover-up. ... I'm not going to prosecute anybody that made a mistake. I will prosecute someone that made a decision, a culpable decision, to commit a crime," Flood told WDET-FM.

These eight middle- and lower-level government workers who buried the facts are not the only ones who may avoid being prosecuted for poisoning thousands of children. While Michigan is trying to lock up the guys who concealed the facts, their bosses or the individuals who created the mess in the first place should be the center of attention.

As reported by Occupy, charges against the engineers of the water switch-over plan are conspicuously absent. Figures like Flint's emergency manager, Darnell Earley, and Governor Rick Snyder go unpunished, while the middlemen take the full blow.

Sources for this article include:

AllGov.com

BigStory.AP.org

Occupy.com