Democrats continue to use water problems in Flint, Michigan, as a campaign line, but a new report suggests that their own policies and mismanagement are responsible for the city’s struggle to replace lead pipes in the local water system.
Flint made headlines in 2016 after high levels of lead were discovered in its water. Democrats blamed Michigan’s then- Republican governor, Rick Snyder, even though the decisions made by Democrats were almost entirely to blame.
Democrats have continued to use Flint to attack Republicans — though they mocked U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler when he said that safe drinking water was a more urgent environmental problem than climate change.
However, a new report by the Daily Caller News Foundation notes that the city hired an inexperienced company for $22 million to replace the lead pipes, and ignored available research about where the lead pipes were located, wasting money instead on digging up every backyard in the city, including in areas known only to have copper pipes.
Reporter Luke Rosiak added that the city rejected a bid from an experienced company that happened to be owned by a white person in favor of a black-owned company. That company, in turn, was to have been aided by an experienced subcontractor, but it soon stopped dealing with the subcontractor, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Rosiak noted that “the city has received more than $600 million in state and federal aid for its water crisis.” He added that there had been suspicions of corruption regarding the contracting process.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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