Email shows top doc got early warning on Legionnaires'

 Chad Livengood, Detroit News Lansing Bureau 9:12 a.m. EDT June 27, 2016

(Photo: fordschool.umich.edu)

Lansing — The state’s top doctor was among high-level Michigan health officials briefed about a deadly Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Genesee County nearly one year before it was publicly disclosed, state records show.

Dr. Matthew Davis, who served on Gov. Rick Snyder’s Flint water task force, has previously denied having any knowledge of the Legionnaires’ outbreak prior to his April 2015 departure from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services as the state’s chief medical executive.

But Davis was a recipient of a Jan. 28, 2015, email sent to top DHHS officials sounding alarms about the respiratory disease infection outbreak in the Flint area — an outbreak that ended up killing 12 people in a span of 18 months in 2014 and 2015. The email was part of more than 303,000 pages of records about Flint’s water crisis the Snyder administration released publicly last week.

More ...

Nestlé Pumps Millions of Gallons for Free While Flint Pays for Poisoned Water

As Flint residents are forced to drink, cook with and even bathe in bottled water, while still paying some of the highest water bills in the country for their poisoned water, we turn to a little-known story about the bottled water industry in Michigan. 

In 2001 and 2002, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality issued permits to Nestlé, the largest water bottling company in the world, to pump up to 400 gallons of water per minute from aquifers that feed Lake Michigan. This sparked a decade-long legal battle between Nestlé and the residents of Mecosta County, Michigan, where Nestlé’s wells are located. One of the most surprising things about this story is that, in Mecosta County, Nestlé is not required to pay anything to extract the water, besides a small permitting fee to the state and the cost of leases to a private landowner. In fact, the company received $13 million in tax breaks from the state to locate the plant in Michigan. 

The spokesperson for Nestlé in Michigan is Deborah Muchmore. She’s the wife of Dennis Muchmore—Governor Rick Snyder’s chief of staff, who just retired and registered to be a lobbyist.  More ...

Michigan Chapter Update - June 19, 2016

Michigan Chapter Update - June 5, 2016