Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was booed so lustily during his first big public appearance in Flint Wednesday that his remarks were drowned out.
Snyder spoke as a part of an event at Flint’s Northwestern High School where President Obama was to make an appearance before the community. While the Republican governor has held town halls via conference call and individual visits to Flint homes, Wednesday’s speech was his first before a large crowd in the eastern Michigan city since the water crisis emerged late last year.
“Let me begin by saying I understand why you are angry and frustrated,” Snyder said. “I want to come here today to apologize.”
The booing continued throughout Snyder’s speech, rising and falling depending on the crowd’s mood.
The Republican governor has been roundly pilloried in the Democratic stronghold for the city’s lead water crisis. His administration has been blamed by a state report for causing the crisis.
In April 2014, a state emergency manager appointed by Snyder signed off on a symbolic vote from the Flint City Council to change the city’s water source to a new local authority. While a pipeline was being built, a state official decided the city would get its water from the Flint River instead of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department.
The Flint River water, however, was so acidic that it caused the lead pipes bringing water from the city’s cast iron mains into homes to corrode. Lead leached off the pipes and into drinking water throughout the city.
The state and the federal government have declared a state of emergency, and Flint residents are not able to drink the water coming out of their taps.
A report done by the state indicated state environmental officials are at fault for the crisis. Three people, two state regulators and one city official, have been charged with state crimes, and the Michigan attorney general’s office continues to investigate the incident.
In a stark contrast, Flint’s congressman, Rep. Dan Kildee, Sen. Debbie Stabenow and Mayor Karen Weaver, all Democrats, were cheered heartily by the crowd.
Kildee, speaking immediately after Snyder, rubbed salt in Snyder’s wound by telling the crowd that Snyder’s policies of austerity are to blame for causing the crisis. He said Flint residents were victims of the Snyder administration’s callousness toward the city.
“We did not do this to ourselves, this was done to us,” Kildee said.
