Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will reportedly visit Flint, Mich., on Wednesday, a city that has been embroiled in a lead water drinking crisis for months.
A local TV station reported Trump would travel to Flint to tour the Flint Water Treatment Plant and a neighborhood in the city. The Detroit News reported the campaign had not detailed any specific plans or if Trump planned on holding a rally while in the city.
The trip was not listed on Trump’s public campaign schedule online. He is scheduled to speak at 7 p.m. Canton, Ohio in his only event listed for Wednesday.
It would be Trump’s first visit to the city where 100,000 people cannot drink their water without a filter. His opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, made Flint a central theme of her primary campaign but the city has fallen by the wayside in recent months on the national scene.
The city has been in a drinking water crisis for about a year since test results showed the amount of lead in the blood of children had increased since the April 2014 switch from Lake Huron water to the Flint River. The change was made at the behest of the then-state-controlled local government.
The river’s water was so polluted and acidic that it caused lead pipes leading from the main city pipes to homes to deteriorate and decay into drinking water. The National Guard was called in to deliver bottled water to homes in the city. Residents still cannot drink the water without using a filter.
The federal state of emergency ended in August, but some government agencies remain in Flint.
Trump declined to comment on the crisis when it was making national news early this year, and only spoke briefly about it following a GOP presidential primary debate in Detroit in March.
“They have to work with the state government in order for it to get done,” Trump said. “That’s a really terrible thing, I feel very, very badly for the people in Flint.”
During a trip to Detroit earlier this month, Trump told NBC 25 that the water crisis never would have happened under his watch.
“First of all, it would have never happened, because it was so ridiculous. In order to save a small amount of money, they re-do the whole thing and now it’s a disaster,” Trump said. “I will say this, my administration, we’ll get very much involved, and we’re going to get the problem solved. But it’s still not solved and it’s hard to believe — but it’s really harder to believe that they did it in the first place, should have never happened.”
