Republican Sen. Ted Cruz became the first GOP presidential contender to make public comments about the Michigan water crisis Tuesday, calling it an “absolute travesty.”
Cruz came ready with an answer on the situation in Flint, which has seen bottles of water trucked into the city after acidic water ate away at the lead pipes bringing water to people’s homes, contaminating their drinking water.
Cruz called the situation a failure at every level of government.
“It’s a failure of the city officials. It is a failure of the county officials. It is a failure of the state officials. And the men and women of Michigan have been betrayed,” he said.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Monday he hadn’t been following the situation and Republican front-runner Donald Trump declined to comment on the situation when asked about it in Iowa Tuesday.
While the situation in Flint has been brewing for months, it has gained more exposure since former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought it up in front of 10 million viewers during the Democratic presidential primary debate Sunday. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has called on Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to resign.
But, until Cruz’s comments, the GOP candidates had been mostly silent on the issue.
Cruz said all people should have access to clean drinking water and said the potential exposure of children to lead poisoning was heartbreaking.
“There needs to be accountability,” he said. “There needs to be accountability as to why dirty water, poisoned water, was given to a community that did not deserve this. And we need to ensure that there is accountability to ensure clean water and clean air.”
Flint, a city of a little less than 100,000 people in eastern Michigan, is grappling with lead contaminating the city’s drinking water. On Saturday, Obama signed an emergency declaration, freeing up $5 million in federal aid for the city.
In April 2014, Flint switched its water source from the Detroit and Sewer Department, which draws water from Lake Huron, to a local agency that also would take water from the lake.
However, the infrastructure needed to get water from Lake Huron to Flint under the new agency was not yet built, so an emergency manager appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder decided to take water from the Flint River as a temporary measure.
The water from the Flint River is so polluted and acidic that the water ate away at the lead pipes bringing water to the city’s homes.
A study by the Hurley Medical Center found the amount of children with too much lead in their systems rose from 2 percent to 4.1 percent after the change in water supply.
The study also reported the share of children who live in the most affected parts of the city with elevated lead levels in their blood increased from 2.5 percent to 6.3 percent. The number of children in Flint under the age of 15 months who tested positive for higher lead levels increased two-and-a-half times after the switch.
High amounts of lead in blood could lead to drops in IQ, increased risk of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and other negative health effects, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The state Department of Environmental Quality has acknowledged it failed to require the city of Flint to treat the water with a chemical that would have made the water less acidic.
