The Good and Bad News Coming Out of Flint
The good news? A $100 million grant in federal funding is on its way to approval to help the residents of Flint, Mich. The bad news? Thousands of residents could lose their homes because they haven’t been paying for the toxic water that’s running through their pipes.
MLive reports that legislators have finally gotten out of their own way and sent the grant to the governor’s desk for approval. The latest hold-up was allegedly a result of it including $3 million to fix a sinkhole in a different city.
“This is our mulligan. We sent it over there and there were a couple things that were not done correctly. It had actually got by three people reading it and still was wrong,” said Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof.
The state Senate unanimously approved the bill. The House also voted it forward. If the funding is used as expected, the lead-contaminated pipes in Flint could be removed sooner than expected.
However, it appears that the situation in Flint may get more complicated before it improves. NBC 25 reports that more than 8,000 people have received notices that they have to pay water bills for at least the past 6 months or risk foreclosure.
“I got scared, for probably the first time since this all started this actually scared me,” said Melissa Mays, who was told she has to pay $900 by May 19. If she and the other 8,000 people aren’t able to pay, a lengthy process will start that could eventually lead to them losing their homes.
“We have to have revenue coming in, so we can’t give people revenue, I mean excuse me, give people water at the tap and not get revenue coming in to pay those bills,” said Al Mooney, City of Flint Treasury Department.