Governor Takes Responsibility For Flint Crisis; Detroit Pistons' Owner Helps Flint Residents
HARLOW: To Flint, Michigan now. Ground zero of a public health crisis that everyone agrees was manmade. Michigan's governor signed a bill yesterday to provide $28 million in funding to try to cope with the ramification of the poisoned water there. Corroded lead pipes and health problems for those who drank the tap water before the alarm was sounded. This as President Obama announced $80 million in funding for Flint and as three members of Congress propose legislation that would include, $400 million in federal funding to resolve the issue and $200 million to address health issues. There is no guarantee that Congress will approve that funding though. In just a moment, the CNN exclusive interview you will hear from the man many hold responsible, Michigan's Governor Rick Snyder. It is his first national interview about the crisis and calls for him to step down. Flint's drinking water became contaminated on his watch and while the city was in dire financial straits, an emergency manager that was appointed by the Governor switched the city's water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. That did save money, but look what has happened. The river water was corrosive it caused lead and other toxins to leech from pipes and for months, residents of Flint rang alarm bells but officials assured them the water was safe to drink. CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently showed us how one family with four-year-old twins has been affected, their tap water tested off the charts for lead. Here is what the doctor who exposed the disaster told Sanjay.</s>DR. MONNA HANNA-ATTISHA, EXPOSED LEAD POISONING IN FLINT: The percentage of children with lead poisoning doubled in the city of Flint. And in some neighborhoods it actually tripled. If you were to think of something to put in a population to keep them down for this generation and generations to come it would be lead.</s>HARLOW: That's because the damage that lead does to the body is irreversible, especially in children. Medical experts say there is no safe level of lead in humans. Investigations have been launched, lawsuits have been filed. A federal official with the EPA has resigned as for Governor Snyder he is apologizing to the people of Flint. He said, he is not living office, I sat down with him this week.</s>HARLOW: Can the people of Flint today as we sit here, can they drink the water?</s>SNYDER: No. We don't want them to. And that's the terrible tragedy of all this.</s>HARLOW (voice-over): As the people of Flint wait and wonder if they have been poisoned by the lead in their water, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder admits he failed them and promises to fix the crisis. (on camera): All medical experts agree no level of lead ingestion by anyone especially children under the age of six is OK.</s>SNYDER: That's correct.</s>HARLOW: Flint is not there yet.</s>SNYDER: No.</s>HARLOW (voice-over): State officials now seeing progress, saying unofficial water samples by residents show 93 percent of Flint's water is below 15 parts per billion lead the legal threshold. (on camera): To be clear these are nonscientific tests, these are done by residents. What do your scientists tell you from their tests are the lead levels?</s>SNYDER: That's the protocol we're trying to establish because if you look at this part of the issue we had were we had different experts coming out with different answers. And that's a bad answer.</s>HARLOW: But why not on your top guy to the homes, just get it done. And just find out what the numbers are.</s>SNYDER: Well, there is a trust issue at this point. And so, what we're doing now and we -- we're being very I think thoughtful and careful about this given the circumstance in particular, is state people have come up with what they think is a good protocol.</s>HARLOW: And every day that is protocol, protocol, protocol is another day that people here can't drink their water, the mother of three at the coffee shop down the road this morning told me she and her children go bathe at their church. Can this be sped up so they can get back to their life?</s>SNYDER: This is one of the hugely frustrating parts particularly for the citizens. This is a terrible experience for them. The point is, is you can't just do it based on the calendar. You captain just say it's X days. We want to make sure it is safe.</s>HARLOW: You said last week over 100 children here in Flint have high levels of lead in their blood. How many kids is it as we sit here today?</s>SNYDER: It's about 100 and some if you go back over the last couple of years. And so, that's the problem here is, we know the ones that have higher levels to do appropriate follow-up care. It's really we need to establish the right medical protocols, the public health pieces, the educational process things. To watch these kids for years that didn't have higher blood levels in terms of a blood test because they could be affected.</s>HARLOW: You're saying there is the 100 children as of now, there may be many, many more.</s>SNYDER: There could be many more. We're assuming that.</s>HARLOW: A decline in the child's IQ forever, affect their behavior, it has linked to criminality and it has multigenerational impacts. It can be passed on. Talk directly to the parents of Flint right now who have a child that is going to live with this.</s>SNYDER: Yes. This is awful. And again, our goal is to do whatever possible to minimize the damage. To help support them through that. This shouldn't have happened. Again, this is where there was a failure in government. In terms of people not using common sense enough to prevent this from happening. And identifying it.</s>HARLOW (voice-over): No level of lead in the body is safe, it is especially detrimental to children under the age of six. Dr. Monna Hanna-Attisha one of the first to discover the lead in the water here calls the impact on children irreversible and multigenerational. (on camera): For those parents that are sitting here today and wondering is my kid going to not reach their potential because of this, and that's going to happen with some of these kids, we know that. Dr. Monna Hanna-Attisha told me what can be done is that you can minimize the impact through early literature programs, universal preschool, access to healthy foods that have calcium binds instead to the lead to the child's bones, et cetera, mental health services. She put a price tag on that, Governor and she told me it's going to cost $100 million just to do that. Will you make sure they get $100 million?</s>SNYDER: I'm not sure she would know how to put the price tag. I have reviewed recommendations she's made. And actually a number of those actions we were already working on doing in Flint but we're going to enhance those. Ideas like preschool, in terms of making sure that's accessible to everyone. We've been a leader in the country in that but we need to do more here in Flint. So, we're going to look at all of these things. I mean, that's the point of getting good feedback from health experts and we can actually --</s>HARLOW: She is the expert who found the lead --</s>SNYDER: Yes.</s>HARLOW: -- in the water, and she's done the analysis and she says $100 million is what it's going to take. I'm asking you again, $100 million, will you make sure they get that if that's what they need?</s>SNYDER: Well, we're making sure they get what they need. Again, I haven't reviewed her number. I'm happy to do that.</s>HARLOW (voice-over): A 2011 study fond water from the Flint River would have to be treated with an anti-corrosive agent to be safe to drink. To do that would have only cost $100 a day, but that was never done. (on camera): I was speaking with a young man this morning, and he said to me, they put money over people. And he said, the black lives and the poor white lives weren't worth it. When you look at the numbers, $100 a day, what happened?</s>SNYDER: Well, that's the failure point. I mean, in terms of cost structures, $100 a day, this is where the huge error was, is people, there were people that were subject matter experts in this that didn't believe that needed to be done. That was a huge mistake. That was part of the fundamental mistakes of this whole situation.</s>HARLOW: Why?</s>SNYDER: Well, again --</s>HARLOW: That money was given --</s>SNYDER: No. Not on that point.</s>HARLOW: Priority here, over these people?</s>SNYDER: Not at all. This is where the investigations will follow up and all those in terms of the details of all that. We're cooperating with all of those investigations. Because I want to find out what went on. I want the facts out there. Because we want to make sure this never happens again. But in terms of saying it happened because of the nature of the community here, absolutely not.</s>HARLOW: When you look at the demographics here in Flint, more than 40 percent of residents here live below the poverty line, many of them are African-American, minorities, this morning a white middle class university professor here said to me, Flint has always been marginalized. And he said this would not have happened down the road in Grand Blanc. And this would not happen in gross point. Is he right?</s>SNYDER: No. In terms of doing that, in terms of the commitment I've made to Flint and our administration and what we've been doing in Flint, Flint has been a challenged community for a long time. But I made a massive -- no, but I made a massive investment in Detroit and we've -- we made a major commitment to Flint that we need to do even more on now. If we look at what we've done in Flint we've seen a 45 percent reduction in violent crime in this community by putting additional resources. We actually pay for the lock up for the city. In addition to many other law enforcement efforts in this community. In terms of kids, we've done healthy kids dental to get dental care to the kids of Flint and around the state that are lower income. Healthy Michigan in terms of getting health care to people.</s>HARLOW: But the kids were being poisoned by the water they were drinking here. The EPA knew about it.</s>SNYDER: It doesn't.</s>HARLOW: Your former spokesman knew about it in July 2015 and sent an e-mail about it. And you didn't declare a state of emergency until January of this year. Why did it take so long?</s>SNYDER: Actually, I learned about it in October. And I took action immediately then, offering filters, working with people on getting water on doing water testing, again we needed to do more though. So, as soon as I learned about it, we took dramatic action. The failure was is people --</s>HARLOW: Was it a dramatic action? Because the mother this morning said to me, no one came to my house immediately back in October and knocked on the door.</s>SNYDER: That's why I said we needed to do more. So, this point in time, all of the other efforts weren't as much as I would have liked. So the point is, now that was the point of calling the National Guard out, about making attempts to visit every home in Flint.</s>HARLOW: Up next, the e-mail: "I'm frustrated by the water issue in Flint. These folks are scared and worried about health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us."</s>HARLOW: You have said since then that you knew about that e-mail. And that you were made aware of that. Why not act then?</s>SNYDER: The experts came back from both Department of Environmental Quality and Health and Human Services to say they didn't see a problem with lead in the water or lead in the blood and --</s>HARLOW: Folks here did. They were getting rashes.</s>HARLOW: Their kids were having rashes. The water was discolored.</s>SNYDER: Let me finish, Poppy.</s>HARLOW: Ahead, more from the governor on that. He tells me he will fix the problem, and is not resigning. Stay with us.