The Patriot Post® · Left Proposes Big-Gov't Fix to Flint's Water Crisis

For the Left, the question over how to fix the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, comes down to not how it should be fixed, but who should fix it. A few days ago, large companies like Walmart, Pepsi and Coca-Cola were on the receiving end of a critical piece written by The Atlantic’s David Graham. To him, the companies’ pledge to quickly move millions of bottles of water to affected residents was a dangerous usurpation of government’s role. Currently, local government and the state are moving to find solutions to providing water to the city of 100,000. But two Democrat U.S. senators think this is a perfect pretext to expand the Environmental Protection Agency’s power. Sens. Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow tacked an amendment on to the energy bill being considered in Congress that would expand the EPA’s ability to intervene if lead levels in the water in any municipality in the nation got unacceptably high. Peters said the legislation would be “broad.” Stabenow said it would give “clear legal authority to provide notice to the public when a state is not taking action on a public-health-safety crisis.” The agency knows a thing or two about water unfit for human consumption, especially after it poisoned the Animas River last summer and let itself off the hook for the environmental whoopsie.