FLINT, Mich. — Hundreds of residents of Flint, Michigan, filed a racketeering lawsuit Wednesday targeting Gov. Rick Snyder and other state and local officials over lead contamination of the city’s drinking water.
Filed in U.S. District Court in Flint, the suit is one of many arising from the decision to switch the Flint supply from the Detroit water system to the Flint River in April 2014 to cut costs. The move was supposed to be temporary, until Flint could join a new water authority that would pipe water from Lake Huron.
The lawsuit accuses Snyder and others of hatching a “wrongful scheme” to reduce Flint’s indebtedness by stopping the impoverished city from buying treated Lake Huron water from Detroit, instead of “invoking time tested, well-honed federal bankruptcy protections for restructuring the debts of municipalities.”
Snyder spokesman Ari Adler declined comment on the suit.
State officials have acknowledged erroneously advising Flint officials not to treat the river water with anti-corrosive chemicals, and that this enabled lead to leach from aging pipes and reach some homes, businesses and schools. Testing last fall showed that levels of lead in the blood of some children in the city rose after the water systems were switched.