Flint: The Smoking Gun

A high-ranking DWSD official told us today that Detroit offered a 50% reduction over what Flint had been paying Detroit.

The offer by DWSD shows that Gov. Rick Snyder was lying when he insisted the water switch was motivated by saving money for Flint, which was under the control of a state emergency manager.

“When compared over the 30 year horizon the DWSD proposal saves $800 million dollars or said differently – saves 20% over the KWA proposal,” then-DWSD Director Sue McCormick said in the e-mail dated April 15, 2013.

[...]Documents show that DWSD made at least six proposals to Flint, saying “the KWA pipeline can only be attributed to a ‘political’ objective that has nothing to do with the delivery – or the price – of water.”

[...]

Saying he was sorry for the mistake, Snyder pledged full transparency during his State of the State address last week and released e-mails related to the water crisis from 2014 and 2o15. Curiously, he refused to release e-mails from 2013, which would have showed why state officials decided to make the switch from DWSD to the KWA.

Now it seems clear why Snyder wouldn’t release the e-mails: They would have revealed that the switch was not about saving money.

[...]

So what was it about? Some have suggested that Snyder was motivated by a desire to break up DWSD and ultimately privatize it. In the summer of 2015, DWSD was split into two entities: the DWSD and the Great Lakes Water Authority.

Others have suggested that Snyder wanted to start fracking operations along a new pipeline. Snyder’s office didn’t return calls for comment.

  Motor City Muckraker

Hang 'em.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.