What Can Gov. Snyder Do to Regain Trust After Flint Water Crisis?
Snyder has vowed to drink filtered Flint water for next 30 days
Gov. Rick Snyder announced this week that he will drink filtered Flint water for 30 days. Many critics, though, are calling it a PR stunt.
This comes at a time when officials are telling Flint residents to run their water in order to flush out the system and recoat the pipes with a film that controls corrosion.
Michigan Public Radio Network state Capitol Bureau Chief Rick Pluta tells Detroit Today host Stephen Henderson that he is surprised that Snyder didn’t decide to drink the water sooner. Pluta told Henderson, “the Governor had to do it because he’s saying the water is safe. There are going to be people who are going to be critical of the governor no matter what he does, if he personally drove a backhoe into the city and started replacing lead pipes himself, there are people who would have a problem with that.”
Meanwhile, a Michigan State University survey found 44 percent of respondents giving Snyder a poor job performance in the wake of the Flint water crisis, “up sharply from 21 percent in the previous survey and the worst mark of the Republican governor’s five-year tenure,” the report says.
Pluta says that normally survey respondents are concerned about jobs and the economy. Those concerns are closely followed by education or public safety. In this case, for the first time that he can remember, a majority of the people cited that, “…infrastructure in cities is the most pressing problem facing the state of Michigan.”
Click on the audio link above to hear the entire conversation.
