Trump to Campaign in Flint Wednesday to Draw Attention to Lead Crisis, Blight

FLINT, MI — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is expected to make his fourth visit to Michigan since sealing his party’s nomination in a Wednesday stop in Flint, which has been under a lead-water crisis for more than two years, according to media reports.

Trump, who said he would visit Flint sometime before the Nov. 8 election when he appeared at the Great Faith Ministries International church on Sept. 3, shows only a Wednesday event in Canton, OH, on his website.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton visited Flint twice last winter to call attention to the city’s water crisis, but as a primary candidate, Trump barely mentioned the crisis.

WEYI-TV said Trump is expected to tour Flint’s water plant and a Flint neighborhood, then address blight in the community of just under 100,000 residents. Other details of Trump’s visit to Flint aren’t yet available.

Trump has called Flint’s lead water crisis a “horror show.”

In an interview with WEYI after his Sept. 3 visit to the Detroit church, Trump said the lead crisis “would never have happened” under his administration. Residents began complaining discolored drinking water with particulate matter shortly after the the city began drawing water from the Flint River in 2014 as a cost-saving move while under the control of an emergency manager.

“First of all, it would have never happened, because it was so ridiculous,” Trump told the TV station. “In order to save a small amount of money, they re-do the whole thing and now it’s a disaster.

“I will say this, my administration, we’ll get very much involved, and we’re going to get the problem solved. But it’s still not solved and it’s hard to believe — but it’s really harder to believe that they did it in the first place, should have never happened.”

Besides his Sept. 3 visit to Great Faith Ministries, Trump also visited Dimondale on Aug. 19 and the Detroit Economic Club on Aug. 8.

An interview with Bishop Wayne T. jackson, the leader of the Great Faith Ministries congregation, will be broadcast at 9 p.m. Wednesday on Jackson’s Impact Network, The Detroit News said.

Several events related to the Flint water crisis will be occurring on the same day Trump is scheduled to visit. One of those criminally charged in the water crisis, former director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Service’s Bureau of Epidemiology Corinne Miller, has a pretrial hearing at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Also, several members of Michigan’s congressional delegation — Democratic Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters and U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, as well as Flint Mayor Karen Weaver — will join environmental activists in calling on Congress to move quickly to solve the environmental and public health disaster to minimize the impact of lead and other threats to Flint’s citizens.

According to the post on the National Wildlife Federation, which is bringing together a broad coalition of 64 community, social justice, civil rights, faith, public health, labor and environmental groups to draw attention to the crisis.

As many as 12,000 children in Flint may have been exposed to lead by drinking the city’s tap water. Lead is particularly damaging for children’s developing brains. Some homes in Flint had water with lead levels more than 850 times the level the EPA considers unsafe.

A Senate vote on the Water Resources Development Act could as early as this week. It includes $100 million for improving Flint’s water infrastructure and allocates $4.8 billion for programs under the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund and the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. The House has yet to take up the water resources bill or enact any measure providing funding for Flint.

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr Commons