FLINT, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is defending how his office responded to an email flagging a potential link between a surge in Legionnaires’ disease and Flint’s water.
The Republican governor told The Associated Press Friday that an aide, Harvey Hollins, asked the Department of Environmental Quality to look into a local official’s concerns further. He says the DEQ was skeptical of any link last March and “didn’t bring it forward” again.
Snyder says one reason he changed the agency’s leadership is because he “wasn’t getting the information that I should have.”
Snyder publicly disclosed the spike in Legionnaires’ cases in January, 10 months later, saying he learned about it a couple of days earlier. Snyder spoke after visiting a Flint church that’s distributing water and filters to its predominantly Latino parishioners.
