Why Flint Water CRISIS Has Troubling Ties To Rick Snyder’s Pro-Fracking Donors
By: Jordan Chariton
While preparing to host a TYT Flint town hall tonight at 8pmET at Flint’s Woodside Church, I took a little trip down Follow The Money lane.
Three years after the state of Michigan’s disastrous decision to switch the city of Flint from clean Lake Huron water to toxic Flint River water, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder still remains in office, using taxpayer funds to pay for a criminal defense fund now north of $5 million.
All along, Snyder ducked responsibility, later offering faux regret and ownership for the debacle that’s left thousands of residents sick, depressed, and hopeless. Meanwhile, he’s fought tooth and nail to cut water tax credits to Flint residents; fought a court order for the state to deliver water to people’s doorsteps, appropriate money to fix the tens of thousands of lead and galvanized pipes that need replacement (fortunately, he was forced to settle yesterday to pay for 18,000 new pipes) and, ultimately, to provide the proper medical care that Flint residents need — Medicare for life.
In the appropriate rage of citizens toward Snyder, much has been discussed about the governor’s true motivations for approving his undemocratic, state-issued Emergency Manager’s plan to switch Flint off of Detroit’s clean water system to the toxic Flint River.
According to Snyder, his Emergency Manager, and other state officials, this was all a cost-saving measure in the face of Detroit’s high water prices (Flint was Detroit’s largest customer). The powers-that-be said switching off of Detroit to the Flint River temporarily would save the city money until the privatized KWA Pipeline was ready.
Emails unearthed from April, 2013, show that’s nonsense. In the face of losing its biggest customer, Detroit Water offered Flint an immediate 48% discount, which over 30 years would be 20% cheaper than what Flint would pay to the KWA.
So, why did Snyder want to switch to a privatized water system that would ultimately cost the city of Flint more than staying on clean, Lake Huron-issued water from Detroit’s water system?
Follow the money, Lebowski!
If you don’t know, there’s active discussion on plans to frack, frack, and frack some more along the path of the KWA pipeline — which would require TONS OF water.
And in looking at some of Snyder’s top donors, a troubling pattern appears: They’re a bunch of MOTHER FRACKERS!
Between Snyder’s initial run for governor in 2010 and today, the head of MPI Research, William Parfet, donated $300,000 to Snyder’s campaigns. Until last year, he was on the Board of Directors for big-agro giant Monsanto (pesky sexual harassment lawsuit may have done him in).
Well, what do you know? Monsanto heavily deploys nitrogen fertilizer, which is primarily made up of natural gas. Hence, the more natural gas produced by fracking, the cheaper nitrogen fertilizer becomes for Monsanto (and the more it can use).
Then there’s PVS Chemicals, who donated $242,600 to Snyder from 2010–2017. President and CEO Andrew Nicholson donated $60,000 to Snyder’s “One Tough Nerd” PAC. PVS is a chemical manufacturer and distributor that loves fracking.
Why? According to company President David Nicholson, “PVS has sold hydrochloric acid to various manufacturing customers for more than 50 years — but demand has surged in the past three to five years to use it as a ‘pre-treatment’ chemical in hydraulic fracturing.”
Hmmm — so a top Snyder donor’s sales of toxic acid would spike due to an increase in fracking? You don’t say!
And, accompanying the big boys in the Snyder fracked money-machine, is CMS Energy and DTE Energy: CMS donated $82,975 to Snyder’s 2014 reelection run, while DTE forked over $75,800 to the effort.
CMS definitely loves themselves some fracking: In 2012, they announced an ambitious effort to build a $750 million natural gas plant 20 miles north of Flint (the plant is delayed). So, increased fracking — say, along the route of a new privatized pipeline — would be A-OK with CMS.
For DTE, they’ve dropped a pretty penny for the love of fracking: According to Common Cause, “Michigan oil and gas companies that have participated in buying political influence on the issue of fracking [are] led by DTE Energy, which has spent $2.8 million on lobbying at the federal level and an additional $2.2 million on Michigan State candidates and political parties between 2001 and 2010.”
Do all of these pro-fracking mega-donors to Governor Snyder — who temporarily approved a switch to a toxic water source in order to move to a privatized water pipeline that wouldn’t be cheaper than existing supplier Detroit, but would allow for more fracking — prove that the Flint water crisis was really an ungodly ploy on behalf of bought-off state officials to pay back his financial sugar daddies?
Since Governor Snyder won’t release any emails prior to 2014 — when conversations about the motivations for the pipeline might’ve been discussed— I guess we’ll never know.
Governor Snyder’s office did not reply to requests for comment on his fracking ties.
