Karen Weaver, the newly elected mayor of Flint, Mich., stopped drinking the tap water there nearly two years ago, as soon as the city began drawing its water from the murky Flint River to save money.
She thought the decision to draw water from the river a tough call in a poor city run by a state-appointed emergency manager was a bad one.
And her husband stopped drinking it, too.
“It’s sad that I would say, ‘Thank God my kids are grown and not there,’ ” Weaver said Wednesday at a meeting of the country’s mayors in Washington.
“But everybody can’t say that.
Since that April 2014 decision, thousands of children in Flint have been exposed to water contaminated with lead.
Now, President Obama, who met with Weaver on Tuesday, has declared a federal emergency that frees up to $5 million in federal aid.
