Scream for Help...

The biggest government cover up of the 21st century began 10 years ago today. Here's an excerpt from Jordan's upcoming Flint water cover up book AND an announcement on our upcoming Flint documentary

Hey folks, it’s Jordan. Exciting news below. I sincerely ask you to consider supporting Status Coup to help fund our continued reporting on this important story, our upcoming documentary, and more.

In today’s media world flooding you with a tsunami of information 24/7, it’s hard to remember what happened yesterday let alone a decade ago. But I firmly believe the origins of the biggest government cover up of the 21st century began ten years ago…today.

On April 17th, 2014, Mike Glasgow, lab supervisor at the Flint water plant, emailed officials at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality eight days before Flint’s expected switch to the Flint River as its drinking water source.

 "I do not anticipate giving the OK to begin sending water out any time soon. If water is distributed from this plant in the next couple of weeks, it will be against my direction. I need time to adequately train additional staff and to update our monitoring plans before I will feel we are ready. I will reiterate this to management above me, but they seem to have their own agenda.”

Glasgow, along with most of the workers on the plant floor, had been warning their city bosses—including the unelected emergency manager appointed by then Governor Rick Snyder to seize control over Flint—that the plant was not ready or equipped to safely treat drinking water from the Flint River that would be sent out to the city’s 100,000 residents.

But tragically, city and state officials reacted to Glasgow and other plant workers with a simple message: no is not an option—come hell or dirty water, we’re switching to the Flint River! After Glasgow emailed state environmental officials that he could not sign off on switching to the Flint River, they did not respond. That’s right— the state simply ignored the head of the Flint water plant’s stop sign not to switch to the Flint River.

As will be revealed in my book, “We the Poisoned: Inside the Flint Water Cover Up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans,” the Flint water plant was much worse off, and unprepared, to safely treat drinking water from the Flint River. Despite knowing this, then-Governor Rick Snyder’s administration—and the unelected emergency manager he appointed to rule Flint—insisted the Flint River switch proceed anyway. In the book, you’ll learn the scandalous reasons why.

Here is a short excerpt from my upcoming book—which is available now for pre-order—on the dire straits plant workers were operating under. This excerpt mixes different parts of Chapter 8 together.

“Hell no, we can’t do it, we are not ready!” Matt McFarland recounted telling superiors. “There wasn’t a lot of time to do anything as far as upgrades to our plant . . . we knew we weren’t ready to run.”

The plant only had a temporary chlorination system. Its ozone system, used for deeper disinfection of bacteria and heavy metals, wasn’t working properly. The water softening system had structural problems. The plant’s weirs, small barriers inserted to control water flow, were either not installed or completely submerged in the water. The SCADA software system, which measures real-time data, was outdated.

For years media coverage on the water crisis framed a simple story: to save money the state and city decided not to add corrosion-control chemicals to Flint River water.  But the media had it wrong. “We didn’t even have the equipment or the chemicals to feed [corrosion control] when we first went online from the Flint River,” Glasgow revealed to Flood.

Ten months before the Flint River switch, workers at the city’s water plant called off doing more engineering tests. The decision, and their reasons, should have alarmed the powers that be pressuring workers at the plant to move mountains to ready the plant for the Flint River switch.  “The plant was found to be in such a state of disrepair we could not fully evaluate the plant (because) a number of the treatment systems were not operating,” LAN’s Warren Green publicly testified.

In February of 2014, MDEQ approved a permit for the Flint water plant to operate full-time ahead of the move to the river. But ahead of the April water switch, the pressure on the water plant’s lab supervisor Mike Glasgow intensified. “They explained it as, they were following their orders, they were passing on the marching orders,” he told special prosecutor Flood about instructions he received from Howard Croft, Flint’s public works director. Glasgow believed Croft was merely a puppet passing down his orders via Snyder’s proxy, emergency manager Darnell Earley.

“We have to meet this deadline. ‘No’ is not an option or an answer,” Glasgow recounted Croft dictating. But he pushed back. “I don’t feel we’re ready. I’m uncomfortable with this. I think things are happening too fast.”

Glasgow’s final effort to stop the switch went unanswered. “To me, that [email] was my last chance of trying to delay or stop our switch,” the lab supervisor told Flood. “It’s my last, I guess, scream for help.”

In addition to the book, I’m excited to announce that Status Coup will releasing its documentary, “Flint Fatigue,” on Sunday April 28th. The documentary will first be released on Breaking Points YouTube channel. Status Coup members will have access to the FULL DOCUMENTARY INTERVIEWS and BEHIND-THE-SCENES clips from the documentary on our website.

We will be releasing the trailer for the documentary this week. Next week, I’ll be reporting ON-THE-GROUND in East Palestine Ohio and then in Flint on the decade anniversary of the water crisis. Then we’ll be releasing “Flint Fatigue” on April 28th. Needless to say, this all costs a lot of money and resources. Please support us if you can.

Jordan