Great Lakes (IL IN MI MN OH WI)

"FLINT, Mich. — Near the top of the daily challenges that Flint residents face in a city without safe drinking water is how and where to shower."

"Flint residents aren’t using enough water to pull necessary chemical treatments through the city’s system, hindering efforts to get water up to safety standards in a community where residents are afraid to use their taps and loathe to pay for what comes out of them.

Although the past six months have produced improvements, recent testing by Virginia Tech researchers, including expert Marc Edwards, shows contamination still at problem levels.

"More than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of shoreline and 44,000 square kilometers (17,000 square miles) of open water in Lake Huron and Lake Michigan could be at risk if oil spilled from twin 63-year-old underwater pipelines that run below the Straits of Mackinac, according to a study released Thursday by the University of Michigan Water Center and supported by the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Regional Center."

"With public officials across the nation under fire for downplaying the health risks posed by lead water pipes, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration is moving to start testing tap water in the homes of children poisoned by the brain-damaging metal."

"Ohio's environmental regulators are proposing an overhaul of how the state and its cities deal with lead in drinking water, including speeding up notifications when lead is found at the tap."

"It was a controversial move when Madison, Wis., decided to replace all its lead pipes in 2001. But that decision put the city ahead of the curve — allowing it to avoid the lead water contamination that is plaguing cities like Flint, Mich., now."

"An official with Flint's water plant said Tuesday he had planned to treat the drinking water with anti-corrosive chemicals after the city began drawing from the Flint River but was overruled by a state environmental regulator."

"A controversial public relations contract between the global firm Mercury and the state of Michigan has ended, The Hill has learned. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) came under fire for hiring the high-powered firm to help deal with the fallout from the water contamination crisis in Flint, Mich."

"Enbridge Energy’s Line 5 goes right under Lake Michigan at the Straits of Mackinac."

"FLINT, Mich. — A task force appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder issued a hard-hitting report on the Flint drinking water public health crisis, slamming the catastrophe as a story of "government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction and environmental injustice."