(Source: MIRS.news, Published 05/26/23) Attorneys for Concerned Pastors for Social Action filed a motion Friday seeking contempt charges against the city of Flint and its mayor for missing court-ordered deadlines to replace the city's lead water pipes.
The plaintiffs allege the city and Mayor Sheldon Neeley continue to miss deadlines for completing the water service line replacement work as required under a March 2017 order and most recently, in a February order from U.S. District Judge David Lawson.
“We’re approaching a decade without safe drinking water in Flint; that’s a lifetime for many of Flint’s children,” said Melissa Mays, one of the plaintiffs and operations manager of Flint Rising. “It’s unacceptable that, even after we’ve come back to court several times and won, our officials are failing to finish the job.”
The Rev. Allen C. Overton, a plaintiff with Concerned Pastors for Social Action, added:
“Just three months ago, Flint agreed to new deadlines, which the city has already failed to meet. While this news is disconcerting, the people of Flint refuse to let these failures be the status quo and will continue to hold the city and Mayor accountable until every lead pipe has been replaced.”
Today’s motion seeks a daily fine of $500 payable to the court until the city fixes the violations as well as permission to seek attorneys’ fees for future work to enforce the settlement agreement.
A message to Neeley was not returned late this afternoon.
The city hasn’t disputed the plaintiffs’ allegations that it failed to complete the remaining required service line excavations and replacements by the court-ordered Sept. 30, 2022, deadline. The city also did not dispute that it failed to track and maintain records of addresses where the restoration has been completed or that it neglected to provide timely reports of its work.
The settlement agreement initially required the city to complete service line excavations for about 18,000 eligible homes and replace those lines by Jan. 1, 2020. That deadline was extended to Nov. 20, 2020, but the city failed to provide monthly lists to the plaintiffs on what homes had been restored and it has provided a cumulative list only twice, most recently in July 2021, according to Lawson’s February order, which marked the plaintiffs’ fifth motion to enforce the original settlement agreement.
The plaintiffs allege the city missed a key May 1 deadline to fill gaps in tracking restorations and as a result, the city “still does not know how many addresses require property repairs,” which violates the court’s orders.
However, mLive quoted a city press release noting that the city is closing in on completing the final 2% of lead service line replacements.
“The City of Flint’s ongoing failures to finish the job it committed to in 2017 are causing new harms to the Flint community," said Sarah Tallman, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, who filed today’s motion. “Thousands of residents have waited — some for years — for the city to fix their torn-up lawns or broken sidewalks. We will continue to hold the city accountable until every Flint resident gets the benefits guaranteed to them.”
