The News reported that Buffalo stopped adding fluoride to its water system in June 2015, according to the Buffalo Water Board’s annual water quality report for that year. Fluoridation was expected to be restored sometime after March 2016, the report stated. The next year, that estimate was pushed back to December 2017, before being extended to 2018 and 2019.
The updated lawsuit, which has nine more plaintiffs than the three who were named in January, was filed by Robert Corp of the Lipsitz Green Scime Cambria firm. Corp said he re-filed the suit because of a procedural issue with the original filing.
“I think there’s a real public harm here,” Corp told The News. In the updated filing, the lawyer said “we have young people, old people, people from a variety of races, people from different parts of the city.”
Brown in January took responsibility for the failure.
“The buck ultimately stops with me,” Brown told reporters in his City Hall office. “Like others, I was not immediately notified, but I should have been, and we should have put the information out to the community. No excuse for it.”
McFoy previously told The News the city was in the process of upgrading an outdated fluoride system when the lead water crisis in Flint, Mich., caused the water board to pause in 2016 and study whether the new type of fluoride system would have a corrosive effect on Buffalo’s many lead pipes.
McFoy said studies done in conjunction with the University at Buffalo showed the system is safe and the city will begin adding fluoride to its water again sometime this year.
“The community is still without any firm answers as to when (or if) the Defendants will actually resume fluoridating Buffalo’s water,” the lawsuit states.
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