Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE Flint residents talk about health concerns for quality of drinking water and high rates since moving from buying water from Detroit to using treated water from the Flint River after boil advisories and violation of Safe Drinking Water Act. Ryan Garza/Detroit Free Press 
 
 Buy Photo Luke Waid holds his 2 year old daughter Sophia Rodriguez-Waid during a press conference announcing the first individual lawsuit brought against the City of Flint and state of Michigan. (Photo: Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo 
 
 Flint resident Luke Waid had a gut feeling something was wrong when his 2-year-old daughter recently went from being a bubbly, energetic child to anxious and constantly irritable. 
 
 Waid's worst fears were confirmed when his daughter's blood test results showed the toddler suffering from lead poisoning after ingesting Flint's contaminated water. 
 
 "She's constantly irritable," Waid said Monday, while consoling Sophia. "She's constantly irritable. These guys (his children) don't have a voice of their own so I have to be their voice. I have to stand behind my children. If I didn't feel so betrayed, I wouldn't have brought it this far. They (state officials) could have told us, and we could have had a home filtration system set up so it wouldn't have gotten this far." 
 
 Waid, along with his lawyers, announced Monday that a federal lawsuit has been filed against several State of Michigan and Flint officials, including Gov. Rick Snyder, former Flint emergency manager Darnell Earley and former Flint Mayor Dayne Walling. 
 
 Waid said he's concerned about the consequences the lead will have on his daughter's brain development. Blood-lead levels of 5 or greater are considered to be toxic. Sophia's blood lead levels tested at 14, according to the family. 
 
 "We don't know what's going to come in the future," Waid said. "I'm uncertain. I'm no doctor, but it's really putting the parents in between a rock and a hard spot. ... It seems like our city officials do not care." 
 
 Lead exposure in children younger than 6 can damage organs, slow development, lead to learning and behavioral problems, and more. 
 
 "At critical times, including during gestation and her developmental years, the minor plaintiff has been exposed to damaging levels of lead and other toxic substances," the lawsuit states. 
 
 A Detroit-based law firm, McKeen & Associates, and two New York law firms, Napoli Shknolnik and Slater Slater Schulman, will represent the family in the lawsuit, which was filed Monday in federal court. Shknolnik has managed more than 150 lead poisoning cases and Schulman has expertise in lead poisoning cases. 
 
 According to the law firms, this is the first individual, non class action brought against the city of Flint and state of Michigan on behalf of victims of the lead poisoning of Flint’s water supply. 
 
 "Even when these officials knew of a lead problem, they failed to act, thus resulting in an epidemic of lead poisoning," said Brian McKeen, managing partner of McKeen & Associates, at a Monday news conference. "This child is but one of literally thousands of Flint residents who've been affected. ... They, like any parent have suffered tremendous anguish knowing that their child has been poisoned and faces an uncertain medical and developmental future." 
 
 Adam Slater, the attorney who specializes in lead poisoning cases, said individual cases often get "lost" in class actions and they believed it would better serve the little girl to do it this way. 
 
 According to the lawsuit, Sophia has experienced serious physical and emotional issues due to the contaminated water, including skin rashes, digestive problems, infections, excessive crying and irritability and the inability to sleep at night. 
 
 Waid said he was relieved to know his youngest child, 2-month-old Luke Waid Jr., does not suffer from lead poisoning. His wife, Michelle Rodriguez, stopped drinking the tap water in August 2014, which was when they found out Sophia had been poisoned. 
 
 "For a short period of time we did keep drinking it not knowing it was so bad for us," Waid said. "The smell got so bad and we noticed the water was discolored. You don't even want to put your child in the water because it's so bad." 
 
 The lawsuit is the latest in a flurry announced over the past several weeks. 
 
 Southfield lawyer Geoffrey Fieger filed a $100-million lawsuit Feb. 2 against McLaren Flint Hospital and the State of Michigan, saying they did nothing to combat an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease that killed at least one person during the Flint water crisis. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of four Genesee County residents who contracted the disease, including the family of Debra Kidd, who died in August, seven days after entering the emergency room with a headache, according to the suit. 
 
 Flint's drinking water became contaminated with lead in April 2014 after the city, while under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, switched its source to the Flint River as a temporary cost-cutting move and the state Department of Environmental Quality failed to require the addition of needed corrosion-control chemicals. As a result, corrosive water caused lead to leach from pipes, joints and fixtures, causing many citizens to receive water with unsafe lead levels. The state has told residents not to drink the water without filtering and says it is treating all Flint children as having been exposed to unsafe levels of lead. 
 
 The FBI is now investigating the contamination of Flint’s drinking water amid a growing public outcry. Last week, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver called for the immediate removal of the city's lead-contaminated pipes from the water distribution system. U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Harrison Township, proposed an emergency $1-billion grant to be authorized through the Environmental Protection Agency, and two Democratic U.S. senators and U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, proposed up to $400 million in dollar-for-dollar matching funds from the state to do much the same thing. 
 
 The U.S. Attorney's Office announced Jan. 5 that it was assisting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a Flint drinking water investigation and Gina Balaya, a spokeswoman, said federal prosecutors are “working with a multi-agency investigation team on the Flint water contamination matter, including the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, EPA's Office of Inspector General, and EPA's Criminal Investigation Division." 
 
 McKeen said he thinks the case might go on for several years, since lead poisoning can affect victims for several years or their entire lives. 
 
 "The long-term fallout in terms of the neurological cognitive impairment of the children in this community is one of the greatest potential damages and that's going to take years and years for this to fully evolve," McKeen said. 
 
 Contact Katrease Stafford: 313-223-4759 or kstafford@freepress.com. 
 
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 / Updated By Tracy Connor 
 
 When doctors detected lead in 1-year-old Sophia Rodriguez Waid's blood, her family did everything they could to fix the situation, spending months living with friends and relatives and scarce dollars remodeling their home in Flint, Michigan. 
 
 But the amount of the toxin in the little girl's blood only got higher -- and the worried parents say local officials threatened to call child protective services on them. 
 
 It wasn't until the family moved in with a relative who wasn't on Flint's water system that Sophia's blood began returning to normal, the first evidence the family had that the service line under the street -- and not their home -- was the culprit. 
 
 Now, with Sophia facing an uncertain future, her parents are filing a lawsuit against the city and a raft of government officials they say lied to Flint's residents and put children like her in harm's way. 
 
 "It's a crying shame they had to put all these children through this," Luke Waid told NBC News on Monday. "It's heartbreaking because my daughter doesn't have a voice of her own." 
 
 Sophia Rodriguez Waid, 2, had elevated lead levels in her blood after drinking Flint water. Courtesy Luke Waid / via Facebook 
 
 Waid and fiancee Michelle Rodriguez had Sophia, their first child, in July 2014. At 6 months old, she was tested for lead and the results were normal. 
 
 But at her 1-year followup, the levels were high and doctors told Waid, a welder, how to find and get rid of lead in their home, he said. 
 
 He said he didn't suspect the water because he'd had it tested when he bought the house and it was fine. 
 
 But that test was done when Flint was buying water from Detroit. Just three months before Sophia's alarming blood test, the city had started using water from the Flint River to save money. 
 
 The new water was more corrosive, and under the city streets, it began eating away at 25,000 lead service lines, eventually leaching the heavy metal into the drinking water. 
 
 "We changed our whole life. We remodeled out home and lived in hotels and with family for months," Waid said. 
 
 But Waid and Rodriguez were still living in Flint, and the couple says Sophia's lead level didn't decrease. It went up, hitting 14 micrograms/dl, well above the 5 micrograms/dl level that the CDC says requires public health action. 
 
 "They threatened us with child protective services if it didn’t go down," Waid said. 
 
 They moved to Rodriguez's sister's house, which had its own well, and Sophia's levels began dropping, he said. 
 
 The family's lawyers, Brian McKeen of Detroit and two New York-based lawyers with experience in lead cases, say damage was already done to young Sophia, though it could be years before they know how much. 
 
 In addition, Rodriguez was drinking Flint water throughout her second pregnancy. Luke Jr. is now 2 months old and the family is anxiously waiting to get his blood tested. 
 
 "This family has gone through hell," said one of the attorney, Hunter Shkolnik. "They literally abandoned their house. This young family almost lost their child over this. This is as tragic an event as I have ever seen." 
 
 The suit, which does not specify damages, names the city of Flint and the state of Michigan and government officials as defendants. Another lawyer for the family, Adam Slater, said they are arguing the water system was not strictly a governmental function so the city and state can't use governmental immunity as a shield. 
 
 Waid said his dream was that his children would have "bright futures," and now they are at risk of cognitive delays and physical problems for years to come. 
 
 He said he's worried -- and angry at officials who made the switch to the Flint River, who didn't add anti-corrosion agents to the water, and who didn't respond with urgency to the early warnings of lead in the water. 
 
 "The point is they didn't tell us, and I know they knew," he said. 
 
 Local officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for the state declined to comment because he had not yet seen court papers.
– A Flint, Michigan, family is suing the city and several government officials after their young daughter tested positive for lead poisoning, NBC News reports. The family of Sophia Rodriguez Waid, who's now 2, say they moved out and spent scarce funds on remodeling their house to avoid contaminated water—but Sophia's lead level only rose. "We changed our whole life. We remodeled out home and lived in hotels and with family for months," says her dad, Luke Waid. "They threatened us with child protective services if (her lead level) didn't go down." But they say her level rose to 14 mg/dl (well past the danger line of 5) until they moved in with the sister of Luke's fiancee and drank from the sister's well. Sophia's lead level then declined, they say. But lead levels under 6 in children are known to curb development, harm organs, and cause behavioral and learning problems, the Detroit Free Press reports. "Even when these officials knew of a lead problem, they failed to act, thus resulting in an epidemic of lead poisoning," says Brian McKeen, one of the family's lawyers. "This child is but one of literally thousands of Flint residents who've been affected. ... They, like any parent have suffered tremendous anguish knowing that their child has been poisoned and faces an uncertain medical and developmental future." This is the first such lawsuit filed amid the city's ongoing water crisis, the lawyers say. Local officials and a lawyer representing Michigan haven't responded to the suit, which does not specify damages. (Even Flint-area dogs are turning up toxic.)