Buy Photo Governor Rick Snyder addresses questions about a spike in a form of pneumonia in Genesee County. (Photo: Daniel Bethencourt Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo 
 
 Since Flint switched its water source to the Flint River, officials have seen a spike in the number of cases of a severe form of pneumonia, called Legionnaires' disease — but officials say they're still looking for the cause. 
 
 There have been 87 cases in Genesee County from June 2014 to November 2015 — and 10 of those cases resulted in death, said Dr. Eden Wells, chief medical executive with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, or MDHHS. 
 
 That number is a jump from previous few years, when the county saw between 6 and 13 cases. It’s not clear how many were fatal. 
 
 While state officials said they couldn’t make a connection between the water and the spike in disease, a drinking water expert who studied Flint said the rise in cases was “dramatic,” and added there’s a “very strong likelihood” the river’s water played a role. 
 
 “I applaud the state for releasing this (report),” said Marc Edwards, who heads the Virginia Tech Research Team which was a key player in exposing lead contamination in the city's water. 
 
 Officials with the MDHHS say they noticed the spike in the fall of 2014. Months later, in April, MDHHS said they began interviewing residents who were affected. 
 
 That summer, Edwards and his team noticed that in some large buildings, which can have older plumbing systems, there were high levels of the bacteria that can cause the illness. 
 
 “Our hypothesis is that something about the Flint River and lack of corrosion control, plus big buildings, is creating these problems,” Edwards said Wednesday. 
 
 Though officials held a news conference Wednesday to alert the public about the spike, they made clear that there were no changes in recommendations for bathing or showering. Edwards also noted that the water is safe for residents to shower in. 
 
 “There’s every reason to believe (the spike) is something in the past,” he added. 
 
 Legionnaires' disease is a lung infection caused by Legionella, a type of bacteria that grows best in warm water. The bacteria usually enter the body from a person breathing it in, but it can't spread between people. The most vulnerable are those with weakened immune systems. 
 
 Gov. Rick Snyder said he learned of the disease cases only “a few days ago," and acknowledged during questioning that the increase in Legionnaires' disease “just adds to the disaster we are already facing.” 
 
 Flint’s water became contaminated with lead in 2014, once its supply source was switched from Lake Huron to the Flint River water, which was treated at the city water treatment plant. 
 
 The state downplayed and largely ignored the immediate complaints about the smell, color and taste. In October, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality acknowledged it had failed to ensure the necessary safeguards for corrosion. That failure resulted in lead leaching into the water. 
 
 Lead causes permanent brain damage in children and is linked to other health and behavior problems. 
 
 The crisis became even more apparent this month, when Snyder declared a state of emergency, and Michigan State Police joined others in distributing bottled water and water filters. The state has also urged all Flint parents with children younger than 6 to have their children’s blood tested for exposure to lead. 
 
 In response to Snyder’s announcement Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, D-Flint, demanded that national infectious disease specialists arrive in Flint “tomorrow” and added, “We need an investigation into the past outbreak so we know what happened, whether there is any ongoing threat, and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” 
 
 Flint’s water is still unsafe to drink. Officials on Wednesday did not give a firm time estimate as to when the water might be drinkable once again, though Edwards noted that lead levels in a few homes have already gone down dramatically. 
 
 At the news conference on Wednesday, Snyder fielded questions about his administration’s handling of the crisis. He said that a good portion of the fault “could lie” with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and welcomed the federal investigation already under way. 
 
 “We’re taking every action within reason, and going beyond reason to address this,” he said. He also said, “This is something you wish that never happened, and let’s see that it never happens again in the state of Michigan.” 
 
 Contact Daniel Bethencourt: dbethencourt@freepress.com or 313-223-4531. Follow on Twitter at @_dbethencourt. 
 
 Fund established for Flint children 
 
 A fund has been established to address the short- and long-term needs of Flint children exposed to lead through contaminated drinking water, the Community Foundation of Greater Flint announced Monday. 
 
 “Our Flint children deserve every opportunity to be healthy and successful," said Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the Hurley Medical Center pediatrician who helped expose the tragedy. "The creation of this Fund will further ensure that our children are afforded the resources and interventions to overcome this population-wide exposure to lead.” 
 
 Donations can be made online at www.flintkids.com 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1UPCf8i ||||| (CNN) Residents of Flint, Michigan, already reeling because of lead contamination in their drinking water, got more disturbing news on Wednesday. 
 
 Gov. Rick Snyder announced the number of cases of Legionnaires' disease has spiked in Genesee County in the two years since Flint switched its water supply from the Great Lakes to the Flint River. 
 
 But the increase cannot be directly attributed to the switch, said Nick Lyon, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. Not all the people who got Legionnaires' were exposed to Flint water, he said. 
 
 From June 2014 to November 2015, at least 87 county residents developed Legionnaires' disease, compared to between six and 13 cases in the four preceding years, Lyon said. Ten patients died, he said. 
 
 The water looked smelled and tasted funny 
 
 Health officials are not changing recommendations about how Flint residents should deal with the water crisis. They should keep drinking bottled water and use water filters, Snyder said. 
 
 Legionnaires' disease is a respiratory bacterial infection usually spread through mist that comes from a water source. It is not transmitted person to person. Symptoms of the disease include fever, chills and a cough. The CDC estimates 8,000 to 18,000 people are hospitalized with Legionnaire's disease in the United States every year. 
 
 Flint, an economically depressed city of about 100,000 people, started getting its water from the Flint River about two years. It previously bought Lake Huron water through the city of Detroit. The state government made that change to cut costs. 
 
 Soon after the switch, the water started to look, smell and taste funny. People complained. 
 
 On January 5, Snyder declared a state of emergency for Genesee County as a result of the water crisis. 
 
 He apologized for the state's actions, but residents and officials are furious. The state denied the problem existed for months and failed to use anti-corrosive treatment on the river water, which might have reduced the iron. 
 
 'Flint residents are victims in this crisis' 
 
 "Flint needs more action and less talk from Governor Snyder," U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee said in a press release. "It is important to remember that this crisis was created by a state-appointed emergency financial manager, and it is the state's ultimate responsibility to act and make it right. Flint residents are the victims in this crisis, and they deserve a more urgent response equal to the gravity of this crisis." 
 
 Flint switched back to Detroit water in October. 
 
 "It will require more time and effort before the water is safe to drink again," the city of Flint website said . "Until that time, residents and water customers are urged to continue using water filters and bottled water." 
 
 Dr. Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech researcher who studied Flint water and found high levels of lead, said it would be almost impossible to make a definitive link between the water source and Legionnaires' disease. To do so, he said, would require matching the strain of Legionnaires' in someone's body to the strain in the water. 
 
 "What's clear is that there's an association, which means that the increase of the Legionnaires increased pretty dramatically," he said. "And there's a strong likelihood that it's related to the water supply. 
 
 "We'll never know for sure, but we did find very high levels in the time period when they were on the Flint River water." 
 
 Edwards said this might be the first case of Legionnaires' associated to lack of corrosion control. 
 
 "This is already a tragedy," he said. "It's a crisis of conscience in government. This could potentially just add to it. But they're being very forthcoming about it at this point. There are just so many places where you wish people had done things differently." 
 
 National Guard activated 
 
 Snyder activated the state National Guard on Wednesday to assist with the water crisis. 
 
 Seven guardsmen arrived in the town Wednesday, and up to 30 are expected by Friday, Snyder said in a news release. 
 
 They will help distribute bottled water and water filters at fire stations and other public buildings, he said. That will allow Red Cross volunteers to go door-to-door to hand out water, filters and testing kits. 
 
 FEMA announced that it approved Snyder's request for federal assistance, according to agency spokesman Rafael Lemaitre. The governor had asked FEMA to step in to coordinate with other federal agencies. ||||| Sarah Truesdail holds her five-year-old daughter, Gabriella Venegas, who screams as a health official pricks her finger with a needle for a free lead test on Monday, Feb. 8, 2016 in Flint, Mich. (Jake May/The Flint Journal-MLive.com via AP) 
 
 As a probe begins into the water crisis gripping Flint, Mich., a top investigator announced Tuesday that if officials are found to have been grossly negligent, they could face charges as serious as manslaughter. 
 
 “We’re here to investigate what possible crimes there are, anything [from] involuntary manslaughter or death that may have happened to some young person or old person because of this poisoning, to misconduct in office,” said Todd Flood, special counsel for the state attorney general’s office who is in charge of the investigation. “We take this very seriously.” 
 
 Since the city switched suppliers in April 2014, corrosive tap water has caused the level of lead in kids’ blood to soar and has sparked fears of permanent neurological damage. In some cases, the water has been so poisoned by lead that it qualified as “toxic waste.” 
 
 A spike in Legionnaires’ disease led to 10 deaths during the same time period, although it’s not clear whether the bacterial outbreak was linked to drinking the water, according to Mlive. 
 
 Outrage over those deaths and the possible long-term effects of lead poisoning hung over Tuesday’s news conference. Flood was brought in to lead the investigation last month because the Department of the Attorney General is defending Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and various state departments against lawsuits brought by Flint residents. 
 
 The water emergency in Flint, Mich., is two years in the making. Here are the people who've played a key role in the crisis. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post) 
 
 Flood described a number of possible outcomes of the investigation. He said it could turn out that the crisis was simply a result of “honest mistakes,” the Associated Press reported. 
 
 But it could also turn out that city, county or state officials were guilty of a “breach of duty” or “gross negligence,” exposing them to possible criminal or civil actions, he said. 
 
 Flood said that the severest possible charge, manslaughter, was “not far-fetched.” He compared charging officials with manslaughter over the water crisis to charging construction workers with the same crime for leaving open manholes unattended, resulting in death. 
 
 He said he could also pursue restitution against both private companies and governments on behalf of Flint residents affected by the water crisis, according to the Detroit News. 
 
 Flood’s team will consist of nine full-time investigators, including former state and Detroit police officers as well as Andrew Arena, former head of Detroit’s FBI office. 
 
 
 
 Bottles owned by Flint residents Jessica Owens and Tonya Williams, filled with water, sit on the table outside of city council chambers as Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder speaks during a news conference in Flint, Mich., Monday, Jan. 11, 2016. (Jake May/The Flint Journal-MLive.com via AP) 
 
 A separate federal investigation also has been launched and will include prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Detroit as well as the FBI, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General and the EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division, Reuters reported last week. 
 
 The two investigations will try to suss out who is to blame for Flint’s dangerous drinking water. 
 
 So far, state and federal officials have been trading blame, often along political party lines. 
 
 [Hope — and clean water — remains elusive for the people of Flint] 
 
 Last week, the EPA’s acting water chief, Joel Beauvais, told Congress that Michigan — under the leadership of Snyder — had ignored federal advice to treat Flint’s water for corrosive elements, which are believed to have eroded old lead pipes and contaminated drinking water. Beauvais also said the state delayed for months in telling the public about the health risks, according to the AP. 
 
 State officials shot back, however, claiming that the EPA did not act urgently enough, either. 
 
 Not even city officials are exempt from scorn. Although the city was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager when it switched from Detroit water to the highly corrosive Flint River, it was the Flint City Council that voted 7-1 on March 25, 2013 to end its contract with Detroit, a decision that opened the door for the later debacle, according to the Detroit Free Press. 
 
 Even then, though, Snyder’s office was heavily involved in the decision, the Free Press reported. The morning before the Flint City Council vote, the state’s Democratic treasurer called Snyder’s chief of staff to discuss “Flint water supply alternatives,” according to the Free Press. And the next morning, the treasurer held two more meetings regarding the switch. 
 
 Snyder, a tech venture capitalist elected in 2010 on promises to turn around the state’s floundering economy, has accepted some blame for the crisis. He has apologized — calling the crisis a “disaster” and his “Katrina” moment — and promised to fix it. He also has released his emails on the subject. 
 
 But Snyder also has claimed that his top aide’s concerns about Flint’s water were “blown off” by Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality, an agency under the direction of a man whom Snyder appointed. 
 
 
 
 Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, center and Our Lady of Guadalupe Church Deacon Omar Odette, meets with volunteers helping to load vehicles with bottled water, in Flint, Mich. (Carlos Osorio/AP) 
 
 As the state and federal investigations proceed behind closed doors, public records are beginning to shed more light on the crisis and who might be at fault. 
 
 Last week, for instance, a liberal group released records showing that Snyder’s office knew of the Legionnaires’ outbreak more than nine months before the governor announced the problem this January, according to the Free Press. 
 
 “More than 40 cases reported since last April,” wrote Brad Wurfel, then the director of communications for Michigan’s Deptartment of Environmental Quality, in an email to Snyder’s director for urban initiatives and DEQ Chief Dan Wyant, a Snyder appointee. “That’s a significant uptick. More than all the cases reported in the last five years or more combined.” 
 
 A health official in Genesee County, where Flint is located, was “putting up the flare” and had “made the leap formally in his e-mail that the uptick in cases is directly attributable to the river as a drinking water source,” Wurfel wrote. 
 
 Snyder’s office released a statement saying that the governor “was not briefed on this issue until January 2016” and pointing to passages in Wurfel’s email calling the link to the city’s water as “premature” and “beyond irresponsible.” 
 
 But Snyder’s critics pounced on the public documents. 
 
 [Flint’s water crisis reveals government failures at every level] 
 
 “For months the public has been asking Gov. Snyder what he knew and when he knew it regarding the Flint crisis and this e-mail shows that one of his top aides was aware nearly a year ago that county health officials were concerned that the switch to the Flint River could be potentially deadly,” said Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan, the group that obtained the email. 
 
 On Tuesday, the Free Press published its own investigation into thousands of other emails that suggest city and state officials were aware of the Legionnaires’ outbreak eight months before Snyder disclosed it and that those officials also withheld information about the problem from county health investigators. 
 
 “We are very concerned about this Legionnaires’ disease outbreak,” Laurel Garrison of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote an April 27 email to Genesee County health officials, the Free Press reported. “It’s very large, one of the largest we know of in the past decade, and community-wide, and in our opinion and experience it needs a comprehensive investigation.” 
 
 The CDC official added: “I know you’ve run into issues getting information you’ve requested from the city water authority and the MI Dept of Environmental Quality.” 
 
 Five weeks later, however, an official from the state’s Department of Health and Human Services emailed Genesee County health officials to lambast them for speaking to the CDC. 
 
 “Relative to communications around the investigation, I believe that CDC is in agreement that their involvement really should be at the request of the state, rather than the local health department,” Collins said, according to the Free Press. “To be clear, we do value the skills and resources of our CDC colleagues, but we also recognize that their involvement needs to have some structure,” and “I want to reinforce the necessity that investigation communications from the Genesee County Health Department need to be directed to staff at the MDHHS.” 
 
 By December, county health officials were so frustrated they accused the state of a “deliberate cover-up.” 
 
 
 
 The Flint River is shown on February 7, 2016 in Flint, Michigan. (Photo by Sarah Rice/Getty Images) 
 
 “The state is making clear they are not practicing ethical public health practice,” Tamara Brickey, the Genesee County Health Department’s public health division director, wrote in a Dec. 5, 2015 email to colleagues. “Now evidence is clearly pointing to a deliberate cover-up. … In my opinion, if we don’t act soon, we are going to become guilty by association.” 
 
 Whether any of these officials will be charged as a result of the two ongoing probes remains to be seen. 
 
 On Tuesday, state officials said they were taking Flint’s water crisis seriously. 
 
 “We’re not going to shortchange justice,” said Bill Schuette, the attorney general, sitting beside Flood, Arena and another investigator. “We’re not going to do justice on the cheap. We’re going to have a full and complete investigation, and where the truth goes, that’s where we’ll go.” 
 
 On Wednesday, Snyder will propose an additional $195 million in state spending to address the city’s emergency, including $25 million to replace lead-contaminated pipes, a spokesman told the AP. 
 
 The same day, the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee will hold a hearing on Flint’s water crisis. 
 
 Snyder turned down an invitation to speak, according to CNN. 
 
 Correction: On March 25, 2013, the Flint City Council voted to end its contract with Detroit and authorize a new agreement, under which it would get the majority of its water from Lake Huron and a small amount from the Flint River, according to Mlive. It was only later that the Flint River became the main source for the city’s water. Also, it is the Department of the Attorney General, not Attorney General Bill Schuette himself, that is defending the governor and various state departments against lawsuits brought by Flint residents. 
 
 Read more about Flint’s water crisis: 
 
 [This is how toxic Flint’s water really is] 
 
 [Lawmakers wrestle with who is responsible for Flint water crisis] 
 
 [Clinton calls Flint water crisis ‘immoral’ in break from NH]
– Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced a new development Wednesday in Flint's water crisis that "just adds to the disaster we are already facing": specifically, a marked increase in cases of Legionnaires' disease that could be linked to the area's tainted water, reports the Detroit Free Press. From June 2014 to November 2015, there were 87 cases in Genesee County, 10 of them fatal, per the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. In the previous four years, Legionnaires' cases ran from six per year to 13, CNN notes. And while the MDHHS isn't able to definitively tie the spike to Flint's water, it's taking the news seriously, and a drinking water expert who's been studying Flint's water tells the Free Press there's a "very strong likelihood" that it played a role. MDHHS officials first observed the rise in Legionnaires' cases in the fall of 2014, per the Free Press, and researchers found the bacteria to blame was proliferating in larger buildings, many with older plumbing. "Our hypothesis is that something about the Flint River and lack of corrosion control, plus big buildings, is creating these problems," Marc Edwards, head of an independent Virginia team looking into the crisis, tells the Free Press. Speaking Wednesday, Snyder said he learned of the issue just "a few days ago" and appeared to place some blame on the state's Department of Environmental Quality, the paper notes. "We're taking every action within reason, and going beyond reason to address this," he said. State health officials say it's OK for residents to shower and bathe, though they still can't drink the water. Edwards' team agrees, though he laments how it's all been handled. "It's a crisis of conscience in government," he tells CNN. "There are just so many places where you wish people had done things differently."