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Flint Water Crisis 2020 Past and Present

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Flint Water Crisis 2020 Past and Present

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A list of testimonials from the community is included, as well as in depth information about the effects of the water poisoning.

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Flint’s water crisis reveals government failures at every level

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Flint’s water crisis reveals government failures at every level

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Bernstein's article discusses the incongruity of government intent and resulting economic and personal health of Flint residents.

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The scale of government neglect in the water crisis in Flint, Mich., could place the city alongside some of the most infamous environmental disasters in U.S. history, from New York's Love Canal to the Hinkley, Calif., saga of Erin Brockovich fame.

Local, state and federal officials - including the top Environmental Protection Agency administrator in the Midwest and Michigan's Republican governor, Rick Snyder - are accused of ignoring, denying or covering up problems that left thousands of children exposed to toxic lead in their drinking water for about 18 months.

"Nobody was owning the problem, not the [state Department of Environmental Quality], not the EPA, not the governor's office," said Kary L. Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which revealed that damning passages had been removed from a government specialist's report on Flint's water contamination.

The debacle ranks among the worst on numbers alone, said Paul Mohai, who studies environmental-justice issues at the University of Michigan. With a community of 100,000 people, largely poor and minority, unable to drink from their taps, Flint is "one of the biggest environmental justice disasters I know" - and perhaps unprecedented, Mohai said Friday.

Months after activists first called for the EPA's intervention, the agency used its emergency powers Thursday to demand action by the state and city. Its regional leader, Susan Hedman, resigned - as the state's water quality director had done just weeks before. The National Guard is handing out bottled water, and water filters have been distributed.

State and federal investigations are underway, and there have been calls for Snyder to resign. He has apologized twice, most recently at his State of the State address Tuesday, when he told Flint residents that "government failed you at the federal, state and local level." President Obama has weighed in, too, sharply criticizing the pace of Michigan's response.

[EPA orders action in Flint, top regional official resigns]

But none of that will quickly repair the deep, pervasive damage to the public's trust in government, say experts and others involved in the crisis.

"People have realized they've been lied to, and EPA knew about this, and the state knew about this," said Virginia Tech engineering professor Marc Edwards, a national authority on municipal water quality whose tests exposed the extent of Flint's lead contamination. "What you really have as it spun out of control is a total loss of trust in government, which failed [residents] miserably. They don't believe a word that anyone tells them."

For decades, the once-thriving industrial city bought its water from Detroit. It was piped from Lake Huron, with anti-corrosion chemicals added along the way. But in early 2014, with the city under the control of an emergency manager appointed by Snyder, officials switched to Flint River water in a bid to save money.

The state, however, did not ensure that corrosion-control additives were part of the new water supply. And that allowed rust, iron and, most dangerous, lead from aging pipes to flow into residents' homes.

State water quality officials first insisted they had taken proper safety steps, then privately acknowledged to federal officials they hadn't, then publicly explained that they had misunderstood the required protocol for protecting the public's health.

"It started innocently when someone forgot to follow the law," said Edwards, who seven years ago played a crucial role in the discovery of lead in Washington's water supply and the testing controversy that followed. "No one gets up in the morning thinking they're going to poison some kids and destroy a city."

Adding the chemicals isn't expensive and usually saves water providers money by prolonging the life of underground pipes, he said. Besides, filing an anti-
corrosion plan is required by law. Edwards estimates that the city and state may spend $100 million to repair just the water infrastructure, plus more to replace lead-pipe connections to individual homes.

People began complaining almost immediately after the switch to the Flint River. Their tap water was discolored and foul-smelling, they said, and skin rashes appeared after bathing in it. Although state officials responded that the water was safe, emails released last week by the governor's office show how those complaints were minimized. Among others in state government, one top Snyder aide said that some in Flint were trying to turn the issue "into a political football" and shift blame to Lansing.

Residents "were forgotten and neglected by every agency in the country that was supposed to protect them," said Mona Hanna-
Attisha, the Flint pediatrician whose research demonstrated dangerously high lead levels in children's blood.

[Pediatrician works to save young lives in Flint]

On June 24, EPA scientist Miguel del Toral internally circulated a report about his concerns over high lead levels in a Flint resident's home. He noted that the state had no corrosion-control effort in place and contended that its environmental quality department had conducted lead tests in a way that would minimize the findings: Residents were instructed to flush their taps for five minutes before samples were taken.

Del Toral's report wasn't released until November - with many of his concerns removed. The agency chose instead to quietly try to persuade the state to take action. Hedman, the EPA's regional leader, later conceded that the agency had been aware of the corrosion problem in the spring, but said her hands were tied by interagency rules, according to the Detroit News.

She "buried the memo and gagged the analysis while kids were being poisoned," Edwards has charged.

EPA press secretary Melissa Harrison told The Washington Post in an email prior to Hedman's resignation that del Toral's memo was not publicly released "because it contained confidential personal and enforcement-sensitive information - but it was immediately circulated to the entire EPA Region 5 team that was working to require Flint to implement corrosion control."

But others were going public with equally incriminating data. In August, Hanna-Attisha looked back at the lead tests of 1,750 children taken at a local hospital. She and colleagues released the results at a news conference in September.

"We found that when we compared lead levels before and after the [water] switch, the percentage of kids with lead poisoning doubled after the switch," she said last week. "In some neighborhoods, it tripled. And it all correlated with where water lead levels were the highest."

There was again a backlash. State officials questioned the findings and accused Hanna-Attisha of causing unnecessary hysteria. The state has since agreed that her data were accurate. Lead can irreversibly damage brain development in children.

The episode, Hanna-Attisha said, has caused a "community-wide trauma" in a city ravaged by crime, poverty and widespread unemployment.

"Our families are already riddled with every possible stress," she said. "Every obstacle to a kid's success, we already had. . . . And then they gave a population lead poisoning."

The aftermath of such disasters is uneven. With those at Love Canal and in the California desert town of Hinkley - both involving small communities where groundwater was contaminated by industrial waste over a period of years - multimillion-dollar legal settlements were reached.

Yet Edwards noted that nobody has won a lawsuit against the District over its past lead-tainted water. Almost a decade later, five cases are pending. The children who were affected are nearly old enough to graduate from high school.

In Flint, which is again using Detroit's water, what's left is the fallout. Which additional heads will roll? Who will pay for the damage, most immediately to the municipal infrastructure and over the long term to children's health? Will Michigan's emergency manager system - used mostly to take over poor, black cities and school districts - continue in the state?

And will Flint residents ever trust their government again? That may take a very long time.

The ACLU's Moss blames the crisis on miscommunication, dysfunction and worse: "It was a combination of indifference . . . of absolute power and the arrogance that comes with that."

Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.

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Flint's water crisis reveals government failures at every level

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The scale of government neglect in the water crisis in Flint, Mich., could place the city alongside some of the most infamous environmental disasters in U.S. history, from New York's Love Canal to the Hinkley, Calif., saga of Erin Brockovich fame.

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EPA Chief, Michigan Governor Asked to Resign Over Flint Water Crisis

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EPA Chief, Michigan Governor Asked to Resign Over Flint Water Crisis

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Harder discusses political discourse between the Governor of Michigan Rick Snyder and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.

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WASHINGTON-Lawmakers from both parties called on the top officials at the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Michigan to resign Thursday over their respective roles in the lead-tainted water crisis in Flint, Mich.

Republicans began by calling for EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy's resignation, and Democrats shot back that Michigan's GOP Gov. Rick Snyder should resign. Thursday's hearing in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was the first such appearance for both Ms. McCarthy and Mr. Snyder on this issue, which has captured the nation's attention for the past few months.

During the hearing, Mr. Snyder repeatedly clashed with Ms. McCarthy over whether state or federal regulators were more to blame for delays in addressing the crisis last year.

Mr. Snyder said he was determined to help Flint rebuild its water infrastructure and address residents' health and other needs going forward. Ms. McCarthy also indicated she had no intention of resigning.

Flint's drinking water became contaminated after the city began using the Flint River in April 2014 and failed to use a chemical to control corrosion of aging pipes, allowing lead to leach into drinking water.

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house oversight and government reform committee

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michigan department of environmental quality

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house oversight and government reform committee

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michigan department of environmental quality

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EPA Chief, Michigan Governor Asked to Resign Over Flint Water Crisis

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WASHINGTON-Lawmakers from both parties called on the top officials at the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Michigan to resign Thursday over their respective roles in the lead-tainted water crisis in Flint, Mich. Republicans began by calling for EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy's resignation, and Democrats shot back that Michigan's GOP Gov.

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Michigan Officials Responsible for Flint Water Crisis, Panel Finds

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Michigan Officials Responsible for Flint Water Crisis, Panel Finds

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McWhirter focuses on accountability, as determined by the Michigan Environmental Council.

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Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and other state officials are "fundamentally accountable" for the lead contamination of Flint's water supply, according to a report Wednesday from a panel appointed by the governor to investigate the crisis.

"The Flint water crisis is a story of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction and environmental injustice," said Chris Kolb, a co-chairman of the task force and president of Michigan Environmental Council, a nonprofit coalition of environmental groups in the state.

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Michigan Officials Responsible for Flint Water Crisis, Panel Finds

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Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and other state officials are "fundamentally accountable" for the lead contamination of Flint's water supply, according to a report Wednesday from a panel appointed by the governor to investigate the crisis.

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As Grilling Over Flint Water Begins, Partisan Divisions Surface

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As Grilling Over Flint Water Begins, Partisan Divisions Surface

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Goodnough delves into bureaucracy surrounding Flint Michigan water crisis.

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transcript

Officials Criticized Over Flint Crisis

Witnesses at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the Flint water crisis criticized Michigan officials and federal agencies for their response.

SOUNDBITE (English) Keith Creagh, Director, Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality "In retrospect, government at all levels should have done more. We must fully investigate what happened in order to make sure it will never happen again. In addition, and most urgently, we must fix the problem for the people of Flint." SOUNDBITE (English) Keith Creagh, Director, Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality "Regardless of the testing schedule allowed by the EPA rule, in hindsight, when the lead levels began to rise, corrosion treatment should have been required by the Dept. of Environmental Quality." SOUNDBITE: (English) LeeAnne Walters, Flint Resident +++SPELLING OF FIRST NAME IS CORRECT+++ "In 2014, in a city with no democracy...forced under an emergency manager handpicked by Governor Snyder, a decision was made to switch the water source without the proper testing and enforcement of regulation. The MDEQ (Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality) claims they misinterpreted federal law with regard to corrosion control. They were allowed to tell EPA they were following the law without any verifications. The citizens of Flint were assured for 18 months that the water was safe. My home was being tested because of the discoloration of the water, and the health issues my family was experiencing. We fought the city and the state saying something was wrong and we were dismissed. SOUNDBITE: (English) Marc Edwards, Virginia Tech Dept. of Environmental Engineering "The agencies involved in protecting children from lead in drinking water in this country and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the EPA, primacy agencies, and the water utilities, have proven themselves time and time again unworthy of the public trust. They cannot be trusted to fix this problem."

Witnesses at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the Flint water crisis criticized Michigan officials and federal agencies for their response. Credit Credit... Molly Riley/Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Flint water crisis fanned partisan tensions on Wednesday in both the Senate and the House, where members of an oversight committee grilled federal and state officials about actions that have resulted in fears of lead poisoning in children. The fight threatened to derail the first energy bill in a decade.

While there was bipartisan condemnation of how officials handled the crisis, Democrats and Republicans split over what the federal government should do to help resolve it. Many Republicans said they would oppose a Democratic proposal to add $600 million in aid to Michigan to the energy bill, a position that Democrats said was Republicans' passion for smaller government gone bad.

"I don't care whether it's the E.P.A., whether it's local, whether it's the state," said Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, during a rare bipartisan questioning over the breakdown in public health. "I want everybody who's responsible for this fiasco to be held accountable."

As House members questioned Michigan officials, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, scrambled to save a sweeping bipartisan energy bill that Democrats have threatened to derail if federal assistance for Flint is not included.

Many Democrats said the energy bill, nearing a final vote in the Senate, would not pass without the additional aid. "We're united in the Democratic Party," said Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. "We're going to stop this bill if they don't help Flint."

But Republicans are balking. "It's a huge earmark," said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2-ranking Republican in the Senate. "I think it's not something I could support. Flint has doesn't have anything to do with the energy bill."

The firestorm showed the potency of Flint's struggles in an election year when Republicans are trying to attract a more diverse group of voters while Democrats struggle to paint Republicans as dismissive of the role of government.

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, tried Wednesday to turn the Flint disaster, which he called "an absolute outrage," into an indictment of Democrats.

"You've got your own government poisoning your citizens," said Mr. Cruz during a campaign stop in Goffstown, N.H. Drawing parallels to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, he added, "Both cities have been governed with one-party government control of far-left Democrats for decades."

Meanwhile, the Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, announced Wednesday that they would hold a debate in Flint on March 6.

In the House, over several hours of tense questioning, lawmakers sought to stitch together the chain of events that led to Flint's water being contaminated with high levels of lead, particularly the failure to add a chemical to the water that would have prevented the city's aging pipes from corroding and leaching lead.

Republicans, including Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, the chairman of the committee, sought to blame the E.P.A., while Democrats focused on the role of an emergency manager appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, to oversee the city, and of the state's Department of Environmental Quality.

Mr. Chaffetz said he expected the E.P.A., by the end of the week, to turn over pertinent emails connected to Susan Hedman, the agency's former director for the region that includes Michigan. She resigned this week.

Much of the hearing focused on concerns about the lead level in Flint's water raised early last year by an E.P.A. official who tested water samples there, and why the E.P.A. did not quickly insist then that corrosion control measures be taken in Flint.

Mr. Chaffetz also said the committee was issuing a subpoena for Ms. Hedman and would make a second attempt to subpoena Flint's former emergency manager, Darnell Earley.

"We are calling on the U.S. marshals to hunt him down," Mr. Chaffetz said. Mr. Earley's lawyer refused service of an initial subpoena late Tuesday.

The House hearing was one of several Mr. Chaffetz has convened at Democrats' request, but many of them are angry that the committee did not invite Mr. Snyder to testify. Representative Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat who represents Flint, pointed out that under federal law, states have "primacy" for making sure a federal rule that controls lead in the drinking water is being followed by municipalities. "This is a state failure," Mr. Kildee said in his testimony to the committee.

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transcript

Overview of Flint's Water Crisis

Months after the city of Flint, Mich., switched from a Detroit water supply to one from the Flint River, contaminants have sickened people. Residents have filed lawsuits, and the governor has apologized.

SOUNDBITE 2 - Rick Snyder, Governor of Michigan (man, English, 13 sec): "To you the people of Flint, I say tonight as I have before, I'm sorry and I will fix it. No citizen of this great state should endure this catastrophe." // TEXT CARD: In November 2015, almost two months before the Governor apologized, residents filed a lawsuit against city and state officials. // 1. SOUNDBITE (English): Michael Pitt, Plaintiffs' Lawyer: "They (state officials) were staring at a public health emergency, and they sat on it for over 10 months." // 12. SOUNDBITE (English): Melissa Mays, Flint Resident: "We're (Flint is) 41 percent under the poverty line. We can't afford the highest bills in the nation for the lowest-quality water in the nation. // 10. SOUNDBITE (English): Melissa Mays, Flint Resident: "What price do you put on your children's brains? Their bones? Their organs that are permanently damaged? How do you figure out how much that's worth? // SOUNDBITE 3 - Rick Snyder, Governor of Michigan (man, English, 08 sec): "Government failed you, federal state and local leaders by breaking the trust you placed in us." // SOUNDBITE (English) Jimmy Taylor, Flint Resident: "It should have never got to this point, We're surrounded by the Great Lakes, the world's greatest fresh water supply. We shouldn't be going through this here in Flint, Mich." // SOUNDBITE 1 - Jesse Fulkerson, protester (man, English, 11 sec): "He's already apologized, but that doesn't mean much when people are poisoned so I think he should resign. I don't think he should be our governor anymore, if not he should be impeached by rest of the congress."

Months after the city of Flint, Mich., switched from a Detroit water supply to one from the Flint River, contaminants have sickened people. Residents have filed lawsuits, and the governor has apologized. Credit Credit... Jake May/The Flint Journal, via Associated Press

Keith Creagh, the new director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and Joel Beauvais, the official in charge of the E.P.A.'s Office of Water, each pointed fingers at the other's agency in their testimony. Mr. Beauvais told the committee that the E.P.A. "encountered resistance" from state environmental quality officials when it urged them to address the lack of corrosion control in Flint's water. Mr. Creagh, for his part, said that technically, the federal lead-control rule would have allowed up to two years for corrosion control treatments to begin after the city switched its water source to the Flint River in April 2014.

"We were minimalistic and legalistic in our behavior," Mr. Creagh said of the state Department of Environmental Quality. He also said the E.P.A. had waited months before providing a legal opinion that Flint should and could be required to have corrosion control measures in place.

And he cited an email from an E.P.A. employee last year that gave the department advice on how to deny having seen an E.P.A. official's memo expressing concerns about Flint's water

But some of the harshest testimony came from LeeAnne Walters, a former Flint resident whose tap water was found to have extremely high lead levels starting early in 2015, and Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech professor to whom she appealed for help after her concerns were "dismissed," as she put it, by city and state employees.

Mr. Edwards testified that the E.P.A. had been "aiding and abetting" the Department of Environmental Quality's "cover-up" of the problem. More broadly, he said water systems across the country were at risk of dangerous lead contamination because of weak federal regulations.

Ms. Walters, who said one of her young sons has a number of problems from lead poisoning, testified that the only official who took her concerns seriously was one with the E.P.A.: Miguel Del Toral, who laid out deep concerns about Flint's water supply, and particularly the lack of corrosion control, in a memo to others in his agency and to officials at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality in June 2015.

The committee asked Mr. Del Toral to testify, but "in further discussions with the E.P.A.," Mr. Chaffetz said at the hearing, "we've come to understand he's very active in the cleanup as we speak."

Ms. Walters testified that after Mr. Del Toral shared his memo with her last year and she went public with it, the E.P.A. had forbidden him to speak to her, and a Department of Environmental Quality official told her that Mr. Del Toral "had been handled."

After the hearing, Mr. Chaffetz said, "I really do wonder if not only if people should be fired, but if some people should be put in jail."

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As Grilling Over Flint Water Begins, Partisan Divisions Surface (Published 2016)

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WASHINGTON - The Flint water crisis fanned partisan tensions on Wednesday in both the Senate and the House, where members of an oversight committee grilled federal and state officials about actions that have resulted in fears of lead poisoning in children. The fight threatened to derail the first energy bill in a decade.