The Republican governor places a hefty share of the blame on the “systematic failures” from Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality: “The fact is, bureaucrats created a culture that valued technical competence over common sense – and the result was that lead was leaching into residents’ water”.
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It was an issue that Cummings raised at the end of Thursday’s Flint water crisis hearing before the U.S. Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The poison water crisis can be traced back to 2011 when the city’s water supply was transferred from Lake Huron to the Flint River in an attempt at cutting costs. They failed at the local level, they failed at the state level, and we failed at the federal level.
“If you take a look at the record she has compiled over the last few years as the administrator of the EPA, there is a strong case to make that America has never had a better administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency than Gina McCarthy”, Earnest added. “And I’ve had about enough of your false contrition and your phony apologies”.
Meanwhile Democrats on the committee joined the chorus of those blaming Gov. Snyder for the situation.
Cummings mentioned an email by Snyder’s then-Chief of Staff Dennis Muchmore in March 2015 that said, “If we procrastinate any longer in doing something direct, we’ll have real trouble”.
But the EPA didn’t take that action until January 21, when it found that Flint’s water posed “an imminent and substantial endangerment to the health” of the people drinking it. McCarthy accepted Hedman’s resignation the same day. McCarthy responded September 26 to messages notifying her that the city’s water had high levels of lead and that it had been detected in the blood of some children. “The board of directors would throw him out and the shareholders would revolt”, Cummings suggested.
But representative Jason Chaffetz told Ms McCarthy she should resign and that she and her agency “failed”.
Newswatch 16 spoke with the congressman over the phone Thursday and he admits he felt he lost his composure when Governor Snyder avoided answering his questions. “In this instance… you wish they would have asked more questions”, he said.
Snyder said he first became aware of the lead contamination of Flint’s water in early October, even though many of his top aides knew there was a problem much earlier, and some had serious reservations about turning to the Flint River as a source of drinking water.
During a protest this month, demonstrators call for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to be jailed because of the state’s failure to prevent lead contamination of Flint’s water supply. The city was under state management at the time. This is the third hearing regarding the water crisis.
In response to the crisis, the state has approved $67 million in emergency spending, with a request for $165 million more, Snyder said.
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“Off with the head of the head of the IRS”, Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly said about the Republican committee members criticisms of McCarthy.
