Sharp questioning from members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee broke down mostly along partisan lines. The Associated Press obtained copies of testimony by Snyder and McCarthy in advance.
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But not in every case. Cummings insists that the governor, and not the EPA, are to blame for their failure to act. But the White House asserted that the agency might have never had a better head.
Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz also had strong criticism, recalling an internal email from an EPA administrator stating that she was “not so sure that Flint is the community we want to go out on a limb for”. Susan Hedman from the EPA bares not one tenth of the responsibility of the state of MI and your administration and she resigned.
But like Hedman on Tuesday, McCarthy repeatedly declined to admit that the EPA had done anything wrong.
Snyder, the board chairman of the Gateway computer company and a venture capitalist before he was elected as MI governor, for months has rebuffed calls to quit.
“Were we late in getting it done?” “And the part that drives me insane, if you look at this, is they technically believed they were following the Lead and Copper Rule”.
He also took issue with McCarthy’s comment that it was “courageous” for the EPA’s Midwest regional chief to resign as the crisis got worse.
Democrats focused their anger at Snyder, a Republican, and other state officials, while panel Republicans spent the morning chastising McCarthy and her agency for not acting more quickly.
174-a-11-(Representative Elijah Cummings, D-Md., ranking Democrat, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, during hearing)-“on criminal charges”-Congressman Elijah Cummings says Michigan’s governor is responsible for the lead crisis in Flint”.
Lead poisoning is particularly harmful to children, affecting their neurological systems and leading to permanent learning delays and behavioral problems. But she said the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, or MDEQ, assured the EPA it was under control.
“I have a really simple question, why didn’t Administrator McCarthy just get on the phone and call me?” “This was a failure of government at all levels”, he told the hearing.
Gov. Snyder blamed career bureaucrats in Washington as well as his own state for the Flint water contamination crisis.
MI officials did not require that the river water be treated for corrosion, and lead from aging pipes and fixtures leached into Flint homes and businesses for almost two years. Blood samples taken from children in Flint contained high levels of lead. As a result, EPA staff were unable to understand the potential scope of the lead problem until a year after the switch and had insufficient information to indicate a systemic lead problem until mid-summer of 2015.
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The state, through the appointment of emergency managers, had been running Flint when the decision was made to switch water supplies to the Flint River from Detroit’s water system in 2014, to save money.
