Snyder held a press conference shortly after Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette announced felony and misdemeanor charges against three low-level environmental regulators for allowing Flint citizens to drink lead-tainted water for several months, reports The New York Times.
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Today, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said no one is above the law.
“These charges are only the beginning and there will be more to come, I guarantee you”.
The charges stem from an ongoing investigation into the contamination of Flint’s tap water.
WDET’s Quinn Klinefelter was at the news conference in Flint where the charges were announced and talked about it with WDET’s Jerome Vaughn.
Busch and Prysby are accused of official misconduct for “willfully and knowingly misleading federal regulatory officials in the Environmental Protection Agency”, as well as local officials, regarding the safety of Flint’s drinking water, a felony carrying a potential five-year prison term and $10,000 fine. The charges filed include tampering with evidence, willful neglect, misconduct, evidence tampering and violations of the Safe Water Drinking Act.
“High-profile conspiracy cases will get worked from the bottom up”, said Kevin Collins, a former federal prosecutor in Texas, who’s not involved in the Flint probe.
“We couldn’t be more proud of Dr. Marc Edwards and the work he has done, with his students and fellow researchers for over the past year, Time magazine is just another honor of the really incredible work he has done”, Mark Owczarski, spokesperson for Virginia Tech said. “But nobody is off limits, either”.
The city has been under a state of emergency for more than four months, and people there are using filters and bottled water.
Prysby further violated the same law when he authorized a permit to the Flint water treatment plant despite knowing the plant was deficient, the office said. Meanwhile, no one has even been fired at the ATF or in the Justice Department for the Fast and Furious scandal that ended up costing two U.S. Border Patrol agents their lives.
MID-MARCH: Snyder, the state-appointed emergency manager who oversaw Flint when the water source was switched to the river and other state officials testify in front of Congress. If that image bothers you, imagine what it did to the children who were drinking and bathing in it. Doctors finding dangerously high levels of lead in their blood.
“They had a duty to protect the health of families and citizens of Flint”, Schuette said.
“I completely understand why some Flint residents are hesitant to drink the water and I am hopeful I can alleviate some of the skepticism and mistrust by putting words to action”, the governor said in a statement.
MDEQ employee Michael Prysby was charged with two felony counts of misconduct in office, two felony counts of tampering with evidence and two misdemeanor counts of violation of the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act.
But Busch told EPA in an email that Flint had “an optimized corrosion control program” in place.
“These latest charges are a welcome development but the investigation into this manmade disaster that has permanently damaged the well-being of thousands of residents of Flint, Michigan, particularly children, must be unrelenting”. Busch and Prysby have pleaded not guilty. “The people of Flint deserve accountability for the actions of Governor Snyder and his officials that caused this crisis”.
Essentially, all three were accused of failing to do their duty to provide safe drinking water.
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Genesee District Court Judge Tracy Collier-Nix looks on as Jeff Seipenko, Special Agent at State of Michigan Attorney General, speaks on Wednesday, April 20, 2016 at the Floyd J. McCree Courts & Human Services Center in Flint, Mich. Busch cautioned that difficulty of treating the Flint River water could result in carcinogen exposure for residents – something that happened promptly after the switch, when treatment workers overdosed the water with a disinfectant.
