Veolia’s engagement with the city was wholly unrelated to the current lead issues.
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“In Flint, Veolia and LAN were hired to do a job and failed miserably”, Attorney General Bill Schuette said at a news conference in Flint. A water authority spokesman says Genesee County will be ready to draw water after its treatment plant finishes construction in summer 2017, but Flint will not be able to connect until its treatment plant meets state and federal standards.
The lack of corrosion control caused lead to leach from old pipes and fixtures, poisoning the water system.
The City of Flint switched to using the Flint River for water in April of 2014 to save money.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette is to announce he is filing a civil lawsuit today arising from his Flint drinking water investigation, Schuette’s office said late Tuesday. The state of MI alleges that two water services and engineering companies, Veolia and Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam (LAN), were negligent in their oversight of Flint’s water pipe infrastructure. Flint will get water from the Karegnondi Water Authority as soon as that system is ready, the mayor said Tuesday, even though she had threatened to break an agreement to join the system in the aftermath of the MI city’s lead-tainted water crisis.
This new lawsuit comes after state officials filed criminal charges against three people in April – two officials with the state Department of Environmental Quality and a water official from Flint.
The suit charges that the company LAN failed to adequately prepare Flint’s treatment plant when the city switched to using its river as a water supply two years ago, allowing the system to become contaminated with lead.
“The Attorney General has not talked to Veolia about its involvement in Flint, interviewed the company’s technical experts or asked any questions about our one-time, one-month contract with Flint”, Veolia said in a statement.
“Many things went tragically wrong in Flint, and both criminal conduct and civil conduct caused harm to the families of Flint and to the taxpayers of MI”, said Schuette in a press statement.
“These charges are only the beginning, and there will be more to come, that I can guarantee”, Schuette said at the time.
Snyder spokeswoman Anna Heaton said lawyers in the attorney general’s office have produced hundreds of thousands of documents from the governor’s office and state departments for Flood, and “we will continue co-operating fully with all investigations, as we have from the beginning”.
Last month Michael Glasgow, a Flint utilities administrator agreed to cooperate in investigations as part of a deal with prosecutors.
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The attorney general’s office called in court papers Veolia’s public findings about the nature and cause of the water quality problems in Flint “false and material”. Houston-based Lockwood has locations in Flint and Okemos.
