A state-appointed emergency financial manager was running Flint in April 2014 when the city began using the Flint River to provide its drinking water after nearly 50 years of receiving water supplied by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. As a result, lead leached from pipes, joints and fixtures into Flint households and harmful lead levels spiked in Flint children.
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“Some may wish and some may worry that the story of Flint will be slowly absorbed by world events, the 24-hour news cycle and the short attention span of tweets and posts”, he said.
The state’s former top drinking water official, Shekter Smith, as well as current officials Patrick Cook and Adam Rosenthal, was charged with allegedly misinterpreting federal regulations limiting lead levels in the state’s water supply. Miller has since left the department.
Residents of Flint complained for over a year and a half about the poisoned water before the issue was acknowledged-even while doctors continually tested alarming levels of lead in the blood of children living in the area.
The Environmental Quality and Health and Human Services departments said two workers from each department are off the job for now.
As of today, Schuette has filed criminal charges against nine current and former state and local officials since the start of the investigation, which has included interviews with almost 180 witnesses.
That report was never passed on to the proper health officials, investigators allege.
There have now been nine people charged in connection with the water contamination in Flint.
“However, there is still a lack of transparency and accountability surrounding the crisis in Flint”, the statement continued.
Peeler and Robert L. Scott, the data manager for the Healthy Homes and Lead Prevention program, created a second report two days later that falsely indicated there was no significate rise blood lead levels of Flint children for the summer 2014. Today’s indictments reached the highest level of state government to date, but still targeted mid-level state employees and their supervisors.
Shekter Smith was sacked from the environmental department.
“Some people failed to act, others minimized harm done and arrogantly chose to ignore data, some intentionally altered figures. and covered up significant health risks”, he said at a news conference Friday. Despite knowledge to the contrary, the investigation showed that Shekter-Smith allegedly told MDHHS that there were no lead issues with Flint’s drinking water.
Two Michigan Department of Environmental Quality officials also received charges of conspiracy, misconduct, misdemeanor violations of clean-water law and tampering with test results, and are awaiting preliminary examinations.
The civil lawsuit, filed in Flint in Genesee County Circuit Court, accuses engineering firm Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam and environmental consultant Veolia North America, plus related companies, of causing “the Flint Water Crisis to occur, continue and worsen”. Schuette’s investigation remains ongoing and the charges filed today do not preclude additional charges at a later date. “And the victims, these are real people, families that have been lied to by government officials and treated as expendable”.
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“I’ve been involved in thousands of cases – there isn’t a case that has jarred my soul more than this for the lack of caring, lack of compassion, the lack of understanding that has affected the citizens of the city of Flint”, said State special investigator Todd Flood.
