The criminal charges were filed by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette against three employees apiece from the state’s health and environmental departments.
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An independent investigation of the Flint water crisis concluded in March that officials within the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality are mostly to blame, although other officials share some responsibility, and called the prolonged poisoning of the Flint water supply “a story of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction, and environmental injustice”.
“The families of Flint will not be forgotten”, Attorney General Bill Schuette said. “Their narrative and their story was that there’s nothing wrong with Flint water”.
The state health department employees charged were Nancy Peeler, Corinne Miller, and Robert Scott.
Three other local and state employees were charged in April, bringing the total number of people charged in connection to the health crisis to nine.
Its disappointing. I think were going to be really hard-pressed to find that she did anything wrong, and certainly nothing criminally wrong, he said. He plans to formally announce the charges at a morning news conference.
She is charged with misconduct in office and willful neglect of duty.
Schuette and Andy Arena, the lead investigator who once led Detroit’s FBI office, say nobody is off-limits from investigation or prosecution. According to The Detroit News, it is still considered unsafe to drink Flint water. He entered a plea to a misdemeanor and one count of willful neglect of duty, in exchange for a dismissal of evidence tampering, a felony charge. “The people of Flint, and the entire state of MI, deserve to know the full extent of Gov. Snyder’s involvement and knowledge of this crisis”.
“Shekter Smith ignored reports that the (water treatment) plant was out of compliance, lied that the water plant was certified, and deliberately misled her superiors”, Schuette said. Schuette said Rosenthal and Cook were tasked with ensuring Flint had safe drinking water and “they failed” and misled health officials.
Asked what the motive was, Schuette said “part arrogance”. Charges allege that in 2015, Rosenthal willfully participated in the manipulation of lead testing results and falsely reported that the 90th percentile of the results for lead water testing was below the federal action level. Schuette appointed a special counsel in January to discern whether laws had been broken, and two state regulators and a city employee were charged with evidence tampering, official misconduct and other offenses in April.
The Attorney General is filing charges including felony misconduct in office. The two environmental department employees, Stephen Busch and Mike Prysby, are awaiting preliminary examinations. This includes the preparation of derivative works of, or the incorporation of such content into other works.
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Schuette last month sued French water company Veolia Environnement SA and Houston-based engineering services firm Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam for “botching” their roles in the crisis.
