Lawmakers of both parties took the opportunity Tuesday to lash out at key local, state and federal officials for their roles in the Flint, Mich., drinking water crisis.
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A memo obtained by the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee revealed that Environmental Protection Agency officials were hesitant to resolving the Flint Water crisis via the use of federal funds.
“The EPA had everything to do with creating Flint”, Virginia Tech environmental engineering professor Marc Edwards, who helped discover the contamination, told lawmakers.
In her testimony, Hedman said it was not the EPA’s fault that officials in MI didn’t treat the water being delivered to Flint homes and businesses, and that the agency reacted properly, the Detroit Free Press reported.
The governor is scheduled to appear before the committee on Thursday, along with EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.
The committees top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, said he agreed the EPA could have done more.
Edwards said the EPA has helped create a “climate where anything goes” across the US.
Hedman, however, said del Toral was not disciplined and she had “no knowledge” of anyone in the EPA who did so. That water, left without adequate additives to reduce lead leaching from deteriorating and cracked pipes, resulted in widespread lead poisoning of the city’s population.
The Sept. 24 email comes several months after a memo sent by EPA official Miguel Del Toral detailed the presence of lead in Flint drinking water.
According to Hedman, in February of 2015 the EPA asked about the type of corrosion control in place, and was told that “Flint was fully optimized”.
Edward, seated at the same table as Hedman, was less forgiving, calling the agency’s response “willful blindness to the pain and suffering of Flint residents (with EPA officials) unremorseful for their role in causing this man-made disaster”. “And incredibly even as national guard walked the streets of Flint distributing bottled water and installing filters on taps, MI and the EPA are able to say that Flint has never failed the lead and cooper rule”. Rather, she told the panel, she said she was sorry for taking an entire day to respond, because she had been out of work for a medical procedure. Headman said she resigned because she was the head of the office and “it was the right thing to do”. But in hindsight he said he should have done more to challenge the experts who told him Flints water problems were harmless to human health and geographically limited in nature.Earley said that knowing he was misled doesnt ease the difficulty of what happened.
“I don’t think we did anything wrong, but I do think we could have done more”, Hedman conceded. During the hearing, Edwards said his testing has shown a “dramatic” drop in lead levels since corrosion control was implemented, with the situation “about four times better than it was” at the height of the crisis.
“I believe, based on the information we were given, we acted responsibly, and did what we did knowing the information we had at the time”, he said.
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Flint’s drinking water became contaminated with lead in April 2014 when the city, while under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, switched its drinking water source from Lake Huron water treated by the Detroit water system to Flint River water treated at the Flint water treatment plant. “Flint represents years of disinvestment and decisions to save money at times at the expense of the people”.
