Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette filed the first criminal charges in the Flint, Mich., water crisis against one local and two state officials, charges he promised and environmentalists hoped wouldn’t be the last in the investigation.
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Reporter: Now facing felony charges, MI department of environmental quality supervisor Stephen Busch and engineer Michael prysby, and city of Flint water quality supervisor Michael Glasgow.
They both were charged with a misdemeanor violation of the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act for allegedly ceasing the utilization of optimal corrosion control treatment at the Flint Water Treatment Plant after the plant switched to the Flint River as a water source and refused to mandate optimized corrosion control treatment at the Flint Water Treatment Plant in a timely manner after the lead action level was exceeded.
Prosecutors alleged that the officials charged this week, among other violations, conspired to deflate lead levels in Flint water by improperly running residents’ taps prior to taking samples.
Flint utilities administrator Michael Glasgow is charged with tampering with evidence for changing lead water-testing results and willful neglect of duty as a public servant.
Lee Anne Walters, the Flint mother-turned-advocate who prosecutors listed as the victim in the charging documents, told CNN that Glasgow was one of the only city workers in Flint who had helped her when she discovered dangerously high levels of lead in her water.
Schuette on Wednesday sought felony and misdemeanor charges against Flint employee Mike Glasgow and the DEQ’s Mike Prysby and Stephen Busch and said “there will be more to come”.
That investigation led to charges against three people he says knowingly allowed people in Flint to drink harmful water.
“It’s a victory”, Chatman said. I just say believe in me, Give me a chance. To this day serious reconstruction work on Flint’s piping system has not begun.
“You have to now prove exactly what they did that violated the law. If water is distributed from this plant in the next couple weeks, it will be against my direction”, Glasgow wrote to state officials, including Busch and Prysby.
“Governor Snyder can hold all the photo ops he wants drinking filtered water now, but that doesn’t help the residents of Flint who were drinking poisoned, unfiltered water for more than a year”, said Rep. Elijah Cummings, ranking member of the House Oversight Committee.
According to the findings, on July 27, a meeting was held between DEQ and Flint, where it was decided that the original lead report was “scrubbed” eliminating two of the highest lead results, which lowered the city’s overall lead levels, putting the city below the action level for lead. When asked how testers could be sure they were getting samples from homes with lead lines, he essentially said there was no way to be sure.
Environmental experts called in to investigate determined that the corrosive water from the river interacted with the ancient lead supply pipes, causing lead to leach into the water supply.
Flint’s water was contaminated by lead in April 2014, after the city switched its supply from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River under the supervision of then-Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, who stepped down in January 2015. It blamed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s delayed enforcement of federal drinking-water standards for “prolonging the calamity”.
The report also said Snyder and his administration failed to act even after “suggestions to do so by senior staff members in the Governor’s office”.
The corrosion control efforts also appear to be reducing levels of iron in the water.
Testing of the city’s water was also problematic, records obtained by the Flint Journal reveal.
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“I think its critically important these investigations go forward”. The citizens of Flint deserve that, the citizens of MI deserve that. “They still haven’t sent money to replace our pipes”.
