Also appearing were Darnell Earley, Flint’s former state-appointed emergency manager, and Dayne Walling, the city’s former mayor.
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Michigan’s environmental agency erred in numerous ways, the report found. Misinterpreting federal regulations, it instructed Flint not to treat the water with anti-corrosive additives after switching from the Detroit water system – which drew from Lake Huron – to the Flint River.
Tuesday, on World Water Day, Tao Group announced its plans to partner with WHOLE WORLD Water to install a state-of-the-art Pure Ionic water fountain within a local Flint elementary school this spring. Since then, writes website publisher Chris Savage, “ZERO lead water service lines have been replaced in Flint through the actions of the Snyder administration”.
The report, released Wednesday, March 23, includes 36 findings and 44 recommendations for state and local officials following the crisis.
“The Flint water crisis is a story of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction, and environmental injustice”, the report said. “It’s about equal treatment”, said Ken Sikkema, a member of the independent panel who authored the Flint water crisis report. It also found “cultural shortcomings that prevent it from adequately serving and protecting the public health of MI residents”. “And it is extremely troublesome to me that an agency whose primary role, once again, is to protect human health and the environment came to these decisions, and they never backed off these decisions, no matter how many red flags they saw”.
Governor Snyder has stated that the report contains many “good recommendations”, but hasn’t commented on his own personal culpability, which the report suggests with powerful evidence. It puts the blame on the the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and calls for a review of the state of Michigan’s emergency manager law. “The significant consequences of these failures for Flint will be long-lasting”. “It was dismissed, however, because of cost considerations and repeated assurances that the water was safe”, the report notes, while also acknowledging that Snyder was relying on incorrect information provided by state agencies.
Owens, a member of MSU College Democrats, said he felt Snyder, as well as the EPA administrator, did not do enough to address the tough questions posed to them as well as how to further aid the citizens of Flint. Agency Director Dan Wyant and spokesman Brad Wurfel both resigned as a result. Rather, the report lays the Flint disaster at the governor’s feet. MI regulators refused to listen to Flint residents or federal officials about lead problems for months.
Three months later, police still don’t know who broke in.
“The [Michigan Department of Environmental Quality] slow-walked all the things that needed to be done to find out how to fix the problem”, McCarthy told Congress in a recent hearing, adding that EPA was “strong-armed” and “misled” about the magnitude of the crisis.
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“It was definitely an inside job”.
