Require EPA to create a strategic plan for handling and improving information flow between drinking water utilities, the states, EPA, and affected drinking water consumers when there is an enforceable lead exceedance in drinking water. Flint residents have been advised to either drink bottled water or to drink boiled water that has been already been filtered through an NSF-certified filter rated to remove lead.
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Another witness, Virginia Tech University’s Marc Edwards, a professor of environmental and water engineering, told the committee that the EPA did not display the sense of urgency the situation required to address the public health problem once it became known within the agency. Several residents say they w…
The state administration has denied allegations of negligence.
Critics have blamed the state administration for failing to apply essential corrosion control to make the water from Flint River safe for consumption by preventing the antiquated pipelines from leaking lead.
Between April 2014, when the city changed its water supply, and March 2015, Flint registered almost 40 cases of the disease – more than all the cases in the previous five years combined.
Snyder last fall appointed an independent task force to identify where specific failures occurred within state government.
In Flint and other cities, he essentially nullified democratic elections, deposed elected mayors and city councils and installed his own agents with virtually dictatorial powers.
Gov. Rick Snyder, who appeared on MSNBC on Thursday and apparently is trying to keep a high profile in the Flint water crisis, is now expected to testify before Congress on the Flint water crisis. Busch was later suspended during investigations into the mishandling of the crisis.
In January, the governor released the first batch of emails sent during 2014 and 2015 regarding Flint’s drinking water crisis. But the new documents reveal the extent to which federal agencies like the EPA were also aware of the danger. The concern about Legionnaires’ disease, a bacterial disease, emerged later.
Many of those people have either quit, announced resignations, or been have booted out by voters since the crisis erupted.
Nick Lyon, the director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, has said that about half the cases were connected to Flint water, and half were not.
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Multiple people alerted the DEQ to the high lead levels even as late as August of 2015, but Stephen Busch from the DEQ – claimed the city was in compliance, despite an email that came out one week prior which shows it clearly wasn’t.
