Gov. Snyder said his team was telling him the water was safe and that’s why he didn’t act.
Advertisement
Several members of Congress called for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency to resign Thursday in a tense hearing over the Flint water crisis.
“There’s a special place in hell for actions like this”, the committee’s top-ranking Democrat, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, said to Hedman, adding, “I’m glad you resigned”.
McCarthy said that the agency is now looking at how to strengthen its lead and copper rule, which is meant to eliminate lead hazards from old pipes but which Snyder called at the hearing “dumb and risky”.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has held two previous hearings on the Flint water crisis. “We were strong armed, we were misled, we were kept at arm’s length, we couldn’t do our jobs effectively”, she said of the relationship with the state agencies.
“I will take responsibility for not pushing hard enough, but I will not take responsibility for causing this problem”.
“That was an issue I didn’t need to face, sir”, McCarthy said.
“You don’t get it, You still don’t get it. You just don’t get it”, Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, told McCarthy, criticizing her for failing to accept blame for the crisis. “Even when you did know, you did nothing”.
Snyder’s administration ordered various cost-cutting measures in financially struggling Flint – including a shift in the water supply from the Detroit River to the Flint River.
“Not at that time”, McCarthy replied. In his testimony, Snyder confirmed that officials in the state Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) did not instruct the city of Flint to use those chemicals.
At Snyder’s order, the city of about 95,000 people switched back to Lake Huron water in October, but unfiltered tap water is still not safe to drink.
Snyder took issue with the committee’s framing of some events. Cummings had berated Snyder for running his state like a corporation. “It’s depressed economically, they’re going through their own economic crisis”, Chaffetz said in his opening comments.
“Congressman, I read a number of those stories”. The September 2015 memo said, “I’m not so sure Flint is the community we want to go out on a limb for”.
Today, I will report what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and what we will do to deliver real results and real relief for the families of Flint.
On that day, I took immediate action. “But it’s a little bit late now for the kids in Flint”.
Last month, a bipartisan group of senators led by Michigan Democrats Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters and Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., reached a deal to provide funding to help Flint and other cities struggling to replace aging pipes. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is supposed to be there, and both should expect a tough round of questions.
“Not one. Not one”, Connolly said. “We came to DC [to] meet on neutral ground”.
According to the USA Today analysis of EPA data, there were 600 water systems in which tests at some faucets indicated lead levels exceeding 40 parts per billion (ppb), which is more than double the EPA’s stated limit.
Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) also called for McCarthy’s resignation during Thursday’s hearing.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions. The American people deserve rules that make sense and professionals to enforce them who know that health and safety are urgent matters.
As early as February 2015, Del Toral had said high lead levels in at least one residence in Flint concerned him that the problem could be more widespread and he wondered openly if the city was practicing corrosion control, which he said was required.
Advertisement
Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., scoffed at the outrage from Chaffetz and other Republicans, noting that the EPA under President Barack Obama is a favorite target of GOP politicians who routinely accuse the agency of overreach.
