“This is very personal and it’s a sad day for me”, Congresswoman (D-MI) Brenda Lawrence told Gov. Rick Snyder at a House of Representatives congressional committee hearing in Washington on the Flint Water Crisis.
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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.
But the governor said the EPA had failed to alert the public when one of its own experts raised the alarm about lead levels in Flint water.
“The questions I should have asked… the answers I should have demanded… how I could have prevented this?”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said McCarthy understands how serious Flint’s problems are, adding: “There’s a strong case to make that the United States of America has never had a better administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency than Gina McCarthy”.
Addressing the committee, Snyder, R-Mich., said: “Let me be blunt”.
And the hearing today, Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland said that if Snyder were running a business instead of running a state, he would probably be facing criminal charges. U.S. President Barack Obama has said he supports McCarthy and the EPA despite calls for her resignation. “I’ve heard you say that, but I gotta tell you, there are children that have got to live with it, the damage that has been done for the rest of their lives”. “I will take responsibility for not pushing hard enough but it was not the EPA that caused this”. The river water ate into rust and buildup on old pipes, solder on joints and the insides of old metal fixtures, mixing contaminants with treated water and sending it out utility customers’ faucets.
“Plausible deniability only works when it’s plausible”, Cartwright snapped.
Snyder is urging the federal government to update what he called the “dumb and dangerous” rule and said he will also pursue state legislation to go above and beyond water testing requirements.
Flint’s problems began when the city switched its water source from Detroit’s system to the Flint River in 2014 as a cost-cutting measure.
Congressional leaders also criticized EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “That’s cheap”, Rep. Jason Chaffetz said.
McCarthy, who in her testimony to the House panel did not take as much responsibility as Snyder did, got a bipartisan grilling from committee members. About 8,000 children under the age of six were potentially exposed, and elevated lead levels have been found in some children’s blood.
Activists and health officials worry that 18 months of Flint River water loosened contaminants coating the insides of old pipe, including the city’s water mains, weakened lead solder on plumbing joints and ate away the insides of faucets, decay that will continue even with the return to less corrosive water.
“We couldn’t do our jobs effectively”, she said.
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Under questioning from Chaffetz, McCarthy said the EPA should have done more to head off the crisis, but she repeatedly said she did not have the authority to “pull a switch” and force Flint to change its water source.
