Less clear are the politics surrounding the decision to award a sole-source contract in June 2013 to a local engineering firm – Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam Inc., or LAN – to ready the city’s water treatment plant for its planned switch to Flint River water. The report states the federal environment watchdog “failed to properly exercise its authority prior to January 2016 … was hesitant and slow to insist on proper corrosion control measures in Flint …”
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“The Flint water crisis is a story of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction and environmental injustice”, said Kolb.
The Flint Water Advisory Task Force released its final report this morning. It also provided inadequate guidance to Flint staffers on water sampling, snubbed offers of help from the federal EPA and dragged their feet on investigating the possibility that the city water system was contributing to an outbreak of Legionnaires’ Disease.
Ed Kurtz was first appointed as the city’s emergency manager in 2002, following the recall of former Mayor Woodrow Stanley.
-Change the Department of Environmental Quality’s culture to focus primarily on protecting human health and the environment.
According to the report, this happened because MDEQ misinterpreted the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead and Copper Rule, leading to underreported lead levels and exposure to contaminated water.
SMITH: But the group also put some of the blame on a state law aimed at saving cities like Flint from financial collapse. “The state is fundamentally accountable for what happened in Flint”, it states.
Snyder, who has apologized repeatedly for his administration’s role in the disaster, and his office were directly involved in some aspects of the crisis and briefed on some of the major decisions surrounding Flint water, the report says.
As we have reported, the lead problem started after Flint switched to a new water source in 2014 to save money.
The task force also suggested that the crisis was partially driven by “environmental injustice”, because Flint is populated largely by low-income and minority residents, an allegation the governor denies.
The emergency manager law in MI needs to be reviewed.
“After months and months, the people of Flint still do not have clean drinking water”. Without the checks and counsel provided by such professional advisers as EM Kevyn Orr used in Detroit, an EM appointed by the governor is more likely to make bad calls akin to those handed down in Flint.
Alternatives proposed by the task force included engaging local officials on key decisions, an ombudsman function in state government to ensure local concerns are a factor in emergency manger decisions and an opportunity to appeal the decisions made by the emergency managers.
Furthermore, the task force added, “Official state public statements and communications about the Flint water situation have at times been inappropriate and unacceptable”.
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However, Republican lawmakers reestablished the practice in Public Act 436, which went into effect March 28, 2013, following a lame-duck legislative session and being signed by Gov. Rick Snyder.
