Regulators dismissed dissenters on Flint crisis Jonathan Oosting , Christine
MacDonald , Joel Kurth and Jim Lynch , The Detroit News Michigan regulators
who failed to ensure proper corrosion control chemicals were added to Flint's
drinking water spent six months dismissing evidence of their error and
considered
ways to muzzle the federal expert who first sounded alarms about it. More than
24,000 pages of documents from state agencies involved in Flint water quality
issues provide a clearer picture of how the crisis developed. They show water
quality complaints from Flint residents, federal officials and whistle-blowers
alike were challenged by state bureaucrats, who insisted on strict adherence to
their interpretation of federal rules. Gov. Rick Snyder and his new Department
of Environmental Quality Director Keith Creagh now say a lack of 'common sense'
by staffers contributed to the lead contamination of Flint's drinking water.
'The constant second-guessing of how we interpret and implement our rules is
getting tiresome,' Pat Cook, a treatment specialist at the state Department
of Environmental Quality, told colleagues in a previously unreported April, 27,
2015, email after Miguel Del Toral of the federal Environmental Protection
Agency's Region 5 openly questioned their compliance with the Lead and Copper
Rule. The state should have required corrosion control treatments when the
city began using Flint River water a year earlier, Del Toral told Cook, also
warning that 'the whole town may have much higher lead levels' than testing
originally indicated because of a 'pre-flushing' technique allowed by the
state. The state DEQ advised residents to run their cold water faucets for
several
minutes the night before a test for lead levels ' a practice it has since
stopped. Flint residents began complaining about the brown color, rotten-egg
smell and bad taste of their tap water almost immediately after the city moved
off Detroit's Lake Huron system in April 2014 and switched to the Flint
River. Del Toral was the first water quality expert to suggest bigger problems
might be afoot. Resident Mona Monroe-Young, 36, was pregnant and desperate
for answers about the Flint River water in July when she sent a lengthy email
to the EPA. She wanted advice on filters and whether total trihalomethanes
' a byproduct when chlorine is used to disinfect water ' could be dangerous to
pregnant women if inhaled during hot showers. 'If your wife or sister or
friend were living in Flint and pregnant, what course of action would you
recommend she take? Monroe-Young wrote. She said she got answers from the EPA
on filters but she began to question whether her filter was enough after
hearing about continued cases of homes having high lead levels in her
neighborhood.
She and her husband would go on to spend $2,000 on a Culligan Water System. 'I
think as a Flint resident, you are frustrated because you have to do all
the research on your own,' Monroe-Young told The News. 'There was no
coordinated response. 'The state, the city, the EPA completely fell down on the
job.
I feel like you have to take everything they say now with a grain of salt. Lead
7 times the safety limit The EPA's Del Toral began asking the state about
water testing protocols as early as February 2015, when the city told homeowner
Lee-Anne Walters it detected 104 parts per billion of lead in water coming
from her tap, more than seven times the federal safety action limit. She sent
the results to the EPA, prompting Del Toral's involvement. Later tests would
reveal even higher levels. By April, state environmental regulators confirmed
to Del Toral that Flint was not adding corrosion treatments to the new water
source but insisted they were properly enforcing federal rules. Del Toral
appeared to be getting under their skin, and they discussed taking their
frustrations
to Department Director Dan Wyant and Office of Drinking Water and Municipal
Assistance chief Liane Shekter Smith. 'If he continues to persist, we may need
Liane or Director Wyant to make a call to EPA to help address his
over-reaches,' Stephen Busch, state DEQ's Lansing regional director overseeing
the Flint
system, told Cook and another colleague in an April 27 email. It's not clear if
the call happened, but the threat reflects resistance within a department
that would later admit in mid-October that it erred in failing to add corrosion
controls. Wyant resigned in late December after a Snyder-appointed task
force blamed the lead contamination of Flint's water on a 'regulatory culture
of passive technical compliance that is simply insufficient to the task of
public protection. Shekter Smith was fired last week, while Busch remains on
suspension pending further investigation. Creagh, who took over the state
environmental department in early January, told The Detroit News Thursday he
continues to assess his new workforce but does not have immediate plans to
punish other employees. 'People said, 'Director, you should just go in and
remove people. That's a very simplistic solution to potentially a more complex
problem,' he said. Staff lacked 'regulatory curiosity' and failed to treat
individual water issues as part of a larger problem, Creagh said, adding that
he hopes to build a culture where employees feel comfortable speaking out
against the status quo. 'We need to make sure we raise the issue as opposed to
bury the issue,' he said. 'It's a sign of strength. Conflict is OK. Innovation
actually occurs around tension points. Snyder has said he was unaware of
the bureaucratic wrangling, has since repeatedly apologized to Flint's
residents for failures at the city, state and federal levels and has vowed to
fix
the problem. EPA vetting held up report Despite the red flags raised by Del
Toral, EPA's Region 5 stayed silent about Flint's water. After Del Toral shared
his concerns about Flint outside the agency in a June 24 draft report, Region 5
EPA Administrator Susan Hedman told then-Flint Mayor Dayne Walling in a
July 1 email that the report 'should not have been released outside the agency.
When the report has been revised and fully vetted by EPA management, the
findings and recommendations will be shared with the city and DEQ will be
responsible for following up with the city. The vetting wasn't finished until
November ' after the lead contamination was revealed and the city was back on
Detroit's water system. Hedman resigned Feb. 1. The DEQ had access to the
report by early July, when a reporter pointed public information officer Brad
Wurfel to a link, which Wurfel then shared with Wyant, Shekter Smith and
others. But in a previously unreported Sept. 11 email sent from her personal
account, EPA Region 5 program officer Jennifer Crooks told DEQ regulators
they could 'truthfully' tell 'the Legislature or whoever' that they had not
received the report directly from Del Toral. The EPA email was sent a few days
after U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, and state Sen. Jim Ananich,
D-Flint, sent Wyant separate letters asking about the lead contamination
concerns
raised in Del Toral's draft report. In a Sept. 16 response to Kildee, Wyant
didn't mention the report, although emails show earlier drafts noted the
department
'was aware of the existence of this document' but had not received copies from
the EPA. His Sept. 17 response to Ananich briefly explained that the department
'does not review or receive draft memos from the USEPA, nor would we expect to
while it is a draft. Whistle-blowers opposed Del Toral was not the only
whistle-blower to face opposition. In an early September email, Busch
questioned independent lead testing by Virginia Tech University Professor Marc
Edwards,
whom Snyder has since praised and asked to assist with the state response to
the Flint crisis. Busch, in an internal email about a media question, told
colleagues 'we are not aware of any certification for his university's research
laboratory for metals analysis, and it does not appear he has disclosed
this fact. The lack of urgency over the mounting crisis extended to advice
given to residents. Five days after the city sent a lead advisory to residents
and one day after the Genesee County Health Department did the same, state
water division workers were told to be 'polite and empathetic' but tell
concerned
residents the water was still safe to drink. 'If you receive one of these
calls, our message should be consistent ' the drinking water distributed to city
customers currently meets all drinking water standards and is considered safe,'
DEQ field operations section chief Richard Benzie wrote in a Sept. 30 email
to staff. 'However, there is no safe level for lead. Even if testing showed
elevated blood lead levels in their homes, Benzie said, the state could tell
them to run their faucet 'for a few minutes or until the water is cooler ...
and then use it for drinking or cooking. One day later, Genesee County officials
declared a public health emergency and told residents not to drink untested tap
water without a filter. That same day, the Michigan Department of Community
Health confirmed an independent blood-lead level analysis performed by Dr. Mona
Hanna-Attisha of Hurley Medical Center. A a day later on Oct. 2, Gov. Rick
Snyder announced a 'comprehensive action plan' to address Flint water issues '
which resulted in reconnecting Flint to Detroit's water system two weeks
later. Sheila Bailey-Waddell was among the Flint residents who questioned the
reassurances of government officials. After she sent a series of emails to
state and federal officials about water quality throughout last year, including
the EPA's Safe Water Drinking Hotline, the 58-year-old said she felt she
got the 'brush off' and officials were 'shirking their responsibility. DEQ
district engineer Mike Prysby responded to her questions about lead in the water
Oct. 2, reiterating their message that the water met 'all applicable drinking
water standards' and in the email underlined for emphasis the phrase that
they 'had not detected the presence of lead in any tap samples. The email was
sent the same day that Snyder announced his initial plan to address the water
crisis. 'I am really disappointed in government, period,' Bailey-Waddell said.
'Everybody wanted to lag around and waste time instead of expediting solutions.
joosting@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx twitter.com/jonathanoosting About this report The News
reviewed more than 24,000 pages of documents from state agencies involved
in Flint's water crisis. They were gathered under Freedom of Information Act
requests and provided by Gov. Rick Snyder's administration and Genesee County.
They cover the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Michigan
Department of Treasury, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services,
Genesee
County Health Department, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
This article is provided to you as a courtesy of NFB
