Dems say state blocked Flint return to Detroit water Paul Egan, Detroit Free
Press LANSING -- Michigan Democrats said Wednesday that the state of Michigan
blocked Flint from returning to Lake Huron water from the Detroit water system
when it agreed to grant the city an emergency loan of $7 million in April
2015. The loan, approved on April 29 of last year by the Local Emergency
Financial Assistance Loan Board, and intended to erase the city's operating
deficit
so it could begin to emerge from state-ordered emergency management, included
conditions requiring that the city not return to the Detroit Water and Sewerage
Department as its source of drinking water, according to records the Michigan
Democratic Party obtained under Michigan's Freedom of Information Act. Another
condition was that Flint not leave the Karegnondi Water Authority -- a new
pipeline to Lake Huron backed by Genesee County that Flint opted to join early
in 2013, resulting in its split with Detroit as its source of drinking water.
Former Flint emergency manager Ed Kurtz opted to draw water from the Flint
River as an interim drinking water source, beginning in April of 2014, after
Flint and Detroit could not agree on an interim price for Flint to continue
receiving Detroit water while it waited for the pipeline, slated for completion
this summer, to be built. Flint's drinking water became contaminated with
lead after the switch. The city returned to Detroit water in October, with
financial assistance from the administration of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder,
but a threat remains because of damage to the water distribution system. During
a telephone news conference Wednesday morning, Brandon Dillon, chairman
of the Michigan Democratic Party, called on state Treasurer Nick Khouri, who
signed the loan agreement on behalf of the state, to "resign or be fired
immediately.
"This dirty deal was forced on Flint by the Snyder administration, even after
alarm bells were going off all over the governor's office that lead and
Legionnaires'
disease were poisoning families," Dillon said in a release. Terry Stanton, a
spokesman for the Treasury Department, said the loan agreement contained several
provisions intended to make sure Flint remained on a solid financial footing.
"As noted in the agreement, any provision may be waived, if the city were
to request a waiver and the state treasurer were to agree," Stanton said. That
waiver happened when the state provided $6 million to help Flint pay to
reconnect to Detroit in October, he said. Dillon said the Snyder administration
"effectively put a financial gun to the heads of Flint's families by using
the emergency manager law to lock the City into taking water from a poisoned
source. But Ari Adler, a spokesman for Snyder, said Dillon is wrong. "The
provisions in the loan agreement were put in place to ensure the proper
oversight of money sent to Flint by taxpayers from across the state, but nothing
was prohibited as this latest round of political rhetoric is suggesting," Adler
said. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has acknowledged
it failed to require the city's water treatment plant to add needed corrosion
control chemicals when the switch to the Flint River took place. As a result,
the corrosive water caused lead to leach from pipes, joints and fixtures,
sending water with unsafe lead levels into an unknown number of Flint households
and causing a spike in toxic lead levels in the bloodstreams of an unknown
number of Flint children. Dan Wyant, who was DEQ director at the time, resigned
in December over the public health crisis. A ,month before the April 2015
emergency loan from the state, the Flint City Council had voted to return to
the Flint water system amid complaints from citizens about discolored water
that smelled bad and health warnings about high fecal coliform and disinfectant
byproduct levels. Gerald Ambrose, who was Flint emergency manager at that time,
overruled the decision and said Flint would stay with Flint River water.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx. Follow him on Twitter
@paulegan4.
