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 “What happened in Flint can never happen again. It is almost
unbelievable how many bad decisions were made," said Representative
Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican who chairs the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee.
"Government at every level - local, state and federal - made poor
decisions."
Flint, a predominantly African-American city of 100,000 about 60
miles (100 km) northwest of Detroit, switched its water supply from
the Detroit water system to the Flint River in April 2014 to cut
costs. The river's corrosive water leached lead from city pipes,
creating a public health threat marked by high lead levels in blood
samples taken from children.
Lead is a toxic agent that can damage the nervous system.
The crisis has drawn national attention and led to calls for
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to resign. It has also led to several
lawsuits in state and federal courts, and federal and state
investigations.
 The water supply was switched back to the Detroit system last
October.
At Tuesday's hearing, a former regional EPA head, Susan Hedman, who
resigned in February, was criticized by members of the committee for
not acting sooner to use her powers as the regulator to better
protect Flint residents. She defended herself, however.
"I don’t think anyone at the EPA did anything wrong, but I do
believe we could have done more," Hedman said. "I did not sit
silent."
Representative Buddy Carter, a Georgia Republican, blasted Hedman as
well. "I'm sorry, there's a special place in hell for actions like
this," he said of the former EPA official's tenure before the Flint
crisis mushroomed into a national story.
Darnell Earley, a former state-appointed emergency manager in Flint,
also was criticized for failing to ask enough questions about the
safety protocols in place at the time of the city's water-source
switch.
Governor Snyder and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy are scheduled to
testify before the same panel on Thursday.
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Internal EPA memos and emails Chaffetz released about the crisis
raised questions about the agency's actions and the state's
incompetence.
"Lead lines + no treatment = high lead in water = lead poisoned
children," Miguel Del Toral, an EPA official critical of the agency,
wrote in a Sept. 22, 2015, email to other agency officials. "At
every stage of this process, it seems we spend more time trying to
maintain state/local relationships than we do trying to protect the
children."
In July 2015, EPA official Jennifer Crooks said in a summary of an
agency meeting on Flint that "it doesn't make sense to discuss with
the state what happened in the past ... as the state sees the lead
levels climbing, I don't see the benefit in rubbing their nose in
the fact that we're right and they're wrong."
Virginia Tech Professor Marc Edwards, a water engineer who first
raised the issue of Flint's lead contamination, was critical of
Hedman's testimony.
"I can't help but comment on the qualities that seem to be valued in
administrators at the EPA: willful blindness, in this case to the
pain and suffering of Flint residents; unremorseful for their role
in causing this man-made disaster; and completely unrepentant," he
told the committee on Tuesday.
He said the EPA has never apologized for what happened in Flint. "I
guess being a government agency means you never have to say you're
sorry," Edwards said.
(Additional reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by Toni
Reinhold and Matthew Lewis)
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Congress
criticizes EPA, Michigan over Flint water crisis
