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 Snyder, a Republican, and McCarthy, a presidential appointee, sat
side by side before the House Oversight Committee as lawmakers from
both parties grilled them on their response to the crisis, which has
turned into a full-blown health emergency. It also has led to
several lawsuits in state and federal courts, and federal and state
investigations.
Republicans on the committee pinned much of the blame on the EPA,
which many party members want to eliminate because they feel it is
too powerful. Democrats pointed fingers at Snyder and Michigan
officials, suggesting that cost cutting came at the expense of
public health.
Several Republicans called on McCarthy to resign, but the White
House said it had full confidence in her.
The committee's top Democrat, Maryland's Elijah Cummings, and other
Democrats said Snyder's administration was to blame for its
mishandling of the crisis and called on the governor to resign.
Members of the committee chastised McCarthy and Snyder. "You don’t
get it, You still don’t get it. You just don’t get it," Committee
chair Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, told McCarthy as he
criticized her failure to accept blame for the crisis.
 Snyder did not escape unscathed. "There is no doubt in my mind that
if a corporate CEO did what Governor Snyder’s administration has
done, he would be hauled up on criminal charges," Cummings said in
his opening remarks. "The board of directors would throw him out.
And the shareholders would revolt."
Snyder said the state has started the process of replacing the
corroded pipes and has set aside tens of millions of dollars to help
the recovery of Flint citizens injured or harmed by lead poisoning.
Snyder has said he has no plans to resign, despite efforts in his
state and nationally to recall him. U.S. President Barack Obama has
said he supports McCarthy and the EPA despite calls for her
resignation.
Chaffetz said he would continue to investigate the cause of the
Flint crisis and the response to it but that no other hearings are
scheduled at present.
FAILURE ADMITTED
Under the direction of a state-appointed emergency manager, Flint, a
mostly African-American city of 100,000 northwest of Detroit,
switched water supplies to the Flint River from Detroit's water
system in 2014, to save money.
The corrosive river water leached lead from the city's water pipes.
Lead is toxic and can damage the nervous system. Blood samples taken
from children in Flint contained high levels of lead.
The city switched back to the Detroit system last October.
Over 200 residents from Flint traveled by bus to Washington to
attend Thursday's hearing, including 10-year-old Jaylon Terry, who
fidgeted in his chair in the committee room.
"I've been getting constant calls every day from his teachers," said
his mother, Lewenna Terry, who said the lead in his system has
affected Jaylon's attention span and grades. "The teachers have
noticed it's not just my son but other kids. The whole city has been
poisoned."
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Virginia Williams, a Michigan resident who wore a T-shirt with an
image of corroded pipes, said both the state and federal governments
should be held accountable and that the blame game should stop now.
"Replacing the pipes should be their main priority now," she told
Reuters. Snyder again apologized for the state’s poor response to
the crisis, but said the blame can be shared at all levels of
government.
"Let me be blunt," he said in his testimony. "We all failed the
families of Flint."
McCarthy also said the EPA was part of a wider system failure in
response to the crisis, but said the agency could have caught the
problem faster if the state had shared information and cooperated
more. She accused the state's Department of Environmental Quality of
"slow walking" its response, which prevented the agency from being
able to "come to the rescue."
"We were strong-armed. We were misled. We were kept at arm's
length," she said, referring to state officials.
However, Snyder said federal bureaucrats could have responded sooner
if they had used common sense.
Representative Matt Cartwright, a Pennsylvania Democrat, accused
Snyder of apologizing too late and called on him to resign.
“Plausible deniability only works when it's plausible and I'm not
buying that you didn't know about any of this until October 2015,"
he said. "You were not in a medically induced coma for a year and
I've had about enough of your false contrition and your phony
apologies.”
In the Senate, lawmakers have so far failed to reach an agreement on
a $220 million funding bill to help Flint and other cities replace
and repair lead pipes. Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat,
said she was disappointed this was not resolved before a two-week
congressional recess that starts on Friday.
"The children of Flint are waiting," she said. "We need a vote. We
have a bipartisan bill," she said on the Senate floor.
On Thursday, ratings agency Standard & Poor's lowered the outlook on
Michigan's credit rating to stable from positive, citing burgeoning
costs associated with Flint's water crisis and the cash-strapped
Detroit Public Schools.
(Additional reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit, David Shepardson
and Doina Chiacu in Washington and Karen Pierog in Chicago)
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