WASHINGTON DC – Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards and Flint resident LeeAnne Walters told a U.S. House committee Wednesday that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality engaged in a cover-up to prevent its failure to enforce drinking water laws in Flint from coming to light, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was complicit in that scheme.
Edwards, the drinking water expert who assisted Walters, who was deeply worried about problems with water in her home, said the fault for lead leaching into the water at homes with lead service lines in Flint is straightforward.
The DEQ is in charge of enforcing the federal Lead and Copper Rule and the Safe Drinking Water Act, and it failed to insist Flint use corrosion control treatment in the water, Edwards said. Walters went to the EPA, and when its employee, Miguel Del Toral, concluded lead was leaching into the water, his boss, Region 5 chief Susan Hedman, shut him down.
“100 percent of the responsibility lies with these employees at MDEQ, there’s no question, but EPA had the chance because of Miguel Del Toral to be the hero here, and Hedman snatched defeat for EPA from the jaws of victory by discrediting his memo and standing by silently as she knew that federal law was not protecting Flint’s children,” Edwards told the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
It was a riveting and emotional four-hour hearing in Washington, broadcast live on C-SPAN, featuring four members of Michigan’s U.S. House delegation, DEQ Interim Director Keith Creagh and top EPA official Joel Beauvais.
Perhaps the biggest point of contention overall was on the insistence from the Snyder administration that every level of government failed Flint – local, state and federal.
U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Flint) was the first to speak and sought to shatter that argument. Yes, the EPA has culpability, Kildee said, saying they should have “shouted from the mountaintop” about what was happening in Flint.
But to blame the Flint city government ignores the reality that from late 2011 until the spring of 2015, Flint was under the complete control of an emergency manager appointed by Governor Rick Snyder, Kildee said. And it was the DEQ that failed to fulfill its duty as the lead on enforcing federal rules and laws on drinking water, he said. Kildee questioned how the state could seriously complain about the EPA when the EPA’s failing was not compelling the state to do its job.
“This false equivalency that somehow local officials who had no power and the EPA – who I agree should have done more – should be held accountable for this misses the point,” he said. “This is a state failure.”
Creagh stuck with the message, though, of three levels of failure: local, state and federal. He outlined to the committee which layer of government is responsible for which aspects of drinking water.
Flint is responsible for daily operations and the distribution system and certifying that samples meet the lead and copper rule, he said. The state is responsible for ensuring compliance with the lead and copper rule and the Safe Drinking Water Act. And the EPA sets national drinking water standards while providing oversight on those standards as well as auditing state performance, Creagh said.
Creagh then outlined the state response so far.
“We know the task ahead is important as is the restoration of the public trust. Governor Snyder is committed to providing the resources necessary to provide solutions,” he said. “We will not rest until this problem is solved and the people of Flint are assured they again have water that is safe for them and their families.”
Creagh, who became director January 4 following Dan Wyant’s resignation days earlier, was an elusive target for the committee, having not been involved in any of the decisions that led to the crisis.
EDWARDS ACCUSES DEQ, EPA EMPLOYEES OF A CRIMINAL COVER-UP: Edwards and Walters spared no criticism of DEQ employees.
Walters, who had lead levels in her home equivalent to toxic waste, said she raised concerns with the city of Flint and the DEQ and was dismissed.
“I just decided to start researching and educating myself about water and try to figure out what was going on after I was publicly humiliated by the state, by Mike Prysby at the MDEQ and by Jerry Ambrose at a public meeting with the citizens,” she said.
Prysby is a district engineer with the DEQ’s Office of Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance and Ambrose was Flint’s emergency manager at the time.
Edwards said after he spoke with Del Toral, who recognized the lack of corrosion control treatment, he assumed the EPA would address the problem. Later, he found out the exact opposite occurred.
Walters said Liane Shekter Smith, who was head of the drinking water program in the DEQ but has since been reassigned and later was suspended, bragged to her that Del Toral had been handled by the EPA and there would be no official EPA report about her situation.
“When Mr. Del Toral put his professional career on the line to have that memo written and gave it to LeeAnne, when they started covering up, at that point I really personally believe it was criminal,” Edwards said.
The DEQ has now said the problem is it did not properly apply the lead and copper rule when it came to corrosion control treatment for Flint, but there are plenty of emails among the employees involved showing otherwise, Edwards said.
“It was very clear that an agreement had been reached of some sort between the EPA and MDEQ that would let MDEQ have their way with Flint’s children,” he said. “That they were not going to install corrosion control, that they had no intention to do it. There’s many emails that show they were waiting until this new pipeline came on next year. They thought it was a waste of time to do anything to treat the water.”
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) asked Edwards if he thought such actions were criminal.
“If it’s not criminal, I don’t know what is,” he said.
Edwards said he thinks the DEQ did start innocently enough in misapplying the lead and copper rule regarding using corrosion control treatment, but then “ignored warning sign after warning sign,” such as General Motors switching back to Detroit water after Flint water was corroding parts at its assembly plant, Walters’ child’s blood lead levels, and the incredible levels of lead in Walters’ water.
He also slammed the DEQ for telling the EPA it was using an optimized corrosion control program in Flint. The DEQ has said what it meant was it was following the protocol to observe lead levels at two six-month intervals without corrosion control treatment, but Edwards scoffed at that claim.
“They were covering this up, there’s no question about it,” he said. “You read these emails. They lied in writing to the EPA. And it was only after LeeAnne figured out they were not using corrosion control that they started this new story that ‘we don’t know if we have to have corrosion control.'”
There were many at fault in the entire crisis, Edwards said, but it all comes back to the same three or four employees at the DEQ who “were actively misleading everyone.”
EPA BLASTED: Beauvais, the deputy assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Water, received scathing criticism.
Member after member asked Beauvais why the EPA, once Del Toral alerted his superiors to the lack of corrosion control in Flint and rising lead levels, not only took no action, but moved to gag him.
Beauvais repeatedly said the EPA tried to convince the DEQ it needed to order the use of corrosion control treatment in Flint water.
“That is a conclusion and a view that MDEQ resisted throughout this process,” he said.
But several members found that answer wanting.
U.S. Rep. Steve Russell (R-Oklahoma), said a trail of emails show EPA and Region 5 sought to “belittle, obstruct and pretty much eliminate the voices from the community and yet now you’re going to shift that to the MDEQ.”
Beauvais said looking back, everyone should have done everything possible to avoid what has happened.
“But I do think it’s important to remember how we got in this situation,” he said.
U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the committee chair, questioned how Del Toral’s report went almost a full year without being formally released by the EPA. Hedman, after Del Toral gave it to Walters, who later made it public, had dismissed the report as unvetted.
Beauvais said he could not answer that question and knew only that the EPA was working with the DEQ, but then Chaffetz cut him off.
“Then why don’t we fire the whole lot of them? What good is the EPA if they’re not going to do that?” Chaffetz said, his voice rising. “You can’t come to a hearing before Congress and be in charge of water quality for the EPA and not know the answer to that question.”
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-New Jersey) asked Beauvais what the EPA could have done to force the DEQ to act.
“I don’t want to speculate with regard to the specific facts and specific timelines,” Beauvais responded. “I do recognize that EPA has emergency response authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act.”
Watson retorted: “For the record, I want it noted that you didn’t answer my question.”
U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Tipton) asked Beauvais about an email from an EPA Region 5 staffer who had been working with Del Toral on Ms. Walters’ situation. The email was to someone in the DEQ reminding them that Del Toral had cc’d the DEQ on his report about the lack of corrosion control treatment.
“I want to remind you that Miguel’s report had DEQ cc’d,” the email, which Walberg read aloud, said. “So if the Legislature or whoever might say you were all cc’d, you could truthfully respond that it was EPA’s request that the report not be sent to the ccs. Consequently you all never received the report from Miguel.”
Beauvais said he did not know why the email was sent and it is the subject of an EPA inspector general inquiry.
U.S. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Cascade Township), who has said the state, not the federal government, should pay for the damage in Flint because it is a state responsibility, criticized the state.
He said the state is spending $33 million annually on its Pure Michigan tourism campaign, but only mustered $28 million in the most recent appropriation for Flint.
“The state has the resources,” he said. “I can assure you of that as a former state legislator.”
This story was published by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on www.gongwer.com.
