LANSING – Governor Rick Snyder called for some drastic changes in culture and communications to prevent another city suffering the crisis that struck Flint, but after the governor’s State of the State Address Environmental Quality Interim Director Keith Creagh saw the most need for change in his agency.

Neither Creagh nor Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon at this point saw the need for additional personnel changes, though Lyons said he was still awaiting the results of an after action report before making any final decisions.

Snyder had essentially called out the departments during his address both for the issue of lead in Flint’s drinking water and for more recent revelations of an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease in the city.

Lyon said information had moved quickly from his agency. “From day one, the governor knew about this,” he said of his agency’s lead testing results.

But the governor had called out DHHS in his timeline of response for not seeing that the results were not part of a standard seasonal fluctuation.

Lyon said the department has also not hidden the Legionnaire’s disease outbreaks. “That data was out there on our website plain and simple,” he said.

Snyder’s chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, said last week that he and Mr. Snyder should have been told about the outbreak.

The department had not tied it to the other water issues because it was still waiting for the evidence to show that it was, he said.

He said there had been two different spikes of the disease, but that several of those affected had not had contact with Flint water.

Creagh acknowledged that his agency not responded as it should have.

He said the department was equipped to handle oversight of the Flint water system.

“We have Ph.D researchers; we have high end engineers,” he said. “We should have treated it as a complex issue, not as a routine issue of bringing on a water supply.”

But he said the department also needs to change its culture to run problems up the chain more quickly.

“It isn’t so much buried,” he said of the reason for not alerting others. “We all like to try to solve problems. You try to solve it first at your desk. … That’s part of the culture change is when you have a problem, you want to bring some more collective wisdom to it and you don’t keep it at the local level.”

Lyon also had praise for his staff. “I work with some of the smartest people in the world,” he said. “I think that that’s rung true in the work that they done thus far.”

Going forward, Lyon said the effort is to be sure as many children in the city as possible are tested and treated for lead ingestion.

He said the governor’s proposed funding for school nurses is important because they are better placed to track student’s health day-to-day, and the better nutrition, also included in the proposed supplemental appropriation, can block some lead absorption.

Creagh said he is continuing to work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to be sure the agency, in Flint and across the state, is upholding the federal standards.

“I have a weekly call to make sure we’re on the same page,” he said.

State Police Director Kriste Etue said it was unclear how long the state Emergency Operations Center would be activated.

“I’m not going to put a timeline on this,” she said. “When we look at how we can maybe ramp that down a little bit, we’ll make that decision then.”

But she said sending troopers, National Guard troops and volunteers door-to-door with water, filters and other assistance has been well received.

“The best way to connect with the people is to go door-to-door,” she said. “There was not one citizen, no resident of Flint, that was angry about this (the visits). They want to be helped.”

Etue said she was not aware who came up with the idea of going door-to-door, but said the current process would allow officials to reach every household in the city in the next couple of weeks.

She was less clear how the state might address refreshing bottled water and filter cartridge supplies when they are exhausted. She said each filter lasts about 90 days and the packages being distributed include three cartridges.

This story was published by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on www.gongwer.com