LANSING – The task force that Governor Rick Snyder appointed to investigate how the Flint water crisis occurred takes a hammer to the message Snyder and his staff have emphasized for months that the crisis resulted from a failure of government at all levels.
In reading the Flint Water Advisory Task Force’s report on the crisis, it looks like the group watched and listened to some of the messages Snyder had deployed and decided to call him out.
Snyder and his allies repeatedly have pressed the message that the crisis resulted from failure at all levels of government, especially pointing to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, when discussing the Flint water crisis. Snyder has accepted blame for the state’s failures, but frequently then couches that fault within the greater “failure at all levels” characterization.
The task force report describes such characterizations as “inappropriate official public relations efforts.”
“The statement that the Flint water crisis was a local, state and federal failure implies that blame is attributable equally to all three levels of government,” the task force says in its report. “Primary responsibility for the water contamination in Flint lies with the (Michigan Department of Environmental Quality). In addition, at the time of the water crisis, Flint was under the control of state-appointed emergency managers, who made key decisions that contributed to the crisis. Because of these two facts, the state is fundamentally accountable for what happened in Flint.”
In fact, in the introduction of the report, the task force speaks directly to Snyder.
“We are encouraged by your focus and expressed commitment to address the Flint community’s needs, and to learn from the failures that have transpired,” the report says. “This commitment is appropriate because, though it may be technically true that all levels of government failed, the state’s responsibilities should not be deflected. The causes of the crisis lie primarily at the feet of the state by virtue of its agencies’ failures and its appointed emergency managers’ misjudgments.”
Despite the criticism, Snyder Communications Director Ari Adler said Snyder and the administration would continue to say the water crisis was the result of a failure of government at all levels.
Adler said the report does not contradict that statement.
“The message from the governor’s office will continue to be that it was a failure of government at all levels because that is true,” he said. “We have never said to what degree and clearly the task force begins to assign degrees of responsibility.”
Of the report’s statement that the use of the phrase implies equal blame to local, state and federal governments, Adler disagreed.
“It’s an independent task force and they’re entitled to their opinion,” he said. “Their opinion is based on what they believe the governor means when he says that. But the governor has never assigned a degree of responsibility when he says that and none of us have.”
On the question of local responsibility, Adler pointed to the Flint water department’s failure to install corrosion control treatment, noting that Emergency Manager Darnell Earley had delegated water department authority to Mayor Dayne Walling.
But on that point, the task force had a different take, putting the onus on the DEQ.
“When asked by Flint water plant personnel about adding phosphate in the treatment process, as DWSD does for corrosion control, MDEQ said that a corrosion control treatment decision would be made after two 6-month monitoring periods were conducted to see if corrosion control treatment was needed,” the report said.
The report, however, did say that Flint Utilities Department personnel were under-trained, inexperienced with full-time water plant operations and ill-prepared to manage complex water chemistry issues. But then it also noted that some city staff conveyed concerns, namely to the DEQ, only to have those concerns discounted.
Additionally, the task force criticizes attempts to blame the federal Lead and Copper Rule for the DEQ’s decision not to order corrosion control treatment right away once Flint switched its drinking water source to the Flint River. Lack of corrosion control treatment for the more corrosive river water allowed lead in lead service lines to leach into the water.
Snyder has ripped the Lead and Copper Rule as “dumb” and while he has said DEQ staff should not have interpreted it the way they did also said the rule leaves too much room for interpretation.
“Though there may be some ambiguity in the LCR rule, none of it relates to what the MDEQ should have done in Flint,” the task force report says. “There was and remains no justification for MDEQ not requiring corrosion control treatment for the switch of the water source to the Flint River.”
Another message Snyder has repeated when the emergency manager law he proposed and signed in 2012 comes up in the Flint water crisis – Flint was under the control of four emergency managers Snyder appointed from 2011-15 – is that the emergency manager law has been a success overall.
The report seemed to look askance at that message.
“Regardless of any successes of the EM process in other Michigan cities, this failure must force us to review the EM law and the general approach to financial problems,” the report said. “Government approaches to cities in fiscal distress must balance fiscal responsibility with the equally important need to address quality of life, economic development, and infrastructure maintenance and provision.”
The report does look directly at Snyder and Snyder’s Executive Office and how they handled the crisis. It did concur with one of Mr. Snyder’s points since the onset of the crisis, that while he should have asked more questions and showed more of a “trust but verify” attitude toward the insistence from the departments of Environmental Quality and Health and Human Services that the water was safe, that ultimately he must rely heavily on those departments.
But the report had criticism for Snyder and his staff. It urged him to expand the flow of information so it does not come to him from only one trusted source. It also criticized the lack of action after then-Legal Counsel Michael Gadola and then-Deputy Legal Counsel Valerie Brader in 2014 wrote urgent emails to then-Chief of Staff Dennis Muchmore urging Flint be returned to the Detroit water system and pulled off the Flint River, which it was using as an interim drinking water source.
Brader and top aide Rich Baird raised the idea with then-Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, who insisted it was not necessary, and the concept lost any momentum.
That was not good enough, the report suggested.
“The suggestion made by members of the governor’s executive staff in October 2014 to switch back to DWSD should have resulted, at a minimum, in a full and comprehensive review of the water situation in Flint, similar to that which accompanied the earlier decision to switch to (the Karegnondi Water Authority),” the report said. “It was disregarded, however, because of cost considerations and repeated assurances that the water was safe. The need to switch back to DWSD became even more apparent as water quality and safety issued continued and lead issues began to surface in 2015, notwithstanding reassurances by MDEQ.”
Chris Kolb, task force co-chair, said the governor’s staff needed to take a step back once the problems kept mounting.
“When it comes to the governor’s office, I’ll just say that I think they found they were playing a game of whack a mole. Every time an issue came up, they asked about it, they were told it was being taken care of, solved, and another issue would come up. At some point though you have to say ‘wait a second, my gut’s telling me we did something wrong. This isn’t running smoothly,'” he said. “Somebody needed to go back there and start to look at every single decision from the get-go.”
The report further urged Snyder to “assume the leadership” of long-term implementation of the report’s recommendations and to hold his departments accountable. It also called for the governor review budget requests for the Department of Environmental Quality to ensure adequate funding for the Office of Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance.
“EPA audit and interviews indicate that Michigan’s drinking water program might have one of the lowest levels of financial support within EPA Region V while having one of the largest, if not the largest, number of community water systems to regulate,” the report said.
This story was published by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on www.gongwer.com
