Flint’s lead-tainted water: a man-made emergency that unfolded in plain sight

Almost two years ago, the leaders of Flint, Michigan, lifted glasses of water in the air — clear water — to toast a plan to save money for their struggling city. “Here’s to Flint!” said Mayor Dayne Walling. Smiling officials responded, “Hear, hear!” and drank their water, oblivious to the disaster ahead. Flint was in the throes of a financial crisis, and a state-appointed emergency manager had agreed on a way for the struggling Rust Belt city to save money: Stop piping expensive drinking water from Detroit. Flint would instead draw water from the Flint River until a new pipeline could bring cheaper water from Lake Huron. State financial and environmental officials approved the project, which the state treasurer said would bring “desperately needed” savings. On April 25, 2014, the flow of water from Detroit stopped, and a crisis that would soon consume Michigan had begun. Within two months after the switch, residents were complaining. The new drinking water from the Flint River smelled strange, and was much more laden with minerals than the water from Detroit. Officials responded that tests showed the water was perfectly safe. But by August, tests revealed E. coli in the water, and parts of the city were ordered to boil the water before drinking. Some residents also noticed that their water was brown. The worst was yet to come. For months, people in Flint would consume water contaminated with lead, for which there are no safe levels of exposure: even low levels can cause lifelong developmental damage to young children. The toxic metal was leached off the city’s ageing pipes by the inadequately treated water. Researchers would later report that blood tests showing lead contamination had nearly doubled and tripled in children younger than 5 who were exposed to the highest lead levels. Thousands of children were exposed. Last week, President Barack Obama weighed in on the scandal, saying he would be “beside myself” if his children were placed at such risk. A federal state of emergency was imposed in Flint on January 16. Yet for many months, city officials sought to downplay the problems. There were worrisome headlines when the General Motors engine plant in town decided to stop taking Flint’s water in October 2014 because it was worried the high levels of chloride, which the river water also contained, would corrode metal parts. The city insisted the water was still safe. But then, on December 16, 2014, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) notified Flint that it had violated the Safe Drinking Water Act. The city’s chlorine treatment had resulted in a sharp increase of chemical compounds called total trihalomethanes, created when chlorine fuses with organic matter. State officials provided a sample notice letter for Flint to send to its residents by January 10, 2015. “This is not an emergency. If it had been an emergency, you would have been notified within 24 hours,” the notice said. But less reassuring was the next paragraph, which switched to italics: “People who drink water containing trihalomethanes in excess of the (maximum contaminant levels) over many years may experience problems with their liver, kidneys, or central nervous system, and may have an increased risk of getting cancer.” Flint’s water fiasco became Governor Rick Snyder’s problem by around February 2015. Snyder had received a letter from Flint’s Democratic state representative warning that the city was “on the verge of civil unrest.” Residents were attending City Council meetings with jugs of brown water. Groups were handing out bottled water. In a background briefing, MDEQ downplayed the danger. “It’s not ‘nothing’ … but it’s not like an eminent threat to public health,” said the department’s memo to the governor, including a misspelling. Meanwhile, the worst of the crisis was still quietly developing in plain sight of regulators. In February 2015, officials tested one Flint home and discovered its water had lead levels of 104 parts per billion — well above the recommended threshold of 15 ppb. Lead, which is tasteless, can cause permanent damage to young children’s development and lead to lower IQs. A federal Environmental Protection Agency employee asked a state official what Flint was doing to prevent lead from leaching into drinking water from pipes. Detroit had used phosphates to combat the problem. Was Flint using phosphates? In a vague email — obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in a records request – a MDEQ employee responded to say that, yes, Flint had an anti-corrosion program. That was not true. Flint’s new mayor would call it a “man-made disaster.” Over the next 11 months, local doctors, outside experts and independent investigators would conclude that state regulators had made a serious misstep when they failed to treat the water to prevent corrosion. Instead, the MDEQ chose to monitor lead levels over two six-month periods. The lead levels rose, those tests showed. By April 2015, the federal EPA discovered Flint didn’t have an anti-corrosion program, and in August, the state told Flint to implement anti-corrosion measures as soon as possible. But the state remained publicly resistant to the idea that lead was poisoning Flint’s water and its residents. Outside researchers at Virginia Tech University announced September 2 that the Flint River’s high chloride levels were causing pipes to corrode and leach lead. The MDEQ downplayed those findings. Three weeks later, on September 24, Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha, director of the paediatric residency programme at the Hurley Medical Centre in Flint, announced that lead poisoning in infants and small children had surged since the city switched its water supply. The state Department of Health and Human Services, however, responded that its broader set of lead-monitoring data didn’t show an unusual increase in lead poisoning. A painful reckoning came at the end of the year, when a Flint water task force appointed by Snyder said the MDEQ was to blame for the lead poisoning. The task force accused the department of having a “minimalist approach to regulatory and oversight responsibility” that was “unacceptable and simply insufficient to the task of public protection.” “Throughout 2015, as the public raised concerns and as independent studies and testing were conducted and brought to the attention of MDEQ, the agency’s response was often one of aggressive dismissal, belittlement, and attempts to discredit these efforts and the individuals involved,” the task force wrote. MDEQ Director Dan Wyant resigned on December 29, and EPA Region 5 director Susan Hedman did the same on Friday, after accusations that the federal agency had not acted aggressively enough in preventing the crisis. “The Flint water crisis,” the governor’s task force said, “never should have happened.”

Flint’s lead-tainted water: a man-made emergency that unfolded in plain sight

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