Wednesday, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder declared a state of emergency in Flint and Genesee County, formalizing a state response to a crisis that had been months in the making: a staggering and widespread amount of lead poisoning and lead exposure to citizens since switching from Detroit’s Lake Huron-based water system to an interim system based in the polluted Flint River. As many as five percent of all children in the city suffered from elevated levels of lead in their blood and an unknown number more people were exposed to high levels of lead in drinking water, showers, and food preparation. The decision to declare a state of emergency will allow state and local officials to bring state funding to bear in ensuring that people receive safe drinking water and treatment.
However, not only is the decision a day late and a dollar short, it is the necessary end result after decisions by many of these same officials—some venturing beyond tough choices or neglect to total disregard for human lives—created the manmade disaster in Flint.
There was first the decision to remove Flint from the Detroit-based water system. Detroit has endured many of the same problems that Flint has, from major economic contraction to fleeing citizens and socioeconomic and racial injustices at several levels. One of these shared problems has been affordable water. Detroit, like Flint, has been placed under state and external leadership, and the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) has famously dealt with increasing delinquent payments and a rapidly shrinking service base by jacking up prices.
After Flint was placed under the control of an emergency manager, local and state officials considered cost-cutting measures in 2013, including a proposal to switch the water source from DWSD to the new Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), a multimillion dollar treatment and pipeline undertaking that bypasses Detroit with water directly from Lake Huron. State officials, including former treasurer Andy Dillon and Snyder’s chief of staff Dennis Muchmore were actively involved in the Flint Council and Emergency Manager Edward Kurtz’s decision. Commissioned reports found that the switch from DWSD to KWA would not be a cost-saving measure. However, treasury officials, KWA representatives, and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) officials shot down the reports. The council, Kurtz, and then-Flint Mayor Dayne Walling decided to make the switch.
The KWA project, of which several surrounding cities and Genesee County had also agreed to enter, had not yet been constructed, so Flint needed an interim water source. The obvious answer was just to remain part of Detroit’s system until KWA was completed, but according to Walling, Kurtz made the unilateral (and baffling) decision to move the city’s water source to the Flint River. Despite cleanup efforts, the Flint River has been known to be awfully polluted for at least 50 years, and officials knew the river’s history as an industrial waste dump.
Of course, soon after Flint was hooked up to the new source, residents found out the true costs of Kurtz’s decision. Flint River water sucked. Almost immediately, residents began complaining about the foul taste and smell of the water and the orange-brown tint. Formal complaints ensued, and Flint drinking water was found to be in violation of five non-lead-related National Primary Drinking Water Regulations in less than a year. These include multiple coliform (think E. coli and its cousins) and trihalomethane violations. Coliform bacteria incubate most strongly in animal and human feces and are a good indicator of the amount of poop in drinking water. Trihalomethanes—including good old chloroform—are usually byproducts of chlorine treatment to make water drinkable. The presence of both above acceptable levels indicates that something was really, really wrong with the water even absent the whole lead poisoning thing. This was an environmental crisis in itself.
Flint officials also made two key terrible water treatment decisions. After switching to the Flint River, they inexplicably decided not to treat the water with orthophosphate, a chemical that the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) mandates is necessary for all major bodies of drinking water. Orthophosphate keeps water from corroding lead pipes in older water and sewage systems and leeching lead particulate into the water. This decision was made despite then-Emergency Manager Darnell Earley’s (Kurtz’s successor) attestation to the EPA that Flint was prepared to properly treat the water and would be doing so. Also, in order to treat the organic pollutants in the water, the City of Flint began adding ferric chloride. Ferric chloride has the opposite effect of orthophosphate and can increase water’s corrosive effects on lead pipes.
By the time people starting showing up with lead poisoning, the DEQ and Flint officials had already made several indefensible decisions.
But the worst was yet to come. Lee Anne Walters began a grassroots campaign after her children developed serious reactions to lead in swimming pools and baths, and local officials told her that the problem was lead in her house pipes. An EPA study determined that most of her house pipes were plastic and that the problem had to have been on the city’s end. That EPA study also found that Flint officials were instructing residents to flush their tap water before collecting routing compliance samples from their homes. Not only was this a perversion of standard compliance procedures, but it had the effect of likely downplaying the amount of lead measured in water.
An EPA official leaked a draft of that report to Walters, who then shared it with local media. However, officials at all three levels—Flint, the DEQ, and the EPA—either ignored or denied its credibility. DEQ district coordinator Stephen Busch reported to the EPA early this year about Flint’s "optimized corrosion control program" that simply did not exist. DEQ officials regularly disqualified compliance tests with high amounts of lead and had no quality control whatsoever for samples with low amounts of lead, which in essence rigged the system to show lower lead levels. After Adam Rosenthal, an analyst with the DEQ, emailed Michael Glasgow, an administrator in the City of Flint, warning that samples were on track to exceed lead limits, the remaining samples miraculously came in under the threshold.
Even after independent researchers verified multiple times that children were suffering from elevated lead levels, officials still denied that a problem even existed. DEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel stated in July 2015 that “anyone who is concerned about lead in the drinking water in Flint can relax. There is no broad problem right now that we’ve seen with lead in the drinking water in Flint.”
It is clear now that there is no truth whatsoever to that claim. It’s irresponsible to even believe that Wurfel himself believed this. There were too many red flags and too many decisions where officials at all levels could have chosen to take the difficult path and act. There were too many decisions that were downright harmful and callous. It is worth noting here that Flint is full of poor people, lower middle-class people, and people of color, the kinds of people who never get fair shakes and the kinds of people who don’t have the advocates to push back against these kinds of reckless decisions by officials who lived in worlds apart from them. However, the results in Flint were so disastrous that groups of families and the ACLU filed suit against the city and state. The declaration of a state of emergency represents a year-long battle between residents and a bureaucracy seemingly intent on keeping the truth from ever seeing the light of day.
Several officials involved have resigned, and an external report commissioned by Snyder’s office indicates several failures within the DEQ, indicting a culture of “technical compliance” as opposed to following the true spirit of environmental regulations. But this disaster seems more than that. It seems like an utter disregard for the lives of real people. An entire city of people may have been poisoned for life.