New revelations expose federal cover-up in Flint, Michigan water crisis
The highest level US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official in the Midwest was aware as early as April 2015 that the water being piped into the homes of Flint, Michigan residents was not being treated for corrosion control, yet said nothing. This despite the fact that it is common knowledge among water professionals that the lack of such treatment, especially in highly corrosive water as that found in the Flint River, will cause lead to leach into tap water from pipes and fixtures.
EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman made a decision not to use the authority of the agency to compel local water officials to apply a $100 a month phosphate treatment to protect the Flint water infrastructure from corrosion or even to alert the public of the health danger in drinking the water, she told the Detroit News this week.
According to the report, the EPA “battled” over corrosion control with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) behind the scenes starting in February.
It was in February that an EPA expert from Region 5, Miquel Del Toral recognized lead problems with Flint water. On February 26, a water sample from the home of one particular resident, Lee Ann Walters, was measured with extremely high lead content—over 100 parts per billion (ppb), while the EPA “action level” is 15 ppb.
Del Toral asked MDEQ the next day if Flint was using phosphates for corrosion control. MDEQ official Stephen Busch blatantly lied: “The City of Flint…Has an Optimized Corrosion Control Program [and] conducts quarterly Water Quality Parameter monitoring at 25 sites and has not had any unusual results.”
Just over two weeks later, Walters’ home was retested with even higher lead levels—397 ppb. When questioned, the MDEQ said they had investigated, finding that the source of the elevated lead was due to “lead sources in her plumbing.”
From February to June both the City of Flint and the MDEQ conducted the testing required by the federal Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) in a way that purposely obscured the high lead levels in the city. In the last five days before the June 30 deadline for collecting the required 100 samples, Adam Rosenthal of the MDEQ emailed Mike Glasgow at the City of Flint: “We hope you have 61 more lead/copper samples collected and sent to the lab by 6/30/15, and that they will be below the AL [action level] for lead. As of now with 39 results, Flint’s 90th percentile is over the AL for lead.”
This is what happened according to Edwards: “In the next five days the City collected 30 samples, all of which were below the action level, and did not reach the 100 sample target. If all 71 collected samples were counted, the City would have exceeded the 15 ppb action level. Federal law would then require that Flint residents be provided information about how to protect themselves and their children from lead in water .”