A pair of hearings on the Flint water crisis convened last week by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee each quickly devolved into back-and-forth partisan-inspired finger-pointing. Committee Democrats generally assigned the most blame to state employees and the administration of Republican Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, while Republicans’ critiques were more squarely focused on failures of U.S. EPA officials.
The first hearing, held last Tuesday, included testimony from former EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman and former Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley. A follow-up hearing on Thursday featured Governor Snyder and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.
The Thursday hearing saw several Democrats call for Snyder’s resignation, while multiple Republicans said McCarthy should resign. In his testimony, Governor Snyder called for reforms to the “dumb and dangerous federal Lead and Copper Rule.” Administrator McCarthy, meanwhile, emphasized that Flint was a failure of state oversight and enforcement and not a failure of existing Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) requirements. However, she also stressed that EPA is working both to strengthen enforcement of existing LCR requirements and aggressively pursuing needed rule revisions. Speaking more broadly, she said the country needs “to start having a serious conversation about how we advance the technologies and investments necessary to deliver clean water to American families.”