Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week heavily criticized the series of local, state, and federal decisions that led to and exacerbated the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Committee members, both Democrats and Republicans, were harsh in their condemnation of state officials for failing to ensure proper treatment of the city’s drinking water while berating EPA for silencing outspoken staff and not acting quickly enough to warn the public about suspected problems with the water supply.
“It’s important for the EPA to tell people that their water is poisoning their kids,” committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said at a February 3 hearing devoted to the crisis. “What good is the EPA if they can’t do that?” Chaffetz also announced that his panel has issued subpoenas to force Flint’s former emergency manager and EPA’s former Region 5 administrator to appear before the committee later this month.
Committee Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) demanded answers from state environmental regulators who signed off on switching the city’s drinking water source, and was extremely vocal in his condemnation of the fact that Michigan Governor Rick Snyder had not been called to testify. “I want everyone who is responsible for this fiasco to be held accountable,” he said.
In testimony at the hearing, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Director Keith Creagh said the state “relied on technical compliance [with the federal Lead and Copper Rule] instead of assuring safe drinking water” as the crisis unfolded. He went on to say the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) is “outdated and inadequate to protect the public from exposure to lead,” especially in communities like Flint with aging infrastructure.
Committee members pressed EPA Deputy Assistant Administrator for Water Joel Beauvais on whether the agency conducted proper oversight of the situation in Flint and asked how quickly the agency will propose revisions to the LCR. Beauvais stressed that the situation in Flint was not a result of the failure of the existing LCR, but rather a failure of the personnel entrusted to properly enforce existing regulations. However, he did reiterate that EPA is working to propose LCR revisions to enhance the regulations as quickly as possible based on input from stakeholders and the National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC), but that a proposal is not expected before early 2017.
But LeeAnn Walters, a Flint resident who initially called attention to elevated lead levels in her water, slammed the rulemaking process, saying NDWAC represents the voice of water utilities, not the public. And Marc Edwards of Virginia Tech, whose research confirmed the dangerous lead levels in the city’s water, said the situation in Flint, as well as lead contamination experienced in Washington, D.C. more than a decade ago, are the result of “institutional scientific misconduct perpetrated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, primacy agencies and water utilities.”
The Oversight Committee does not have jurisdiction to write legislation in response to the crisis, but numerous proposals to deliver aid to Flint were being discussed on Capitol Hill last week (see related story).