Rochelle Riley

Detroit Free Press Columnist

It has come to this: Gov. Rick Snyder’s lasting legacy will not be balanced budgets or his efforts to make sure everyone is swimming in a “river of opportunity.”

It will not be “relentless positive action.”

Rather, he will be defined by inaction and another river, the Flint River.

He will be known from this time forward as the governor whose team poisoned potentially thousands of children with lead.

The ravages of lead poisoning — which affects mental and physical development — linger for years and are irreversible.

The tragedy began in April 2014 when the City of Flint switched from the Detroit water system to the Flint River. It was a cost-saving measure decreed by one state-appointed emergency manager and implemented by another.

Because of the river’s high salt content, the water corroded the pipes, causing lead to leach into the water.

Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards, who had been testing Flint's water, said the problem could have been fixed for about $100 a day, according to an NBC News report. But no officials — neither state nor city — took any action, despite residents’ complaints.

Edwards obtained, through a Michigan Freedom of Information Act request, an e-mail from Snyder's then-chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, NBC News reported. That e-mail is as much a smoking gun as ever there was.

"I'm frustrated by the water issue in Flint," Muchmore wrote in the now widely reported e-mail. "I really don't think people are getting the benefit of the doubt. Now they are concerned and rightfully so about the lead level studies they are receiving.

"These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts, and they are basically getting blown off by us (as a state we're just not sympathizing with their plight)."

Edwards told NBC that "there is no question that if the city had followed the minimum requirements under federal law that none of this would have happened.

Outcries were ignored

The negligence didn’t stop there.

When a Flint pediatrician, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, learned about later tests in February 2015 that showed high levels of lead in the water at one Flint home, she did her own study and found that lead levels in many children had doubled, and in some cases, tripled, since the move to the Flint River.

It took 16 months from the initial complaints before the state switched Flint back to the Detroit water system in October. It took two more months — to December — before Flint began adding phosphates to the water to coat the pipes and prevent leaching.

And the entire crisis, which resulted in the governor apologizing and one state official resigning, would not have occurred had anyone heeded the warning of that respected pediatrician, city officials and parents who didn’t just blow whistles.

They sounded alarms.

They screamed.

They offered proof.

First, city officials were ignored. Then the pediatrician was ridiculed.

Now the U.S. attorney is investigating.

Costs and consequences

No one has claimed that Snyder or his team decided with malice and aforethought to ignore complaints from Flint residents about the water. I’m sure they didn’t hope that children would be poisoned.

It seems they just didn’t didn’t care.

Negligence is defined as “failure to use reasonable care, resulting in damage or injury to another.” That is the definition the lawsuits will use.

One of the most telling moments in the tragic saga, a Twitter pal reminded me today, came last October when Snyder told The Detroit News that "the staff made a mistake" by applying the wrong federal standards for testing drinking water for lead and copper.

Asked why Wyant still had a job, Snyder said, "... as a practical matter, the people that are first being addressed are the people that had a knowledge and expertise to understand those issues. But we’re still looking at all of that. But Dan Wyant’s done a great job in responding to all of that..."

First question: Why are there people working in the DEQ who do NOT have the knowledge and expertise to understand this simple an issue?

Second question: How could Snyder praise Dan Wyant, his chief in the DEQ's Office of Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance, who oversaw this disaster? My friend said the governor sounded for all the world like former President George W. Bush praising FEMA Director Michael D Brown, who oversaw one of the worst responses to a natural disaster in the history of the world by saying “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

While no one was looking, Wyant resigned over the holiday break, replaced by his chief deputy, which isn't reassuring. And now the real work begins.

The state helped pay for Flint's multi-million move back to the Detroit water system and is providing clean water, filters and information, all things residents could have used — in 2014.

But it will take years for doctors to determine how much damage has been done to the children of Flint — and for the state to determine how much this tragedy will cost taxpayers. And it will cost taxpayers. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said Thursday that it could cost as much as $1.5 billion to repair the city's damaged water system. No one can estimate what it will cost to treat the developmental problems of possibly thousands of children.

What happened in Flint would never have happened in Grand Rapids or Muskegon or Alpena. But it did happen in a poor community with a state-appointed emergency manager. It’s easy to ignore people when they aren’t your business constituents or aren’t contributing to GOP campaigns.

But the GOP-controlled state capital will not be able to ignore the consequences of this tragedy and what it has done to the children in an entire city.

And Rick Snyder will never be able to leave this off his résumé.

Contact Rochelle Riley: rriley99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley.