Matthew Dolan

Detroit Free Press

One of the nation's leading researchers on lead contamination is expected to release details of his latest findings on the Flint water crisis Tuesday.

Marc Edwards, Virginia Tech University's Flint Water Study team leader and a key player in exposing the lead contamination of Flint’s drinking water, said in an e-mail late Friday that he expects his results of his eight-month study based on hundreds of water samples to be disclosed at an 11 a.m. presentation at the university.

The event will be broadcast, he said, but no details were immediately provided.

A senior official with the federal Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that Flint has seen a dramatic decrease in soluble lead in Flint's drinking water, citing Edwards' findings.

"As we do various slices through the data, you can see (the decrease) in many different ways," Robert Kaplan, the EPA's acting regional administrator based in Chicago, told an interagency Flint coordinating committee meeting. "Perhaps the clearest way is the time over time that Dr. Edwards did. He did a sampling from August and then March and then compared the two."

Edwards' latest findings show "a dramatic decrease in the soluble lead," Kaplan said, adding that small particulate lead still in the water supply indicates the overall drinking water system remains "unstable." Government officials still recommend most Flint residents use a filter to drink tap water or use bottled water if they are pregnant or under the age of 6.

The third round of water testing in Flint for lead contamination by the state since the beginning of the year showed slight improvement from the previous round, but concerns linger. The testing by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, known as the sentinel site study, is expected to complete five rounds each separated by two weeks at roughly 600 locations.

Results from round three reported March 29 show 92.1% of sites tested were at or below the federal action level of 15 parts per billion and 7.9% were above 15 parts per billion. The second round of testing completed in the middle of March showed 91.6% of samples were at or below the federal action level for lead. In the initial round of testing, 90.4% of samples were at or below 15 parts per billion and 9.6% were above that.

A community forum is being planned in Flint for Saturday during which many of the government experts from the EPA and Michigan DEQ who met in Chicago are expected to provide more details on testing results and analysis. A separate study of rashes in Flint by government experts is expected to be completed by the end of April.

Among many in Flint, Edwards' team, composed of investigators and scientists working with graduate and undergraduate students, is seen as a reliable source of information about the city's troubled water system. The team worked for years on exposing major lead problems with the drinking water supply in Washington, D.C., before tackling Flint.

It was Flint resident Leeanne Walters, in April 2015, who first looped in Edwards about Flint's water after local and state officials failed to help address her complaints about ailments she believed were connected what was coming out of her tap.

Edwards has testified before Congress about his conclusions and serves on the Flint interagency coordinating committee with Gov. Rick Snyder, a body tasked with finding a long-term strategy to address the water crisis.

Last month in Washington, Edwards gave a searing critique of alleged failures at the EPA over the Flint water crisis before a congressional oversight committee hearing.

Edwards, the Charles P. Lundsford Professor of Environmental and Water Resources Engineering at Virginia Tech, said he was dumbfounded by top EPA officials' inability to take responsibility for the lead contamination of Flint's drinking water supply.

Contact Matthew Dolan: 313-223-4743 or msdolan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @matthewsdolan.