Matthew Dolan

Detroit Free Press

Gov. Rick Snyder's point man for the state's response to the Flint water crisis said he did not brief the governor about a growing Legionnaires' outbreak in the Flint area until January of this year despite first learning about a potential problem in March 2015.

Harvey Hollins III, director of Michigan's Office of Urban and Metropolitan Initiatives, said in an interview Friday that he received an e-mail from a Department of Environmental Quality official in March about concerns over Legionnaires' disease in Genesee County. But Hollins said he told the e-mail's author, former DEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel, in a follow-up call, that there was not enough information for him to take the issue to the governor.

Instead, Hollins said he told Wurfel to gather more information and have the department's director bring it directly to the governor if it was warranted. Hollins said he heard nothing more about the issue until late December when local officials in Flint revealed the outbreak had recurred.

E-mails: Snyder aide was told of Legionnaires' in March

Hollins said he should not be held responsible for what some have called the state's sluggish response to the Legionnaires' outbreaks starting in 2014. The outbreaks and the city's 2014 switch to the Flint River for its drinking water are suspected of being linked, but state officials said they have yet to make a direct connection.

"I have nothing to leave over," Hollins said when asked whether he considered resigning over the issue. "When you have people who are professionals who are hired ... to do their job and it takes four months to do that, for me to leave over their missteps, I'm not going to do that,"

Fieger files $100-million suit over Flint Legionnaires' disease cases

"I don't feel any responsibility for grown-ups who don't do their jobs," he added.

Hollins' comments came after e-mails were released Thursday that showed Hollins was notified in March — more than nine months before Snyder said he learned of the problem — that there was an increase in Legionnaires' disease in Genesee County and that a county health official feared the change was a result of drinking water taken from the Flint River.

Legionnaires’ disease is a pneumonia caused by bacteria in the lungs. People get sick if they inhale mist or vapor from contaminated water systems, hot tubs or cooling systems.

There were at least 87 cases across Genesee County during a 17-month period, including nine deaths, but the public was never told about the increase when it was happening — even after an initial wave of more than 40 cases was known about by early 2015.

The e-mails were part of records released Thursday by the liberal group Progress Michigan. The group said it has thousands of pages of e-mails related to the Flint water crisis, but has only publicly released some of them in a campaign to shine light on the crisis.

Wurfel sent the e-mail on March 13, 2015, to Hollins. It was copied to Dan Wyant, who was DEQ director at the time.

"More than 40 cases reported since last April," Wurfel said in the e-mail. "That's a significant uptick. More than all the cases reported in the last five years or more combined."

Wurfel said that Jim Henry of the Genesee County Health Department is "putting up the flare," and has "made the leap formally in his e-mail that the uptick in cases is directly attributable to the river as a drinking water source."

Henry did not return a phone message left for him seeking comment Friday.

While the e-mail from the DEQ also said linking the outbreak to the river water was "premature" and "beyond irresponsible," Wurfel also called the issue serious and suggested several agencies get together to discuss it.

Neither Wurfel nor Wyant raised the Legionnaires' issue again with Hollins, he said. Hollins said he only learned more about the outbreak in December when it was discussed during a Flint water after-action task force meeting on Dec 23. After that meeting, Hollins said he and another governor's aide, Richard Baird, were part of a briefing for the governor on the issue in the second week of January.

On Jan. 13, Snyder disclosed that water from the Flint River might be linked to two outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease in Genesee County. He said he'd been told about the public health problem just a few days earlier.

The DEQ "didn't think there was a lot of base for it if you look at the e-mail. Harvey, not being a technical expert, pushed back to say, 'You need to look into this and if you find an issue, bring it to the governor.' I think he was trying to respond appropriately, and the DEQ didn't bring it forward," Snyder said while visiting Flint on Friday, according to the Associated Press.

In a separate interview Friday, Wurfel offered his account. He said he did not recall a telephone conversation with Hollins about the issue. Wurfel raised the issue with Hollins because he "was the governor's representative" for southeast Michigan.

After he wrote the e-mail, Wurfel said he was told the issue should be handled by the state Department of Health and Human Services and he did not pursue it any further. "We were incredibly worried that we thought something might be there," he said.

​Both Wyant and Wurfel resigned on Dec. 29. Their departure came after the task force studying Flint water contamination from leaching lead blamed the DEQ in large measure for failing to act.

Snyder announced the firing Friday of Liane Shekter Smith, the former chief of the DEQ's Office of Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance who had previously been reassigned and later suspended; the department continues to review the actions of a second employee who was suspended last month

On Friday, Snyder said one reason he made the staff changes was because "I wasn't getting the information that I should have," according to comments the governor made to the Associated Press.

The state Department of Health and Human Services had already begun assisting the county in the fall of 2014, and the Legionnaires’ investigation had become “very intensive” in early 2015, said Dr. Eden Wells, Michigan’s chief medical executive.

The state has said it cannot conclude that the Legionnaires’ surge is related to the water switch, nor can it rule it out, in part because of too few case specimens from patients.

The first wave of 45 cases was commonly known within the state health department, Wells said, but the agency did not take the information to the governor until confirming a second wave of 42 cases and analyzing them together.

Contact Matthew Dolan: 313-223-4743 or msdolan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @matthewsdolan The Associated Press contributed to this report.