Year before water change, state knew of risks in Flint

Nancy Kaffer | Detroit Free Press Columnist

State and local officials knew in 2013 that without proper treatment of water drawn from the Flint River, they risked subjecting the people of Flint to lead-contaminated drinking water.

But the next year, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality OK'd Flint's plan to pump water from the river, and into residents' homes, without adding an important chemical that would prevent contamination from lead in old pipes.

A report commissioned by Flint in 2011 evaluating the Flint River as a long-term source of drinking water, and delivered by the city to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality two years later, included that chemical — phosphate, often referred to as corrosion control — on a list of chemicals required to make river water safe to drink. Two years later, a Flint employee emailed the report to an MDEQ drinking water official, who passed it along to another state staffer, documents obtained by the Free Press via a Freedom of Information Act request show.

For water treatment professionals, the importance of phosphates is obvious: More corrosive water is more likely to degrade the interior of service lines, allowing dangerous substances from those pipes to enter the water. By forming a barrier inside service lines and plumbing pipes, phosphates limit the corrosive effect of water, and stop lead from contaminating the water.

It's also common knowledge that river water, subject to constant changes of temperature and makeup, tends to be more corrosive than lake water — and is likely to require treatment with phosphates. Nor is it a mystery that an aging, broke city like Flint would have older homes with lead plumbing, or that its water distribution system would include lead service lines or welds.

And this is why the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's public response to the drinking water crisis in Flint — a spike in lead levels that's resulted in an increased number of lead poisoned kids — doesn't add up.

New authority

Flint opted in 2013 to join a new regional water authority. While that system was under construction, Flint chose to pump water from the Flint River, instead of continuing to purchase it from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department.

Sixteen months after the switch, lead in the city's drinking water had spiked; the number of Flint kids with elevated blood-lead levels has increased. Lead poisoning is irreversible, and causes developmental and behavioral problems.

MDEQ chief Dan Wyant has said that in evaluating Flint's water treatment plan, the agency mistakenly applied the wrong federal guideline; an MDEQ spokesman said that the Environmental Protection Agency's standard is ambiguously worded.

But then there's that report. Why didn't Flint — or the state — pay attention?

Ask, and there are no good answers.

"Flint commissioned the report you mentioned," MDEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel says. "If they ignored the recommendations in an appendix of the report they commissioned, they can probably best explain why."

A spokesman for Flint Mayor Dayne Walling, who lost his seat in last week's election, directed inquiries to the city's director of public works, Howard Croft.

"As public works director" — whose responsibilities include oversight of water treatment and a host of other services — "I cannot specifically tell you why phosphate was not approached," Croft said. "It was brought up by our engineering firm, they did ask those questions. Our state licensing director brought up those questions. ... That’s pretty much the discussion that’s out there."

MDEQ signed off on the plan, Croft said, and after Flint began pumping river water in April 2014, embarked on a cycle of water testing: Two six-month rounds that the state says it believed complied with EPA's requirements. As for Flint, Croft said, the city believed it was in compliance with state and federal drinking water rules.

Why did neither insist on corrosion control?

"I think it’s a fair question," Croft said.

When those test results started rolling in, there were more red flags. During the first six-month test span, July to December 2014, results showed 6 parts of lead per billion in Flint's water. By the end of June 2015, the amount of lead in Flint water had almost doubled, to 11 parts per billion. A draft of a memo written by an EPA drinking water specialist, leaked to an investigative reporter for the American Civil Liberties Union in July, identified multiple problems with the city and state's water testing.

Despite all of that, MDEQ's Wurfel insisted that Flint residents should relax, that the city's drinking water was safe.

By the time MDEQ acknowledged that Flint's water supply was compromised, it was September. The city never started corrosion control. It rejoined DWSD last month.

Warnings unheeded

The report certainly didn't alter the outcome in Flint. But it doesn't even seem to have caused drinking water managers at the city or the state to question the city's water treatment plan, to wonder whether perhaps river water should be treated for corrosion control.

And that, perhaps, is the most shocking part of Flint's water debacle. None of these warnings — not a report listing corrosion control as a requirement for using Flint River water, not test results showing rising lead levels, not an EPA memo calling the city's findings into question — moved the state to action.

Not even a local pediatrician's analysis of blood-lead level screenings for hundreds of Flint kids — finding that an increasing number had elevated blood-lead levels, a reversal of a decades-long trend — caused a sense of urgency among state regulators. For more than a week, spokespeople for Gov. Rick Snyder and MDEQ downplayed and discredited the results.

It's incomprehensible.

MDEQ is charged with overseeing compliance with environmental regulations across the state, with ensuring that companies and cities follow local, state and federal guidelines.

In Flint, there was another layer of state oversight — that city spent the last two years under the oversight of a state-appointed emergency manager, brought in to resolve the city's budget deficit. An emergency manager, with the approval of then-state Treasurer Andy Dillon, OK'd Flint's decision to join the Karegnondi Water Authority, the new regional system. And an emergency manager approved Flint's decision to use river water.

Finding out what happened in Flint will be complicated. Gov. Rick Snyder has appointed a task force to investigate. U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee and state Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, both Flint Democrats, have asked the EPA to investigate. Ananich is calling for a Senate committee to hold public hearings.

There's one more thing the city, or MDEQ, might have learned from that 2011 report about Flint River water: Phosphates are cheap. To prevent lead from contaminating Flint's water, to protect children from the lifelong damage caused by lead poisoning, wouldn't have cost much.

Just $60 a day.

Contact Nancy Kaffer: nkaffer@freepress.com