Prior to the switch, Flint had been preparing to move away from water provided by Detroit’s water service and toward a pipeline that would bring water directly from Lake Huron. (The city council did have a chance to weigh in on that change, and supported it 7-1.) But when Flint made the decision, the Detroit Water Services District announced it would terminate service to Flint a year later. That was legal under the contract, but it put Flint in a bad spot, since the new pipeline wasn’t going to be complete in a year. DWSD shrugged, saying Flint should have expected it. That’s how the emergency manager, Darnell Earley, ended up overseeing the switch to water from the Flint River. Flint residents and leaders blame Earley for the decision; Earley insists it was their idea. (Flint reconnected to Detroit water late last year, but there’s lasting damage to the pipes.)

In any case, the final authority for the decision rested with Earley, the manager. That makes it jarring to see Muchmore write, in the same email quoted above, that the state departments of Environmental Quality and Community Health complained that the water issue had become “a political football”:

For one thing, it had become clear by the time of writing, in September 2015, that Flint’s water had dangerous levels of lead. The residents weren’t just angry because they saw a partisan gain—they were angry about brown and apparently tainted water coming out of their faucets. Meanwhile, their political representation had been directly curtailed by the appointment of the emergency manager who oversaw the switch. Officials in Lansing withdrew Flint’s power to govern itself, but when Flint begged Lansing for help, it was told that the problem was Flint’s alone.

There are other cases of the state government getting closely involved with city governance elsewhere in the emails. In one case, officials discussed changing state law to try to outmaneuver a candidate for mayor, after a clerk’s error locked the incumbent out of the ballot:

The emails contain other unflattering moments for Snyder’s office. As early as February 2015, a pastor wrote to the governor that residents were “on the verge of civil unrest.” Even then, Snyder’s aides was impassive. Early on, Flint’s water was treated with high levels of chlorine to combat a bad smell. But that produced high concentration of TTHMs, a type of carcinogen. “It’s not ‘nothing,’” a memo noted. “But it’s not like it’s an eminent [sic] threat to public health.” Even so, the memo conceded communication had been bad.

When the scandal eventually broke out to a wider audience, it was in part due to that pesky political activism. With elected and local leaders continuing to make noise about the dangers of Flint’s water, they were finally able to get state and federal declarations of emergency, bringing with the supplies of water carried by the national guard, as well as the nation’s attention.