opinion

MDEQ e-mails show stunning indifference to Flint peril

"Apparently it's going to be a thing now."

Lackadaisical and dismissive -- that's the tone of a Michigan Department of Environmental Quality spokeswoman's response to a July e-mail noting that a member of a second media outlet had made an inquiry about elevated lead levels in Flint's drinking water. And it's a perfectly tone-deaf representation of that agency's response to the public health crisis then brewing in that impoverished town.

This week, the state acknowledged that it made mistakes in approving and overseeing Flint's transition to a new water source last year, that it misunderstood and misapplied federal rules meant to keep dangerous substances like lead and copper out of drinking water. The state was finally spurred to action after a local pediatrician found that an increasing number of Flint kids had elevated blood-lead levels.

Back in July, it was a different story. Months of MDEQ e-mails, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Virginia Tech University researcher Marc Edwards, show a stunning indifference on the part of state environmental officials, who seemed focused on deflecting criticism. Flint, officials insisted, with MDEQ's blessing was in compliance with federal safety guidelines. End of story.

Frankly, it seemed some state officials thought dealing with inquiries about lead in Flint was a hassle.

"... I just got a call from MI Public Radio[sic] about an EPA notice to Flint about elevated lead levels in the water. Apparently, you were cc'd on EPA's note. Can you call me ASAP? Thanks!" MDEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel wrote to a handful of department officials in a July 9 e-mail.

Karen Tommasulo, another MDEQ public information officer, wrote back: "This is what Curt Guyette had been calling about, by the way. Apparently it's going to be a thing now."

For months, residents had reported problems with Flint's water, some caused by the local treatment plant's addition of a disinfectant to the water supply. But now there were concerns about lead levels. Guyette, an investigative reporter for the American Civil Liberties Union, was preparing to break a leaked U.S. Environmental Protection Agency memo that called nearly every aspect of the state's lead monitoring in Flint into question. He asked for comment. Repeatedly. ("ACLU guy is back today," Tommasulo wrote in a July 8 e-mail.)

MDEQ officials stalled. Guyette published. Then Michigan Radio got the memo.

With at least two reporters on the story, Flint's lead problem -- despite MDEQ officials' best efforts to the contrary -- had, indeed, become a thing.

But it would be months before MDEQ officials, much less Gov. Rick Snyder, would make that acknowledgement publicly, or move to improve Flint's drinking water.

The state monitored Flint's water for a year; in the first six-month round of testing completed last December, results showed Flint's water had 6 parts per billion of lead, below the EPA's actionable level of 15 ppb, but in excess of that agency's 5 ppb threshold for reevaluation of local water treatment plans. A second round of tests, finished in June, showed up to 11 ppb of lead in Flint water, even though the MDEQ advised residents to pre-flush water from pipes before collecting samples, a method not approved by the EPA. The spike in lead is a trend officials should've found disturbing.

But while discussing the EPA's memo privately, acknowledging the city wasn't adequately treating its water -- even as results of water analysis by Virginia Tech's Edwards began to show heightened concentrations of lead in the water -- department officials continued to publicly insist that Flint's water supply was safe.

Why? The e-mails -- largely correspondence among Wurfel, MDEQ district engineer Michael Prysby, district supervisor Stephen Busch, former drinking water chief Liane Shekter Smith and EPA officials --don't offer much explanation, beyond petty insistence that the department hadn't erred, a kind of bruised-ego approach that considered any criticism distasteful, and a bureaucratic blindness to scientific evidence that should have suggested that meeting water standards may not have been sufficient to ensure residents' safety.

Gov. Rick Snyder has formed an independent task force to review government actions in Flint. The decision to switch the water supply was made while the city was under the oversight of Snyder-appointed emergency managers. U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee and state Rep. Jim Ananich, both Flint Democrats, have called for a the EPA to invetigate.

In February, EPA drinking water specialist Miguel Del Toral, the memo's author, informed state officials that there was likely particulate lead in Flint's water, and that this was likely because the local treatment plant hadn't employed corrosion control -- the addition of chemicals that form a film inside aging service lines to prevent lead from leaching into the water.

Flint began pumping its own water from the Flint River in 2014; it opted not to add those chemicals to its water, something officials now say probably violated of federal standards -- instead adding lime to decrease the acidity, and thus corrosivity, of the water. The EPA advised the MDEQ, as early as February and consistently throughout the year, that Flint's water system should be using corrosion control. But it never happened. In October, the city switched back to Detroit water.

In an e-mail before a conference call to discuss the memo, Shekter Smith asked the EPA to confirm in writing that the state was in compliance with federal rules, and expressed displeasure that the memo had been leaked. She never mentioned the memo's content.

The EPA water specialist, Del Toral, was dismissed by Wurfel in September as a "rogue employee"; Edwards, the Virginia Tech researcher and McArthur genius grant recipient -- who has tested water samples from hundreds of Flint homes -- was written off as a man with an agenda, someone whose work didn't merit serious examination. Community groups, Wurfel wrote, were keeping residents "hopped up."

Former drinking water chief Liane Shekter Smith -- she's been reassigned within MDEQ because of her role in the crisis -- earnestly explained to Flint resident LeeAnne Walters in an e-mail that samples taken from her home couldn't be included in citywide test results, because Walters had installed a filter. Yet filtered samples taken from Walters' home showed lead concentrations astronomically higher than the EPA's 15 ppb limit -- 107 ppb, 397 ppb, 707 ppb. It's difficult to understand why Walters' filtered samples -- with lead concentrations that were off the charts -- didn't appear to trigger alarm bells for Shekter Smith, or any other MDEQ official.

It's among the many inexplicable exchanges revealed in the e-mails.

Again and again, MDEQ officials noted that the city planned to switch water supplies again next year, when a new regional water authority is complete. Any testing or treatment plan would just have to be re-done -- so why bother? When Virginia Tech researcher Edwards' team began working in Flint, state officials wondered whether to let him know that the city was changing its water supply, and not to waste resources.

Everything was fine, MDEQ insisted, in alignment with federal standards.

And they might have thought that was true. Or true enough.

If there's such a thing as benign neglect, this was malignant indifference, on an institutional level.

I'm reminded of the old cliche: For evil to flourish, all that's required is that good people do nothing. In Flint, what happened was more insidious: For evil to flourish, all that's required is for people to do exactly, and only, what is required of them. Nothing less.

Nothing more.

Contact Nancy Kaffer at nkaffer@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @nancykaffer.