Matthew Dolan

Detroit Free Press

Simmering tensions between city and state officials over how quickly to replace lead pipes in Flint flared Wednesday after officials announced different approaches to solving the city's drinking water crisis.

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver thanked Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder for starting to move more quickly to replace Flint’s lead pipes and his recent budget proposal to partially fund the project. But the mayor said in a statement Wednesday she would not agree to allow the governor’s engineering firm and contractors recently hired to do the work.

The governor, who was in Flint separately on Wednesday, defended the state's approach, saying his staff is trying to work with city officials to address the city's water crisis.

Child who became face of the Flint crisis moving

It was unclear how the differing approaches may affect solving the nation's most prominent public health crisis. Any fix for the city's water system would also likely need approval from federal health and environmental protection officials, who have been on the ground to monitor the crisis. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell is expected to visit Flint Thursday.

Many of the political turf battles appear to be over how quickly the city should replace its lead service lines. City residents have been drinking bottled water for months amid concerns over lead contamination.

The governor said the state on Tuesday signed an agreement with the Flint-based engineering firm Rowe Professional Services to study the soundness of the city's water system and launch a pilot program to replace 30 lead services lines into Flint homes within the next month.

Snyder has sent a supplemental budget request to the Legislature, including $25 million to be used for water infrastructure, like pipe replacement in Flint. The governor said that other resources could be tapped for additional funds to replace pipes.

Separately, the state Department of Environmental Quality, with the federal Environmental Protection Agency, launched a new testing project for Flint drinking water supply at roughly 400 sites around the city in an effort to see whether the city's switch back to a Detroit water supply has reduced lead levels.

On Wednesday, Snyder did not comment directly on Weaver's opposition to Rowe. And the mayor did not attend the governor's news conference held in downtown Flint on Wednesday afternoon.

In her statement Wednesday, Weaver said she welcomed the governor’s interest in working with the city to coordinate removal of the first 30 lead service lines. But she noted that much more needs to be done by Snyder and others to secure full funding for her plan.

Weaver's administration intends to begin replacing lead pipes in Flint under its own initiative starting next week. That was in contrast to the governor, whose pilot effort to replace 30 lead service lines is expected to be completed in the next 30 days.

She also called on Snyder to pressure the state Legislature to move immediately to approve funding for the first phase of her $55 million Fast Start lead pipe replacement plan.

“We’re going to get this done — and done quickly — by any and every means necessary,” Weaver said in a statement. “The people of my city have simply run out of patience, and I have a moral obligation to act.”

Flint residents paid America's highest water rates

After weeks of tense, behind the scenes talks between the city and state, the mayor appears to be charting her own course. Late last week, she ousted her police chief, fire chief and city administrator.

Elected last year and recently granted additional powers by a financial control board set up by the state, Weaver said Wednesday that she is pleased that her Fast Start plan has been endorsed by Virginia Tech water expert Dr. Marc Edwards, who is hailed for his role in uncovering the lead levels in Flint’s water supply and has testified before Congress on lead contamination in municipal water systems.

“I will not accept anything less than full removal of all lead pipes from our water system,” Weaver said in a statement. “I continue to hear from Lansing that the people of Flint should wait to see if pipes can be ‘coated.’ I call on Gov. Snyder to end that discussion, and to commit fully to getting the lead out of Flint.”

Weaver said in a news release that she is working with water infrastructure experts from the Lansing Board of Water and Light to train local Flint workers on lead pipe removal at a vacant property in Flint owned by the Genesee County Land Bank. The training exercise is set to begin next week, she said. House-by-house lead service line removal and replacement operations targeting high-risk households across the city will begin afterward, she said.

During the scheduled training exercise next week, the Lansing public works department will demonstrate its technology for removing and replacing lead pipes with new copper pipes in half the time and at half the cost of traditional methods, according to the mayor. The Lansing public water and electric utility has refined its technique by removing more than 13,500 lead pipes in Michigan’s capital city over the last 12 years, city officials said.

Weaver said she is also working closely with the White House and Flint’s representatives in the Michigan Legislature and U.S. Congress to secure full funding for her lead pipe removal project, as well as long-term funding to fully repair the city’s water-distribution system. She called on state and federal lawmakers to move quickly to approve emergency funding for her project while long-term repairs to Flint’s water-distribution system are evaluated.

“Lansing and Washington need to understand that the first and most critical priority is an emergency public health intervention to start getting rid of these pipes immediately,” Weaver said. “Then we can figure out exactly what it will cost over the long term to fix our broken water-distribution system.”

If funding to ramp up her Fast Start project is not secured quickly from the state or federal government, Weaver said she may have to take her case directly to the national and international audience.

“If the state and federal governments won’t pay to restore safe drinking water and dignity to the people of my city, I may have to go on national TV and crowdsource the funding on the Internet,” Weaver said.

Flint's switch to using the Flint River as its water supply in April 2014 was followed almost immediately by complaints from residents about discolored, pungent water that had caused a number of ailments. Local and state officials insisted for months the water was safe to drink but reversed course after independent testing discovered unsafe lead levels throughout the system believed to be caused by leaching from lead piping.

Flint is now under a state of emergency because of elevated lead levels that continue to be found in drinking water supplied to city residents. Officials in the Snyder administration have said that they hope to restore drinking water to the city in stages, with a full assessment of the system completed by mid-April.

After testing roughly 10,000 Flint homes since September, the state has found hundreds with lead levels that still exceed the federal safety standard, according to the most recent compilation from state officials.

Snyder said Wednesday that coating the pipes with phosphates will continue in an effort to decrease the amount of lead leaching into the drinking water.

"It's not versus," he said of the effort to recoat the pipes before replacing them. "You can do both."

A spokeswoman for the governor added in an email late Wednesday that "Rowe's work and assistance from the Lansing Board of Water and Light are not mutually exclusive. There is cooperation at many levels and what's important is that the work is being done."

Water from the 400 sentinel sites is to be tested every two weeks to see whether the chemicals are working, according to the governor's plan. Around the same time, the state will move forward with a pilot program to replace lead pipes, but it was unclear how long it would take to replace all of the city's lead pipes, he said.

Snyder did express concern Wednesday that wholesale replacement of all of the city's lead pipes could cause further contamination of Flint's water supply if the replacement is not done correctly.

Of the city's 56,000 land parcels, about 5,200 have lead service lines, state officials have said. But roughly 25,000 parcels have piping of an unknown origin. Determining how much of that piping is lead is a crucial step for any remediation.

"We're having difficulty finding lead service lines in Flint," said Keith Creagh, director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality on Wednesday. He said that nonetheless all pipes containing lead are expected to be identified in the next 30 days.

In some ways, the governor's team has advocated a more deliberate approach to assess the condition of the entire water system in Flint first, in order to make sure any pipe removal does not increase the chances of additional lead leaching into the drinking water.

No one yet knows how much a year's worth of corrosive water in the system using the Flint River water as a source may have damaged the system.

There were already signs Flint's water system was under stress before the switch in mid-2014. A 2013 state Department of Environmental Protection report on Flint’s water distribution system concluded that "our main concern with Flint's water system continues to be the condition of the piping. Although the city has replaced approximately 12 miles of watermain over the past ten years, much of the remaining piping is over 60 years old and in need of replacement." The city has more than 500 miles of distribution and transmission main water lines, according to the report.

Free Press staff writers Robert Allen and Todd Spangler contributed to this report.

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