Michigan’s attorney general will announce criminal charges today against two state regulators and a Flint employee, alleging wrongdoing related to the city’s lead-tainted water crisis, according to government officials familiar with the investigation.
Multiple officials including DEQ Director Dan Wyant and the department’s communications director Brad Wurfel, who failed to respond to experts’ and residents’ concerns, resigned and avoided charges.
The charges – the first levied in a probe that is expected to broaden – will be filed against a pair of state Department of Environmental Quality officials and a local water treatment plant supervisor, two officials told The Associated Press late Tuesday. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.
The felony and misdemeanor charges include violating Michigan’s drinking water law, official misconduct, destruction of utility property and evidence tampering, according to one official.
For nearly 18 months after Flint’s water source was switched while the city was under state financial management, residents drank and bathed with improperly treated water that coursed through aging pipes and fixtures, releasing toxic lead. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder announced in October that the city would return from the Flint River to its earlier source of treated water, the Detroit municipal system. But by that time, dangerously high levels of the toxic metal had been detected in the blood of some residents, including children, for whom it can cause lower IQs and behavioral problems.
The city has been under a state of emergency for more than four months, and people there are using filters and bottled water.
In January, Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette opened an investigation and appointed a special counsel to lead the probe because his office also is defending Snyder and others in lawsuits filed over the water crisis. The state investigation team has more than 20 outside attorneys and investigators and a budget of $1.5 million.
Schuette, Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton, special counsel Todd Flood and other investigators scheduled a news conference for Wednesday afternoon in Flint to make a “significant” announcement, according to an advisory distributed to the media.
A spokesman for Schuette’s office declined comment Tuesday night.
In addition to the lead contamination, outside experts also have suggested a link between the Flint River and a deadly Legionnaires’ disease outbreak. There were at least 91 cases, including 12 deaths, across Genesee County, which contains Flint, during a 17-month period. That represents a five-fold increase over what the county averaged before.
The failure to deploy lead corrosion controls after the city’s switch to the Flint River is considered a catastrophic mistake. The DEQ has acknowledged misreading federal regulations and wrongly telling the city that the chemicals were not needed.
Snyder announced the firing of Liane Shekter Smith, the former chief of the DEQ’s Office of Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance. A district supervisor in the office, Stephen Busch, is on paid leave after being suspended earlier. Mike Prysby, a district engineer, recently took another job in the agency.
A supervisor at Flint’s water plant, Mike Glasgow, testified at a legislative hearing that Prysby told him phosphate was not needed to prevent lead corrosion from pipes until after a year of testing.
Susan Hedman, the director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Chicago-based Midwest office, also resigned.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
This is typical of Government jobs when there is a problem. The employees
are able to resign or transfer to another job. If you didn’t do your job correctly
in the first place, why are you able to transfer to another job ???
In a lot of companies, people are promoted to their level of incompetence. They did every job under them well, but the one where they don’t have the smarts to operate. A good example of this, is Hillary as secretary of state. Her three AM call where our people in Benghazi were tortured, and killed, and praying for the help to come but it never happened. She quit that job, so she could work on becoming the next president. People who were in route, were told to stand down. So much for never leaving a man, or woman behind. Our people were asking for more protection, and Hillary wouldn’t give it to them. She knows no one is going to indite her, because she knows all the dirt on every one in Washington. Even on her cell phone server in her home that wasn’t legal. The man who helped install it, got immunity, so he could speak freely. If some one needs immunity, you can bet it’s a serious law that has been broken. God Bless America.
And she has the audacity to tell her supporters she did no wrong and will never be indicted when there is so much evidence to the contrary. Makes one wonder what “dirt” does she have on her associates in Washington, starting with O’Bummer himself trying to protect her?
Good question and how can they just resign and not be charged with the crime. No wonder this country has become a cess-pool of corruption.
Privatize everything and every agency.
Bad workers get fired. Simple.
Every marxist demoncrat in flint should be put in jail. Our country is on the ropes, we have the Marxist progressive drones to thank.
LMAO.What about the governor and EPA??Typical.Scapegoat some lower level peasants.
100% correct George.
George-
LMAO.What about the governor and EPA??Typical.Scapegoat some lower level peasants.
Indeed. Same thing happens in the military; for example, My Lai and Lt. Calley. He got his orders from SOMEwhere! And if he COULD have blamed it on his enlisted guys, he WOULD have.
i suspect that this sort of thing – blaming underlings for that of which YOU are guilty – has been endemic to human nature since the founding of cities…and the bureaucracies that go along with them. The little fish are caught and fry; the big fish snap the line and get away, until they’re caught in the Net from which there’s NO escape: death and the weighing in the balances.
THE GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO STOP HIRING IMMIGRANTS WHO NEED HELP TYING THEIR SHOES, AND MINORITY’S WITH NO EDUCATION!
“Minority’s” what? Their education? Minority’s is the possessive. As in, do they possess their education or do you mean, minorities, as in more than one, or plural? You sound like YOU need help with YOUR education, bud!
Obviously, these 3 are unrelated to the Klintons.
And may one of them be the governor.
It is his buddy-buddy shenanigans that caused this mess.
Also the “administrator” that the govenor appointed should be there as well.
Every bureaucrat who is responsible for the Flint water problem should be indicted and have their day in court. The people trusted government to provide them clean, safe water. It failed due to incompetence. Those whose actions poisoned people should have to face responsibility for their actions.
Justin W-
Agreed; for involvement in the deaths of so many, they should face either negligent homicide or depraved indifference charges, IMO…and as part of their sentences, be required to reimburse the families for their funeral expenses and/or medical expenses, if not more, besides.
Many other urban American areas are dangerously close to this sort of water problem, and most don’t know it yet. We are way behind in infrastructure funding/repair. We need to start making repairs/upgrades all over the country. Paying for these upgrades would also provide thousands of well-paying construction jobs. It’s something we need and it creates good jobs. A good combination.