The Flint water crisis may have taken a new turn on Wednesday. According to emails obtained by The Flint Journal, health officials in Genesee County, Michigan claimed that Governor Rick Snyder’s office refused to let them see lead test results until–wait for it–they could find a way to spin the problem.
Via a Freedom of Information Act request, The Journal got its hands on a raft of anguished emails from the Genesee County Health Department. Potentially the most damning email was sent on October 18 from environmental health director Jim Henry to health officer Mark Valacak. It summarized a meeting Henry attended with several officials from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
A week earlier, Snyder had announced that three of Flint’s schools had recorded lead levels above the legal limit. In the most alarming case, Freeman Elementary School’s water had six times the legal limit. Henry claimed that DEQ officials apologized for not releasing lead test results from earlier in the month. The reason for the apology? Apparently Snyder’s office “prohibited releasing all Genesee County lead results” until after the press conference.
In response, Snyder’s press secretary, claimed that there was no delay between the time testing began on October 2 and Snyder’s press conference six days later. But Genesee County officials contend that they were stonewalled again in October. Due to the high levels of lead at Freeman Elementary, another round of testing began in October. Henry asked DEQ lab chief George Krisztian for the results on November 3, but Krisztian said that the lab needed more time to review the results.
Fair enough. But when Henry contacted Krisztian again on November 4, he was told that DEQ was under orders to sit on the results until the FOIA deadline of December 2. A frustrated Henry told Valacak that DEQ was acting line “a spoiled 2yr old child” that was willing to “take another spanking just to be defiant.” It also seems hard to believe in light of the fact that state workers in Flint got access to clean water well before residents did.
Hopefully U. S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, who is leading a federal criminal investigation into this tragedy, is paying attention. If I were working at DEQ or the governor’s office at the time this happened, I’d have a lawyer on speed dial.
