Any doubt that the water crisis in Flint, Michigan was a criminal act was comprehensively eliminated on Friday night. Yesterday, Governor Rick Snyder’s office released a raft of emails related to the crisis. These exchanges prove beyond any doubt that Michigan state officials knew Flint’s water was contaminated as early as the fall of 2014. Even worse, Snyder himself knew what was happening–or at the very least had reason to know–and did absolutely nothing for a year.
Quite possibly the most damning exchange came in October 2014. Two of the top officials in Snyder’s inner circle, chief legal counsel Mike Gadola and environmental policy adviser Valerie Brader, got word that General Motors would no longer use water from the Flint River due to concerns it was damaging engine parts. Both Gadola and Brader urged Flint emergency manager Darnell Earley to switch Flint’s water supply back to the Detroit River. This is significant for two reasons. Not only did this come a full year before the water was finally switched, but it was three weeks before Snyder narrowly won reelection.
Brader passed those concerns to several of Snyder’s other aides, but deliberately sent a separate email to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Why? Brader openly admitted that if she copied the DEQ on her exchange with her fellow aides, it could have potentially been unearthed by a Freedom of Information Act request.
As outrageous as this is by itself, the Detroit Free Press revealed that these concerns had been discussed with none other Snyder himself. Snyder’s former chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, told the Free Press that when he learned about Brader and Gadola’s concerns, “we discussed them” with Snyder. However, due to concerns about costs, it took until October 2015 to get the water switched. So Snyder and other officials were well aware that the water was dangerous, and they were actually more concerned about how much it would cost to go back to using water from Detroit. There are literally no words to describe how outrageous this is.
Well, I take that back. If Snyder in fact knew the magnitude of this crisis and did nothing, then this is exponentially worse than Bridgegate. While it is clear beyond any doubt that Chris Christie fostered an environment that made it even remotely possible for the lanes on the George Washington Bridge to be shut down, there is–at least for now–no evidence that he was complicit in this outrageously criminal stunt. But according to the Free Press, Snyder may have been complicit in covering up the danger lurking in Flint’s water supply. And even if he didn’t know, he should have made it his business to know–and didn’t.
It gets even worse. Last month, I told you that state workers based in Flint got access to filtered water in January 2015–ten months before Snyder publicly admitted the water was contaminated. Well, as early as March 2015, Muchmore proposed spending $250,000 to distribute bottled water to Flint-area churches well before concerns about lead poisoning and a spike in Legionnaires’ disease became public. However, Muchmore’s successor, Jarrod Agen, told the Free Press that idea was ultimately deep-sixed because–wait for it–a number of state and local officials feared it would send the message that “something is wrong with the water.”
Within hours of the emails being released, Progress Michigan demanded Snyder’s resignation, calling him “clearly unfit to lead our state.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is an understatement. When a governor is disengaged from a major crisis at best and complicit in covering it up at worst, it is time for that governor to go. Now.
