Republicans say it’s Democrats’ fault, given that they were, after all, the ones who ran Flint into the ground. Democrats (and media) say it’s the fault of the villianous Republican governor.
I had been negligent in digging into the details, but here’s an article that popped up in my facebook feed that lays out the story in detail: “The real tragedy in Flint,” by a local (Saginaw) blogger, Greg Branch.
The long and short of it is this: Flint’s plan to take water from the Flint River would have worked just fine — the river isn’t particularly polluted — had the city’s water department been diligent enough to identify and follow the proper protocols for treating river water, and had the relevant Michigan agency, the Department of Environmental Quality, been negligent in their supervision.
There are well-documented protocols for corrosion control for municipal water systems. They were not followed in this case – from what I can see, because the agency charged with monitoring that activity, the Michigan DEQ, simply didn’t require it.
And why didn’t the DEQ require it? Branch speculates that this was because they were asleep at the wheel, and a mix of indifferent bureaucrats and political appointees. Some further details are in this October Detroit News article, “Michigan DEQ vows changes in Flint water crisis,” which reports that
staff members applied the wrong standards of the Lead and Copper Rule that governs testing and monitoring for drinking water. The result was that proper controls regarding corrosion were not put in place when the city began drawing its water from the Flint River in spring 2014.
There’s a lot more to the story, but for an initial read, this is worth your time.
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