Flint needs justice — but it needs financial help even more

Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

The wheels of justice are finally beginning to turn in Flint, Michigan, following last year’s startling revelation that the city’s drinking water had been poisoned with lead for over a year before residents learned of the crisis.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette announced that criminal and misdemeanor charges had been brought against two former state environmental health officials and the man who ran the city water treatment plant for neglect of duty and intentionally covering up details of the disaster while more than 8,000 children were exposed to dangerously high levels of lead.

Mike Glasgow, the former city official, was charged with “tampering with evidence and willful neglect of duty” for allegedly filing false reports to the state about water quality, according to the Detroit Free Press. State environmental health officials Stephen Busch and Michael Prysby were charged with “misconduct, evidence tampering, conspiracy and violations of the Safe Water Drinking Act” for allegedly changing water test results.

If convicted, the three could face up to five years in prison, the attorney general said at a news conference. And Schuette promised there would be more prosecutions in the case that has enraged many Americans and severely tarnished the reputation of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.

Flint residents and city officials, no doubt, were pleased with what appears to be the first serious step towards determining accountability for a beleaguered city that has gone without potable drinking water for over a year. The predominantly black and impoverished factory town has been beset with a host of public health problems, including an uptick in Legionnaire’s Disease and the horrifying threat of developmental problems for infants and toddlers who were exposed to the lead-laden drinking water.

Flint became a cause célèbre for the two Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who staged a presidential debate there in early March.  The governor and federal Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy were recently hauled before a House investigative committee and pummeled by Republicans and Democrats alike for botching the crisis.

Making matters worse, a national study by a public interest group found that Flint residents paid the highest water rates in America at the same time the water was being poisoned with lead from leaching pipes.

While he has rejected repeated calls for his resignation, Snyder, a once promising Republican chief executive, has launched a flurry of legislative and funding initiatives to finance a complete overhaul of Flint’s aging water system. And just this week, he dramatized the fact that the water quality has improved by announcing that he would be drinking filtered Flint tap water at his home and office for the next month.

Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

But grandstanding aside, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver and city residents would be far happier if state and federal officials made good on their promises to help fund a replacement of the city’s water treatment facility and the network of pipes that have leached lead into the water system.

Asked yesterday for her reaction to the charges brought against the three former city and state officials, Weaver said that while establishing accountability was important, “What we really need is financial assistance.”

Weaver is championing the city’s “Fast Start” program with a commitment of funding from the state to replace lead service lines suspected of having poisoned the city’s water supply, but it’s off to a slow start. The original plan was to complete new connections to 30 homes by the end of last month, but the city missed the deadline.

Weaver has told reporters that the total cost of replacing the system is roughly $55 million. So far, the Michigan state legislature has moved at a glacial pace to act on the majority of Snyder’s $195-million budget package to revitalize Flint, including new funding for water line replacement, according to the Detroit Free Press.

The funding problem only gets worse higher up the food chain.

In Washington, a single Republican senator – Mike Lee of Utah – managed to hold up a major federal funding package worth more than $100 million which could have been used in part to help Flint address its water crisis. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, both Michigan Democrats, fought hard to keep the Flint funding included in a much larger energy projects package.

However, they recently gave up and allowed the Flint funding to be dropped by the legislation when Lee refused to budge.

“Michigan has an enormous budget surplus this year and a large rainy-day fund,” Lee said in a statement. “Relief and repair efforts are already in the works. The people and policymakers of Michigan right now have all the government resources they need to fix the problem … The only thing Congress is contributing to the Flint recovery is political grandstanding.”

Stabenow did not agree.

"It's totally unacceptable that Sen. Lee continues to block a vote on our fully paid for, bipartisan agreement to help Flint and other communities across the nation who have serious lead and water problems," she said. "This is about something as basic as making sure families have clean water to drink and children with lead poisoning get the help they need." 

NOW WATCH: There's a terrifying reason why people are warned to stay inside at 5:45 p.m. in parts of Mexico