"Whose Responsible for the Flint Water Crisis? : MDEQ, EPA" from Congressional Hearing on Flint

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• published: 04 Feb 2016
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Speaking at the Congressional hearing on the EPA's role in the Flint water crisis, VA Tech Professor, Marc Edwards, lays out who is to blame for the drinking water emergency, laying blame on MDEQ and the EPA. FULL TRANSCRIPT: CHAIRMAN CHAFFETZ: Mr. Edwards, the people at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, do you feel that they were misleading people? Were they providing false information? What were they doing and who were they doing it to? PROF. EDWARDS: I think it probably started innocently. I think someone forgot to follow the law but they ignored warning sign after warning sign. The GM fiasco, Ms. Walters' child, the hazardous waste levels of lead, and gradually step by step they just felt like they were covering this up. There's in question about it. You read the e-mail. They were -- they lied in writing to the EPA and it was only after Lee Anne figured outside that they were not using corrosion controls that they started this news story that "we don't know if we have to have corrosion control." So I think the written record is quite clear on this. CHAIRMAN CHAFFETZ: They were telling that to the EPA. What about to the governor's office and other state officials? PROF. EDWARDS: It's clear to me that they misled the epidemiologists who were looking at that. The very first thing they did was to reached out to MDQ employees saying is there something wrong with the water. And the talking points, the notes from that memo used by the epidemiologist basically repeated one lie after another after another about the actual situation in Flint. And when you're a scientist and you have been mislead so fundamentally by someone in a position of trust, that skews your interpretation. I have criticized what the Health Department did, and the fact that they never told the Governor about the spike in elevated lead that was occurring. And i have talked about their unethical behavior in the month of September when they refused to share data with me and Dr.Mona about the lead poisoned children. But you have to, when you look at the ethics of this, you have to look at what they were told and put yourself in their position. i fault them but the blame lies with these three or four employees who were actively misleading everyone. And i go back to Mr. Walling [former Mayor of Flint] who took a lot of criticism and some of it justifiable. but if you're a mayor of a town in flint and you reached out to susan headman, the top cop in the region and she tells you nothing is wrong, and a few days later you go on television drinking the water to tell everyone it's safe, who is to blame for that? Certainly Mayor Walling has taken his share of the blame for being overly trusting of the top EPA cop in the region for apologizing for this memo and not telling that there's anything wrong going on in Flint, but the bulk of the blame for that particular episode has to lie with Susan Headman[ EPA Region 5 administrator].