S IG: Agency waited far too long in Flint water crisis

The Envi- ronmental Protection Agency had sufficient authority and information to issue an emer- gency order to protect residents of Flint, Mich., from lead-contaminated water as early as June 2015 seven — months before it declared an emergency, the EPA’s inspector general said Thursday.

The Flint crisis should have generated “a greater sense of urgency” at the agency to “intervene when the safety of drinking water is com- promised,” Inspector General Arthur Elkins said in an interim report.

Flint’s dr inking water became tainted when the city began drawing from the Flint River in April 2014 to save money. The impoverished city of 100,000 north of Detroit was under state control at the time. Regulators failed to ensure water was treated properly and lead from aging pipes leached into the water supply.

Federal, state and local officials have argued over who is to blame as the crisis continues to force resi- dents to rely on bottled or filtered water. Doctors have detected elevated levels of lead in hundreds of children.

A panel appointed by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder con- cluded that the state is “fun- damentally accountable” for the lead crisis because of decisions made by state environ- mental regulators and the state-appointed emergency managers who controlled the city. Even so, Snyder and other Republicans have faulted the EPA for a slow response.

“As Gov. Snyder has stated all along, what happened in Flint was the result of failure of government at all levels,” spokeswoman Anna Heaton said Thursday.

State agencies have undergone “culture changes” and updated procedures to prevent a recurrence, so “it’s encouraging to see other agencies undergoing evaluations that can result in improvements to help people here and across the nation,” Heaton said.

The report by the inspector general says officials for the EPA’s Midwest region did not issue an emergency order because they concluded that actions taken by the state prevented the EPA from doing so. The report calls that interpretation incorrect and says that under federal law, when state actions are deemed insufficient, “the EPA can and should proceed with an (emergency) order” aimed at “protecting the public in a timely manner.”

Michigan officials declared a public health emergency in October 2015; the EPA declared an emergency three months later. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has a cknowledged that her agency should have been more aggressive in testing the water and requiring changes, but told Congress that officials “couldn’t get a straight answer” from the state about what was being done in Flint.

Spokeswoman Monica Lee said Thursday the EPA issued an order in the Flint case “as soon as it became apparent that the city and state were failing to address the serious problems with the Flint drinking water system.”

The director of the EPA’s Midwest regional office stepped down Feb. 1 amid withering criticism that the agency failed to act sooner to address lead contamination in the predominantly African-American city.