AG: Flint water charges ‘only the beginning’
Nobody ‘off-limits’ in probe of lead in drinking supply
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette wanted to make one point clear Wednesday, as he announced criminal charges against three state and local workers for their role in the ongoing water crisis in Flint.
“These charges are only the beginning, and there will be more to come,” Schuette said. “That, I can guarantee you.”
The criminal charges filed Wednesday, which were authorized by a Genesee County district court judge, include more than a dozen separate counts against two officials at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, as well as a Flint water quality supervisor.
Stephen Busch and Michael Prysby, the two state environmental quality officials, each face multiple felonies, including misconduct in office and tampering with evidence. Prysby faces an additional felony charge for authorizing a permit for the Flint treatment plant “knowing it would fail to provide clean and safe drinking water to families,” Schuette said. Several of the felony charges carry maximum penalties of up to five years in prison. The men also are charged with misdemeanor violations of drinking water regulations.
Michael Glasgow, a Flint water official, faces a felony charge of tampering with evidence for allegedly altering and falsifying reports to state and federal regulators that made it appear lead levels in the city’s water supply were lower than they actually were. He also faces a misdemeanor charge of willful neglect of duty.
The charges come barely three months after Schuette announced that he would investigate the circumstances that led to Flint’s see if laws were broken during what he called “a human tragedy.” They are the first charges to stem from the catastrophe in Flint — which potentially exposed nearly 100,000 residents to water tainted with lead — but Schuette and other investigators on Wednesday vowed that they mark only the beginning of a broadening investigation.
“We have a long way to go. We have a lot of people to interview, a lot of evidence to get,” said former Wayne County prosecutor Todd Flood, who is helping lead the probe. “We’re not targeting any person or people. But nobody is off-limits, either.”
Flint resident William Chatman, 61, trumpeted Wednesday’s announcement.
“It’s a victory,” Chatman said. “Those people that … allowed it to happen, you have to pay the consequences for your actions. This sends a signal out to others.”
In fact, investigators were asked repeatedly Wednesday whether they were investigating Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder or other top state officials. They repeated only that they would follow the facts of the case wherever they lead, no matter the outcome.
Snyder said Wednesday afternoon that he has not been questioned or interviewed as part of Schuette’s investigation, though he said his office has been cooperating with the probe.
The debacle in Flint began to unfold two years ago. For decades, the once-thriving industrial city bought its water from Detroit. It was piped from Lake Huron, with anti-corrosion chemicals added along the way.
But in early 2014, with the city under the control of an emergency manager appointed by Snyder, officials switched to Flint River water as part of a money-saving measure. Flint’s water was contaminated with toxic lead soon after the city switched to the Flint River as its source in April 2014, and the state’s environmental quality agency failed to ensure that anti-corrosive chemicals were added. That allowed lead rust, iron and, most dangerous, lead to leach from aging pipes into the city’s tap water.
In addition to testing local children for lead poisoning, officials are investigating possible links between the tainted water and a dozen deaths from Legionnaires’ disease.
A task force appointed by Snyder to investigate the water-contamination crisis in Flint issued a report last month that largely blamed state officials in what it called “a story of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction and environmental injustice.” It detailed a widespread lack of responsibility and leadership behind the catastrophe, which exposed more than 95,000 residents in the beleaguered city — including about 9,000 children younger than 6 — to water tainted with lead.