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House Panel Denounces E.P.A. Actions in Flint Crisis
WASHINGTON — Members of a congressional oversight committee excoriated a former Environmental Protection Agency official on Tuesday for not responding more forcefully when she learned last year that Flint, Mich., was not adding a chemical to its new water supply that would have prevented the city’s pipes from corroding and leaching lead.
The former official, Susan Hedman, testified that limited enforcement options had kept her from acting more aggressively to order corrosion control, saying, “I don’t think E.P.A. did anything wrong, but I do believe we could have done more.” But committee members from both parties reacted furiously to her explanation, casting Ms. Hedman, who resigned in January as director of the E.P.A. regional office in charge of Michigan, as one of the primary villains in Flint’s water crisis and heaping contempt on her for more than four hours.
“There’s a special place in hell for actions like this,” said Representative Earl L. Carter, a Georgia Republican known as Buddy, referring to the fact that for months after Ms. Hedman learned about the lack of corrosion control in Flint, neither the E.P.A. nor any other governmental agency warned residents that their water was unsafe.
The hearing was the first time that several prominent figures in the water crisis — Ms. Hedman; Darnell Earley, the state-appointed emergency manager of Flint at the time of the water switch; and Dayne Walling, the city’s former mayor — had testified publicly about their roles.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform used the hearing to try to answer a question that has endured despite two previous congressional hearings, several investigations and the release of thousands of government emails: why so many levels of government failed to take action for so long, ignoring warning signs, while Flint residents were being exposed to dangerously high levels of lead.
The hearing focused heavily on a June 2015 internal preliminary report by an E.P.A. scientist, which raised alarms about extremely high lead levels at one resident’s home, Flint’s methods of testing for lead in water and its lack of corrosion control. After the scientist, Miguel Del Toral, wrote the report, nearly six more months passed before the city added chemicals to the water supply to prevent pipe corrosion, a lapse that committee members from both sides of the aisle said Ms. Hedman should have and could have prevented.
“Why, in July or August, didn’t you just stand up and scream, stop this?” said Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California. “To me, this is negligence bordering on deliberate indifference.”
The committee also released an email that Mr. Del Toral sent to other E.P.A. employees expressing the belief that he was being punished for sharing his report with the Flint resident whose water had been found to have extremely high lead levels.
“It almost sounds like I’m to be stuck in a corner holding up a potted plant because of Flint,” Mr. Del Toral wrote in the email on July 8, about two weeks after he wrote the report.
In other emails released by the committee, Mr. Del Toral took the agency to task for not compelling the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to find Flint in violation of the law for failing to carry out corrosion control and to follow proper rules for lead testing after it switched to a new water source, the Flint River, in April 2014.
“At every stage of this process,” he wrote in September 2015, “it seems that we spend more time trying to maintain state/local relationships than we do trying to protect the children.”
Ms. Hedman testified that members of her staff learned in April 2015 that corrosion control was not being done in Flint, and immediately started asking the city and state “emphatically, repeatedly and urgently” to do it.
In questioning Ms. Hedman, several committee members pointed to language in the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, which states that if the E.P.A. becomes aware of a contaminant in drinking water that could present “an imminent and substantial endangerment” to people’s health, and if state and local authorities have done nothing about it, the agency’s chief administrator “may take such actions as he may deem necessary in order to protect the health of such persons.”
But Ms. Hedman said that because the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality sent a letter to Flint in August 2015, ordering it to implement corrosion control, the E.P.A.’s hands were essentially tied. She received legal advice, she said, that “the State of Michigan would argue there was a jurisdictional bar” if the E.P.A. tried to intervene.
That led Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech professor who helped identify Flint’s lead problem and who also testified Tuesday, to tell the committee, “I don’t know the law, but as a human being, she should have told people immediately.”
The E.P.A. issued an emergency order in January, just as it announced Ms. Hedman’s resignation, to expand federal oversight in Flint because of “serious and ongoing concerns with the safety of Flint’s drinking water system” and “continuing delays and lack of transparency.”
Also at the hearing, Mr. Earley, the former state-appointed emergency manager of Flint, testified that he was “grossly misled” by state and federal experts who failed to tell him about the high lead levels in Flint’s water and the pipe corrosion that caused the problem.
Still, Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, told Mr. Earley that he had “almost vomited” when he heard Mr. Earley testify that he trusted the state’s experts even after he learned that Flint’s new water was corroding parts at a General Motors engine plant there.
“That doesn’t send you a warning that maybe human beings might be harmed?” Mr. Cummings asked.
Committee members — particularly Republicans, who frequently attack the E.P.A. — saved their sharpest barbs for Ms. Hedman.
“You still don’t get it,” said Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican who is the committee’s chairman. “You screwed up, and you messed up people’s lives.”
State hearings began in Michigan on Tuesday, the latest in a series of examinations that have identified numerous missed opportunities, or worse, by government agencies — particularly the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
In Washington, Ms. Hedman joined the committee in painting Mr. Del Toral as a hero, even as its members accused her of trying to silence him, discipline him and play down his memo — charges that she denied. She added that last fall, she had even recommended Mr. Del Toral for the E.P.A.’s highest award.
Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, is to appear before the committee in a separate hearing on Thursday, along with Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the E.P.A. Mr. Cummings said after the hearing Tuesday that 15 members of Mr. Snyder’s staff had refused to talk to the committee about the water crisis, adding, “I’m going to ask him when he comes to us on Thursday, what are you hiding?”
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