Top City Officials Charged In Flint Water Crisis Investigation

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette (R) announced criminal charges Tuesday against four former Flint, Michigan, officials as part of an investigation into the city’s lead-tainted water scandal. The move brought the total number of people facing charges to 13. Former Flint emergency managers Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose both face multiple charges, including false pretenses and conspiring to commit false pretenses, felonies that each carry a 20-year sentence. Schuette also announced charges against former Director of Public Works Howard Croft and Daugherty Johnson, the department’s former utilities director. The state attorney general alleges that, as part of a plan to build a new water pipeline, the four defendants were involved in defrauding the state to borrow millions of dollars. And he accused them of authorizing the switch to Flint River water, despite knowing the treatment plant was not ready for service, sparking the crisis. The cash-strapped city stopped buying its water from the Detroit system, which draws from Lake Huron, and began using the Flint River in 2014 ― supposedly to cut costs. Residents began complaining soon after that their tap water was making them sick. Under direction of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, the city had failed to properly treat the water to prevent it from corroding pipes and lead leached into residents’ drinking water. Exposure to any amount of lead is a serious health risk ― particularly for young children, whose development it can impede. Schuette accused Earley and the other defendants of putting financial savings before residents’ safety. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette says it’s very evident from the investigation into the Flint water crisis that there’s been a “fixation on finances and balance sheets,” which has “cost lives.” “All too prevalent, and very evident, during the course of this investigation has been a fixation on finances and balance sheets. This fixation has cost lives,” he said at a press conference Tuesday. “The tragedy that we know as the Flint water crisis did not occur by accident, no. Flint was a casualty of arrogance, disdain and a failure of management.” Earley “allegedly allowed the Flint Water Treatment Plant to produce water despite knowledge the plant was not ready for use, allowed Flint to enter into a contract requiring use of the Flint Water Treatment Plant during that time, and authorized false and misleading public statements that the water was safe to drink,” according to a statement from Schuette. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality initially dismissed residents’ complaints about the water. However, it eventually acknowledged that there were elevated lead levels in the water and verified a pediatrician’s findings that there was an alarming number of children with elevated lead levels in their blood. State Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and President Barack Obama both declared emergencies in Flint early this year, and the city switched back to its original water source. There have been extensive efforts to respond to the crisis, including the expensive task of replacing lead service lines. Congress passed a bill this month […]

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