Silence was a governmental failure for Flint water

Commentary

By Gary Wilson

There are many lessons to be learned from the Flint water crisis.

Some we know now, like the importance of taking people’s complaints seriously when someone holds up a container of brackish drinking water and says this is what’s coming out of my tap.

Others are harder to grasp, such as understanding the complexity and bureaucracy of our drinking water regulations.

But there’s one that jumps off the page: the consequences of silence.

Silence isn’t golden

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and his Department of Environmental Quality chief Dan Wyant have taken the brunt of the criticism for the Flint debacle. Wyant resigned and it will be Snyder’s Watergate or Vietnam; a failure that overshadows other accomplishments sealing his legacy.

But Michigan officials had a silent enabler along the path to the Flint tragedy: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

It’s now well-documented that the EPA knew of Flint’s lead problems for months and said nothing publicly. It relied on a bureaucratic crutch — lawyers — as justification, and this eventually cost the regional administrator her job. It was an egregious and moral failure.

But here’s what’s puzzling to me.

Criticism of Snyder and his DEQ have been cascading from every word processor, microphone and social media outlet for two months.

Demands for EPA accountability have been slow to come.

Curious about the silence, off I go to canvass the Great Lakes intelligentsia for reaction to the EPA’s role.

These are the folks in the trenches who have access to EPA officials on a number of water issues. Their job is to be the watchdog and tell the public when the agency fails to “protect” as was the case with Flint.

Here’s the question.

Did the EPA act responsibly in its oversight role and with the emergency powers it legally holds?

“I don’t have enough information to know whether they did or not,” David Ullrich responded in a one sentence email.

Surprised by the lack of consideration of the question and brevity of the answer, I went back to Ullrich, explained the question’s reasoning and gave him another chance.

“I stay with what I said,” he fired back.

Ullrich is a former 30-year EPA Great Lakes region executive who now directs the mayors organization, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative.

The initiative is involved in water issues and represents cities. Its website says it’s a “prominent voice” and it works to “improve the quality of life for residents of the region.”

Flint is a member suffering a “quality of life” meltdown. That “prominent voice” has been absent on Flint but the city did send a contingent to the Paris climate talks a few months ago.

OK, maybe that response is an aberration.

No.

“We have no knowledge or information so anything we say would be opinion or speculation,” Melissa Molenda responded for The Nature Conservancy’s Michigan office. Molenda was passing on the comments from Richard Bowman, the Conservancy’s director of government relations.

Keep in mind that when I asked the question, the EPA’s regional administrator, Susan Hedman, had incriminated herself in a Detroit News article. And the Conservancy’s office is a chip shot field goal from the governor’s office and an hour from Flint. But it knows nothing.

Next stop; the Alliance for the Great Lakes in Chicago.

“The information EPA provided creates real concern over the agency’s timeline for action,” Joel Brammeier said in an email. Brammeier is president of the Alliance and his office is a five-minute walk from that of the EPA’s in downtown Chicago.

Brammeier’s comment didn’t move the accountability dial; it did recognize that something was amiss at the federal agency with “Protection” for a middle name.

It wasn’t until I got to the National Wildlife Federation in Ann Arbor that someone said something that resembled a call for EPA accountability.

“Those responsible must be held accountable… including the USEPA,” Jordan Lubetkin responded, attributing the statement to Mike Shriberg, the federation’s Great Lakes director.

Not everyone had sealed lips or professed to have no knowledge of the EPA’s role.

“There is a moral failure here that is beyond astonishing,” Henry Henderson told the Chicago Tribune. Henderson directs the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Chicago Office.

NRDC had people on the ground working with Flint citizens and It filed a petition asking the EPA to use its emergency powers to intervene in October.

The agency’s bureaucratic response ten weeks later — remember, this was an emergency request — was a highlight reel of the things Michigan was doing. We know how that turned out and the EPA issued the emergency order in late January.

Ohio activist Sandy Bihn was similarly candid. Commenting on Susan Hedman’s resignation, Bihn repeatedly used “failure” to describe Hedman’s Lake Erie work.

Where to from here?

What’s done is done.

The important lesson is similar to the terrorism advisories we see in airports: “if you see something, say something.”

If the EPA isn’t protecting drinking water, say so, publicly.

Flint isn’t the EPA’s first drinking water failure in the Great Lakes region; remember Toledo a scant 18 months ago? There too EPA lacked transparency and withheld critical information.

“In all the meetings we’ve been in, we’ve been given nothing,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur told the Toledo Blade at the height of that crisis.

A year ago I said in a radio commentary that Snyder should personally get involved in Flint’s water problems. That’s because “it’s a basic issue; it’s safe drinking water.”

I thought I’d never comment on the issue again — let alone six more times. Privately I suspected Snyder would pick up the phone and ask MDEQ director Dan Wyant what the heck is going on with Flint’s water. That would be it.

Or later that EPA’s Susan Hedman would ignore the bureaucracy, take the moral high ground and tell Flint citizens they had a lead-poison problem in their water.

She didn’t.

The tragedy playing out in Flint today is the sound of silence.