County’s role in Flint crisis gets results

Genesee County points to state's responsibility in Flint water crisis

Genesee County, Mich. had “no skin in the game” in the city of Flint’s decision to switch its water source from Detroit’s system to the Flint River, according to Commission Chairman Jamie Curtis.

But county officials say they played a major role in raising the alarm about the city’s lead-tainted water, and finally got the state to respond. As of Feb. 17, the county had spent more than $1 million on the problem — the health department accounting for about half of that amount, county officials said. The sheriff’s department’s expenses were almost $400,000.

Curtis said the county tried for months in 2015 to find out, definitively, if the water was safe but couldn’t get straight answers to its questions — not from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, nor the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, nor Flint’s public works department. At the time, the city and its departments were being controlled by an emergency financial manager, appointed by the governor.

Flint switched to river water in April 2014, and almost immediately residents began reporting concerns about the water’s color, taste and smell. The city and county have separate water utilities. However, it was the County Board’s declaration of a public health emergency that appears to have prompted the state to step up its response.

Genesee County commissioners made their declaration on Oct. 1, 2015, advising Flint residents to not drink the water from the Flint River, unless it had been tested and been found to be lead-free.

“When that occurred, the floodgates opened,” said Commissioner Barbara Clack, who lives in Flint and whose commission district includes about half of the city’s population. “The very next morning, the governor and some of his administration were in Flint.”

Within 10 days, Curtis said, Flint was switched back on Detroit’s system.

It wasn’t until Jan. 5 that Gov. Rick Snyder (R) declared a state of emergency — one day after the county issued its own declaration, which deemed the water crisis “beyond the control of Genesee County.”

Rep. Dan. Kildee (D-Mich.) is the area’s congressman. A Flint native, he was the county’s former elected treasurer, and before that, a county commissioner. Testifying at a congressional committee hearing on the water crisis on Feb. 2, he called it an “entirely avoidable set of circumstances.” Curtis has called it an entirely “manmade crisis.

“Better action by people in government could have protected the people of Flint, and those players failed,” Kildee told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Since then, the situation has evolved into a circular firing squad of accusations, but from the county’s perspective, the ultimate responsibility lies with the state.

Curtis finds no fault with the city’s elected leaders, who were powerless to act under the governor’s financial manager.

“It was the state emergency manager that made the decision to switch the city of Flint to the Flint River water source,” said Curtis, whose district also includes a portion of the city, “and it was the emergency manager who had 100 percent control of all departments of city government….

“The problem that they incurred was the lack of oversight, lack of understanding and lack of knowledge in doing good due diligence on treating river water, versus getting the water from Detroit, which was already treated,” he said.

As Flint’s water crisis continued, the county was dealing with health concerns of another sort — an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease.

From June 2014 to November 2015, 87 cases of Legionnaires’ disease were confirmed in Genesee County, including nine that were fatal, according to the state health department.

While the state health department said it could not conclude that Legionnaires’ was linked to the Flint River water, it said the situation was being treated “with the same urgency and transparency as the lead response in the city of Flint.”

Mark Valacak, the county’s public health director, did not respond to phone and email requests for an interview. However, a county health department press release stated that “Legionella bacteria are commonly found in the environment (rivers, lakes, streams). It is a waterborne disease, usually located in man-made water supplies that aerosolize water, such as showers, hot water tanks, humidifiers, cooling towers, whirlpool spas and decorative fountains.”

While the concern about Legionnaires’ has abated, Flint and Genesee County residents are continuing to receive donated bottled water from the state, nonprofit organizations and individuals, some as far away as Georgia.

DeKalb County, Ga. Commissioner Stan Watson organized an effort to transport cases of bottled water to Flint, said Clack, the Genesee County commissioner. It was the result of a personal connection. She and Watson met when they were both legislators in their respective states, but she doubted she’d spoken with him in nearly a decade.

“For him to think about me and what we’re doing here in Flint, I felt very fortunate,” she said.

Meanwhile, Clack worries about the future of infants who were exposed to lead in the water for two years.

“We’re going to have children in 2021 — that is the date I estimate — who are going into school who are going to be overly aggressive, who won’t have the ability to retain information, who are going to display physical and mental elements of bad behavior that should not have been.”