I've held off on writing about the Flint water disaster here thus far (although I've dealt with it a couple of times in my Detroit News column) because it seems we learn more every day about what happened and why. Sadly but predictably, Michigan media have treated it mainly as a political story, with the early narrative being something along the lines of "Republicans stick Flint with toxic water to save money."
That has prompted absurdities like Michael Moore (who grew up in Flint by the way) showing up and demanding that Republican Gov. Rick Snyder be arrested. For what crime, I'm not exactly sure, but legal niceties scarcely matter when self-righteous liberals think they're winning an argument
If you've been sort of noticing the story but aren't really up to speed on the details, let me give you a quick primer. Flint is like quite a few Democrat-run cities in Michigan that found itself in serious financial straits and ended up under the control of a Snyder-appointed emergency manager charged with getting the city's finances in order. This has happened a lot during Snyder's tenure, with EMs also being appointed in Pontiac, Benton Harbor, Hamtramck and most famously Detroit, which ended up in bankruptcy and is now experiencing quite a resurgence. Democrats hate the emerency manager law that gives Snyder the power to do this - mainly because it allows the EMs to rip up union contracts - but it's giving these cities the chance to get back on their fiscal feet.
Things didn't go so well in Flint, though. And the main problem has been the water.
In southeast Michigan, just about every community buys its water from the City of Detroit. Despite what you may think about Detroit, the water supplied by the Detroit Water and Sewer Department has always been safe and clean. Detroit gets its water from Lake Huron and its water treatment plant is highly reliable. Whether it's my community of Royal Oak, which is close to the central city, or outlying areas of northern Oakland and Macomb Counties, we all get our water from Detroit.
Flint, which is in Genesee County, has historically gotten its water from Detroit as well. But the Flint City Council made a decision in 2013 to switch to another source, the Karegnondi Water Authority, because it felt it could get a better price than Detroit was offering. This was not the emergency manager's decision, but the EM chose to cooperate with the decision rather than overrule it - which he could have.
During the transition to the KWA, however, Flint could have continued to get its water from Detroit. It chose instead to hook into water from the Flint River - a decision that proved disastrous as the levels of lead and other toxins in the Flint River water proved so high that the Flint Water Plant couldn't possibly purify it. The result you've seen is as horrendous as it looks on television - brown and completely unsafe water coming from people's taps, from shower heads and even from fire hydrants.
Along the way, we've also learned that the EPA had concerns about the safety of Flint River water, but didn't raise the alarms when they should have. We've also learned that some in the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality were dismissive of concerns they did know about. E-mails released from Gov. Snyder's office yesterday indicate that the final decision to approve the Flint River interim plan was made by then-State Treasurer Andy Dillon, a Democrat who was once Speaker of the House in Michigan and was appointed by Snyder after running for governor himself in the same election cycle.
All the political press in Michigan seem to care about at the moment is who's to blame, and they badly want it to be Snyder because they're invested in the narrative of evil-white-Republican-governor-poisons-kids-in-majority-black-city. That's the sort of stuff that's attracting the likes of Jesse Jackson, who was in town earlier this week doing what he does.
The more important story at the moment, of course, is how to get this fixed. Snyder unveiled a six-point plan on Tuesday night during his State of the State address, half of which was devoted to the Flint situation including a personal apology from Snyder, who basically said the buck stops with him because state officials under his watch made decisions that led to this.
And they did, although they're not the only ones. The Genesee County Drain Commissioner Jeff Wright was one of the major driving forces behind the switch from Detroit water, and was a stumbling block as Detroit tried in vain to work out a contract with Flint that would have addressed the latter's concerns and saved it money. I've seen the contract Detroit proposed, and it would have saved Flint a lot of money. But by this time everyone from the Flint City Council to Wright to the folks in Lansing seemed invested in the idea that cutting Flint off from Detroit water was the way to go.
All told, the Flint water disaster has been about as complete a systemwide failure as you're going to find anywhere. The EPA could have stopped it. The MDEQ could have stopped it. The emergency manager could have stopped it. The state treasurer could have stopped it. Ironically, the one person who tried to intervene was then-Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr (also a Snyder appointee), but his attempts fell on deaf ears.
By the way, the attempt of national liberal media types like Rachel Maddow to portray Snyder as some sort of wild-eyed right-wing racist is just absurd. Snyder is not an ideological governor at all. He's a pragmatic problem-solving type who came from the business sector, and had no previous history of political activism. He runs the state like a CEO, trying to weigh the information he has and made logical decisions. He's made many more good ones than bad ones, but in this case the people he trusted failed - as did many other people who did not work for Snyder.
This is also not a case of people being poisoned because of "Republican deregulation" as some are trying to claim. This wasn't about whether to test or not test the water for safety. It was about the failure to properly do so before going ahead with a decision that every politician on both sides of the aisle seemed determined to make.
Also, you should know that President Obama refused to declare a state of emergency, saying that sort of thing is only for natural disasters and this one is man-made. The result is that some federal aide was released, but a lot more could have been, and this is pretty rich coming from a guy who shows no compunction about going outside his own authority when it's important enough to him.
Honestly, I don't really see a major political or ideological lesson to be learned from all this. People in government just have to do their jobs correctly, and in this case almost no one did. I don't see how "conservatism" is the answer, nor do I see how this is an indictment of same. Flint would have been better of just staying with Detroit water and taking the deal that was offered, or at the very least staying with Detroit during the interim.
By the way, Flint is now hooked back up to Detroit water, but the damage done to the Flint water infrastructure was such that the toxins are still in the pipes. Just about everyone in the city is going to need new faucets and showerheads, and that's just the start of what it will take to fix this disaster. You'll be hearing about the political angle for some time, but the help these people need right now is the real story.
I've held off on writing about the Flint water disaster here thus far (although I've dealt with it a couple of times in my Detroit News column) because it seems we learn more every day about what happened and why. Sadly but predictably, Michigan media have treated it mainly as a political story, with the early narrative being something along the lines of "Republicans stick Flint with toxic water to save money."
That has prompted absurdities like Michael Moore (who grew up in Flint by the way) showing up and demanding that Republican Gov. Rick Snyder be arrested. For what crime, I'm not exactly sure, but legal niceties scarcely matter when self-righteous liberals think they're winning an argument
