3 charged with crimes in US city water crisis

FLINT, Mich. – The Flint water crisis became a criminal case Wednesday when two state regulators and a city employee were charged with official misconduct, evidence-tampering and other offences over the lead contamination that has alarmed the nation and brought cries of racism.

For nearly 18 months, the poor, mostly black city of 100,000 used the Flint River for tap water as a way to save money — a decision made by a state-appointed emergency manager — while a new pipeline was under construction. But the water wasn’t treated to control corrosion. The result: Lead was released from aging pipes and fixtures as water flowed into homes and businesses.

Gov. Rick Snyder didn’t acknowledge the problem until last fall, when tests revealed high levels of lead in children, in whom the heavy metal can cause low IQs and behavioural problems.

The crisis — and state officials’ slow and dismissive response to complaints about the water from experts and Flint residents — led to allegations of environmental racism, emerged as an issue in the presidential race during Michigan’s Democratic primary in March, and sent other cities around the U.S. rushing to test their water, particularly in older neighbourhoods that still use lead pipes.

“This is a road back to restoring faith and confidence in all Michigan families in their government,” Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said in announcing the charges, months after officials conceded a series of bad decisions caused the disaster.

He warned there will be more charges — “That I can guarantee” — and added: “No one is off the table.”

Michael Prysby, a district engineer with the state Department of Environmental Quality, and Stephen Busch, a supervisor in the department’s drinking water office, were charged with misconduct, conspiracy, tampering with test results and misdemeanour violations of clean-water law. The felonies carry maximum penalties of four to five years in prison.

They were accused of failing to order anticorrosion chemicals added to the water to coat the pipes and prevent them from releasing lead.

Flint utilities administrator Michael Glasgow also was charged Wednesday with tampering with evidence for allegedly falsifying lead water-testing results and with wilful neglect of duty.

The three could not immediately be reached for comment. It wasn’t known if they have lawyers.

Busch is on paid leave. Prysby recently took another job in the agency.

“They failed Michigan families. Indeed, they failed us all,” Schuette said. “I don’t care where you live.”

For months, people in Flint have been relying on filters and bottled water. Some still do not trust what comes out of their taps, even though the city rejoined the Detroit-area water system last fall and anticorrosive phosphates are being added to the water.

The governor filled a few jugs of filtered Flint tap water this and pledged to drink it for 30 days to show it’s safe.

“It’s a good first step but it’s a small step,” Flint resident Melissa Mays said of the criminal charges. “These are lower-level people, and I want to know who was instructing them to do what they did. I think it’s important that we can see some form of accountability being laid out, but at the end of the day we still can’t drink or bathe in our water safely.”

The Flint debacle exposed a problem that extends well beyond the one-time industrial powerhouse.

An Associated Press analysis of EPA data found that nearly 1,400 water systems serving 3.6 million Americans exceeded the federal lead standard at least once between the beginning of 2013 and last September.

Most U.S. cities stopped installing lead pipes in the 1930s to carry water from main lines under the streets and into homes. But a survey by the American Water Works Association found that 6.5 million of these pipes are still in use.

Some researchers question whether chemical treatment and routine testing for lead in the water are enough, arguing that the only way to remove the threat is to replace the pipes. But the cost could easily be hundreds of millions of dollars or more.

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Associated Press writer David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this report.