Testimony during a preliminary exam of several people indicted on charges related to the poisoning of Flint, Michigan’s drinking water with the powerful neurotoxin lead this week revealed that officials in the Snyder administration called the shots on how the water treatment plant would be run. The plant was taken out of mothballs in order to treat Flint River water in order to save money and the decisions they made resulted in what has become Gov. Rick Snyder’s most enduring legacy: the Flint Water Crisis:
Two state officials on trial for crimes related to the Flint water crisis gave directives for restarting the city’s water treatment plant – the same facility they were charged with regulating — before it was put into service, a former consultant says.
Warren Green, vice president and chief technical officer for Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam, told Genesee District Court Judge Jennifer Manley on Monday, Dec. 10, that Stephen Busch, a district supervisor for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and Michael Prysby, a district engineer in that agency, provided his company with calculations and design directives for the plant.
If accurate, Green’s testimony during Monday’s preliminary examinations for Busch, Prysby and two other DEQ officials would shed new light on how deeply state employees were involved in the effort to prop up the plant to that it could be used to process Flint River water in parts of 2014 and 2015.
The consultants described the heavy-handed oversight by the MDEQ as “highly unusual” which went against their advice. The results — sadly, tragically, lethally — speak for themselves.
Rick Snyder has some hard choices to make in the waning weeks of his governership. He can go down as “the Governor who poisoned a city and robbed Michigan voters of their voice in democracy” or he can be remembered as “the Governor who atoned for his sins by denying sore loser Republicans their ability to rob Michigan voters of their voice in democracy by vetoing most of the legislation they sent him during the lame duck session.”
What’s it going to be, Governor Snyder? The choice is a binary and the choice is YOURS.
[CC image “Michigan Governor Rick Snyder Political Suicide” by DonkeyHotey | Flickr]
