More than a decade after a cost-cutting decision in Flint created one of the more shocking public health scandals in the country — killing a dozen residents and exposing 100,000 others to poisonous water contaminated with lead – the state of Michigan has committed to finally remove the toxic hazards remaining at hundreds of homes there, a lingering threat exposed earlier this year by Scripps News.
For years the city repeated failed promises to finish the work, missing multiple court-ordered deadlines and drawing a stinging rebuke from a federal judge this past spring.
Flint resident Melissa Mays, a mom turned water activist, responded with shock when Scripps News told her of the state’s new plans.
“No wonder it's cold outside. That’s why. Hell froze over,” she said.
The latest news comes after the Scripps News investigative team’s reporting this year restarted a halted pipe repair project, prompted a city contractor to work for free, and may have even played a role in the mayor abandoning his run for Congress.
The lead and galvanized steel service lines connecting homes to the city’s drinking water supply were originally supposed to be eliminated over four years ago. The pipe materials are known to leach lead into drinking water, potentially exposing residents to a neurotoxin that causes an increased risk for cardiac death, pre-term birth, and irreversible damage to children’s developing brains.
This past April, Scripps News exposed serious concerns about the way the city was meeting its obligations to complete the work. City officials repeated claims that just a few dozen homes in Flint needed their pipes inspected. But we revealed officials actually knew about hundreds of dangerous service lines and had no plans to remove them. This number was expected to balloon, as Scripps News also discovered more than 1,000 homes still waiting all these years for an initial inspection.
The state of Michigan now says it is "working with the city to complete the following as requested”: replace 345 known lead and galvanized steel service lines at residential properties and 41 known hazardous lines at commercial properties, according to the senior strategic advisor at the state’s environmental agency, Scott Dean. Dean also told Scripps News that the state has agreed to excavate and identify the materials of 546 residential service lines and about 500 commercial lines and replace what’s needed.
“We are committed to getting the lead out at every home in Flint, and I am grateful to the State of Michigan for our partnership to make this possible,” Mayor Sheldon Neeley told Scripps News in a written statement provided by his office. The statement said they are also considering expanding the program to businesses, though state officials had already confirmed to Scripps News it would.
RELATED STORY | Records missing, phones out: Flint water crisis not over
Scripps News was first to inform City Council Member Tonya Burns of the news. Burns was hopeful residents would finally get the work done they were promised, but said it was “inexcusable” that it’s taken this long and that the city couldn’t get it done itself.
She said she and her colleagues still get inquiries from residents who are waiting for work on their service lines. At this week’s city council meeting, more than ten years after the crisis began, she said a resident with a known galvanized steel line asked her for help getting the city to replace it.
A decade, a contempt order, and $100M
An ongoing Scripps News investigation into the city’s struggle to recover from the crisis found last year that there were thousands of residents who may have still needed their pipes inspected, with work slowing to a crawl under the current mayor, Sheldon Neeley. Citing those reports, a federal judge ordered the city of Flint be held in contempt of court this past March for failing to finish the job of identifying and replacing toxic lead and galvanized service lines that pose a serious health risk to children and adults.
This year, our investigation looked into claims the city administration made about the scope of work that remained, leading the public and even council members into believing work at all but a few homes was complete. As the city was being held in contempt, it told Scripps News only about 30 addresses under the settlement agreement still needed lead service line excavation. Those numbers were repeated to local and national media outlets by Mayor Neeley during coverage of the 10-year anniversary of the water crisis. At the time, he was also running for U.S. Congress in Michigan’s 8th District, which represents Flint.
But we found the city had quietly shut down the project after running out of money, with more than 200 known lead service lines still underground and more than a thousand others that still hadn’t been checked. Some residents had no idea water at their house had tested positive for lead years earlier and that their pipes had never been replaced, until we told them. When pressed to explain why, the city blamed residents, though we found persistent problems in how the city was managing the project. It finally admitted it had exhausted more than $100 million in state and federal funds for the project.
RELATED STORY | Scripps News Investigation: A decade, a contempt order, and $100M later, 'Flint is not fixed'
Mayor Neeley’s office declined multiple interview requests on the subject, and Scripps News reporters were barred from entering a press conference this past spring to try to ask questions, as local media were ushered in.
Our report revealing the city’s unfinished work aired in April. The next day, Mayor Neeley withdrew his bid for Congress. Within the week, the once-dormant project was restarted with the city’s contractor working for free under an expired contract.
Yet, we learned there was still no plan to handle the hundreds of addresses our investigation had revealed required attention. In May, state officials told Scripps News the city would still be responsible for fixing those lines but indicated that the process could take years. One official pointed out that Michigan’s lead and copper rule, the most progressive in the country, gave water systems two decades to get rid of their toxic service lines.
The state now says it will do it themselves.
Waiting ‘far too long’
Flint’s water crisis was exposed because a community rallied and never stopped calling attention to its tainted water, even as officials claimed it was safe. The Biden administration has credited Flint residents with waking Americans up to the hidden dangers of lead lurking in underground drinking water pipes.
When the administration announced billions of dollars in funding this May to help replace the country’s estimated 10 million toxic service lines, Scripps News asked federal officials if they were aware that Flint was still struggling to get all of its lead pipes out of the ground and still had no idea how it would pay for that work. An official with the Environmental Protection Agency later told Scripps News the city was eligible to apply for additional funding.
But we found the city had failed to apply.
Responding to our findings, Flint’s longtime representative in Congress expressed his disappointment in local leaders.
“I get frustrated because we try to do our part to make the money available, but I can't just drive a Brink's truck full of money to the city of Flint,” U.S. Congressman Dan Kildee told Scripps News.
Michigan state officials then took notice, too, saying the state would take over management of the project. According to the city, the only work left under the settlement agreement was to repair nearly two thousand excavated yards, which had been left with torn up grass and broken sidewalks after city contractors dug them up and moved on.
“Every resident deserves confidence in their drinking water and to live in a safe, thriving community,” Phil Roos, director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy said in a written statement when the state began yard restoration work in July.
At the time, neither the state nor the city had plans in place to identify and remove remaining service lines posing health hazards, including the hundreds identified in our April investigation.
In September, the Scripps News investigative team was recognized by the National Academy of Arts and Sciences for its work in Flint and awarded a national Emmy for its reporting in Flint.
The following day, the Flint city attorney sent a letter to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer asking for more help to get the job done.
“... the City of Flint would like to respectfully request that the State of Michigan consider expanding this partnership to include addresses located within the City of Flint that are not included in the existing partnership,” Acting City Attorney Joseph Kuptz wrote.
That’s when the city asked the state to replace hundreds of dangerous service lines and to inspect over a thousand more at residential and commercial properties. Scripps News has not received an updated list of addresses, but the numbers appear to fall in line with the unfinished work we uncovered months earlier.
We learned the state of Michigan plans to start the bulk of the work next spring, though initial work could begin before the end of this year.
“Both the state and the city of Flint remain committed to working cooperatively to get every lead service line out of the ground in that city,” Scott Dean, the state of Michigan’s spokesperson, told Scripps News Thursday.
He said the state’s commitment hasn’t wavered and pointed to the $109 million that Michigan has already spent on the project over the years.
“I just hope that this is all of them. I hope this is all the homes,” said Melissa Mays, one of the Flint residents who still continues to fight for lead-free drinking water not only in Flint, but nationally. She said she had been wishing the state would step in but can’t help but feel some skepticism.
“It’s always that fear that there’s more hiding. Isn’t that terrible? I should feel excited,” she said.
RELATED STORY | Push to hold Flint mayor in contempt cites Scripps News investigation
Mays was one of the lead plaintiffs, joined by the Concerned Pastors for Social Action, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the ACLU of Michigan, who won a historic federal settlement in 2017 when the city and state first agreed to identify and remove the lead and galvanized steel water pipes feeding drinking water into Flint residents’ homes.
In a statement to Scripps News, NRDC attorney Addie Rolnick said she welcomed the state’s involvement, but hopes it moves quickly. “The people of Flint have waited far too long to see all lead lines removed,” she wrote.
Though the state of Michigan was a named defendant in the settlement, up until a few months ago it had only reimbursed Flint for work on this project with available federal and state funds, leaving the project’s management to the city.
Mays wondered what took so long for the state to step in and why the city waited so many years before asking for help.
“It just seems like they all put far more effort into delaying and trying to wriggle out of their promises than actually doing the work they agreed to back in 2017,” she said.
As of last week, the Biden administration is now requiring all water systems across the country to rid themselves of all toxic lines within a decade. Flint may not need to wait another 10 years. The state tells Scripps News it expects to finish the work by the end of next year.
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The Scripps News investigative team has been digging into the aftermath of the water crisis in Flint in a series of reports over the last year and a half.
