A top aide to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was told about the outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease in Flint and its possible connection to the city’s water system in March 2015, 10 months before the public was informed.
Emails released Thursday by Progress Michigan, a liberal advocacy group, show Jim Henry, the environmental health supervisor for Genesee County, believed there was a link between the switch to Flint River water in April 2014 and a subsequent outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease, a respiratory disease that infects the lungs and can cause pneumonia.
“The increase of the illnesses closely corresponds with the timeframe of the switch to the Flint River water,” Henry wrote to the state Department of Environmental Quality as well as Flint officials. “The majority of the cases reside or have an association with the city.”
The outbreak killed 10 people and sickened 87 by the time Snyder told the public in early January. An email from Stephen Busch, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality district supervisor for Flint, showed that Henry reached out to the state about the Legionnaire’s disease cases in Flint in October 2014, 15 months before the outbreak was made public.
When the outbreak was announced in January, Snyder said he had found out about it only a few days before. However, the emails show Harvey Hollins, the head of Michigan’s Office of Urban and Metropolitan Initiatives, knew about the outbreak and Henry’s feelings about a possible connection to the Flint River on March 13, 2015. Hollins is now in charge of the state and city efforts to fix the city’s water crisis.
Henry wrote that he had filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the city of Flint to get water testing results for various bacteria at the water treatment plant. That request had been filed in January 2015 and had not been fulfilled by March, he said.
Hollins received Henry’s email, but Brad Wurfel, then the spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, downplayed the issue to Hollins. He said it was “highly unlikely” that Flint River water was causing the outbreak.
“This is beyond irresponsible, given that his department has failed to do the necessary traceback work to provide any conclusive evidence of where the outbreak is sourced,” Wurfel wrote, “and it also flies in the face of the very thing a drinking water system is designed to do.”
Wurfel eventually resigned from the agency with the department’s director, Dan Wyant. Wurfel was singled out for criticism for the “substance and tone” of his statements regarding the lead-contaminated water in Flint that has since grabbed the national spotlight.
Wurfel’s issues with “substance and tone” appeared in the Legionnaire’s disease emails as well, as he accused Henry of purposely using his records request to back up his suspicions that the source of the bacteria was the Flint River water. He said it “appears designed to buttress his position.”
In his email to Hollins, Wurfel revealed a failure on the part of the Genesee County Health Department to trace the source of the legionella bacteria that causes Legionnaire’s disease.
If that had been done, as is required, there would be some conclusive evidence of how the outbreak began and whether it was related to the 2014 switch in water sources.
However, that investigation was never completed. The evidence is now gone, officials say.
Wurfel told Hollins in the emails that water treatment plants are designed to keep bacteria out of the drinking water supply. Just months before that email, Flint had undergone a boil water advisory after total coliform bacteria was found in the water.
Despite that, and the failure of the city water system to keep lead from getting into residents’ water supply, Busch said Henry was being irresponsible in tying the city’s water system to the Legionnaire’s disease outbreak.
“Conclusions that legionella is coming from the public water system without the presentation of any substantiating evidence from your epidemiologic investigation appears premature and prejudiced toward that end,” Busch wrote to Henry.
Lonnie Scott, the director of Progress Michigan, said the emails show either Snyder ignored warnings about Legionnaire’s disease coming from the Flint River water or the culture inside his administration was one of arrogance and willful ignorance.
“The fact that they potentially ignored information about people dying as a result of the switch is beyond comprehension,” Scott said. “Are we to believe that a top staffer with years of experience would not inform Governor Snyder of a possibly deadly situation? Either the governor is covering up his knowledge of this crisis or his governing culture does not allow for important information to flow from his top advisers to his desk.”
A message was left with Snyder’s office seeking comment.
