Emails from two of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s top lawyers indicated concerns at the highest levels of state government as far back as October 2014 about whether to continue using Flint River water to supply Flint, Mich.
Released in an email dump Friday morning, the emails between Valerie Brader, deputy legal counsel and senior policy adviser to the governor, and Michael Gadola, the governor’s legal counsel, showed both lawyers recommended switching back from the Flint River to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department on Oct. 14, 2014.
That’s a full year before the decision was made to switch water supplies because the river water was so acidic that it was causing lead to leach off pipes and into people’s drinking water.
The emails were sent in the wake of General Motors’ decision to leave the Flint water system and use a private system. At that time, chlorine added to the water to kill bacteria, which had caused multiple boil water advisories for the city, was damaging GM’s metal auto parts.
“As you know there have been problems with the Flint water quality since they left the (Detroit) system, which was a decision by the emergency manager there,” Brader wrote in her email.
Brader goes on to describe why GM is leaving the water system, and said the company’s decision to leave the Flint system took away all economic benefits of Flint switching away from Detroit water.
“Now we are getting comments about being lab rats in the media, which are going to be exacerbated when it comes out that after the boil water order, there were chemicals in the water that exceeded health-based water quality standards,” Brader said. “I think we should ask the (emergency manager) to consider coming back to the Detroit system in full or in part as an interim solution to both the quality, and now the financial, problems that the current solution is causing.”
In response, Gadola, a Flint native, said he was shocked that the Flint River was providing drinking water.
“To anyone who grew up in Flint as I did, the notion that I would be getting my drinking water from the Flint River is downright scary,” he wrote. “Too bad the (emergency manager) didn’t ask me what I thought, though I’m sure he heard it from plenty of others.”
Gadola added, “My mom is a city resident. Nice to know she’s drinking water with elevated chlorine levels and fecal coliform.”
The next response on the email chain is from Dennis Muchmore, Snyder’s chief of staff at the time. In an interview with the Detroit Free Press, Muchmore said he had brought these concerns to Snyder.
“We shared them,” he told the newspaper.
In addition to expressing her worries about the water supply, Brader also knowingly avoided the state’s Freedom of Information Act in her email.
She said she didn’t send an email to any of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality staffers because they would be subject to the law and the email could get out. The MDEQ is subject to the law while the executive office is not.
“Note: I have not copied DEQ on this message for FOIA reasons,” she wrote.
The emails were sent one year before the state decided to step in and tell people to stop drinking the water in Flint, and about 14 months before Snyder declared a state of emergency in the city.
The fact that some of Snyder’s top aides were recommending putting a stop to using the Flint River water a year before Snyder ultimately made the switch is raising new calls for the Republican governor to resign.
Lonnie Scott, director of the liberal group Progress Michigan, said the attempt to avoid FOIA law and the knowledge that Snyder’s top aides wanted to switch water away from the Flint River is reason enough for him to step down.
“There’s no reasonable person who can believe at this point that every top advisor to Rick Snyder knew that there was an issue, but Snyder knew nothing. At worst he’s been lying all along and at best he’s the worst manager on the planet. Under either scenario he’s clearly unfit to lead our state and he should resign immediately,” Scott said.
