A CNN segment detailing the water crisis in Flint, Mich., failed Monday to make a single mention of the Environmental Protection Agency’s role in what the Obama administration has declared a state of emergency.
CNN’s Carol Costello and legal analysts Jean Casarez and Mel Robbins focused instead on Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, and his administration’s handling of the public health crisis.
“He’s now confronting his own Hurricane Katrina,” Costello said Monday morning, citing the governor’s critics.
Flint officials decided a few years ago to switch the city’s water source from Lake Huron to the notoriously filthy Flint River. The idea was that this would be temporary, cost-cutting fix until a new line to Lake Huron could be secured.
After the city switched in 2014, residents complained immediately about the foul smelling, discolored water that came out of their taps. Researchers discovered later that city officials neglected to treat the water properly, and they eventually switched back to the Lake Huron water supply last October.
By then, however, it was too late: The pipes that carry the city’s water supply were already badly damaged by the polluted Flint River, and state officials are now scrambling to bring clean water to the city’s embattled people.
As it turns out, the EPA was also aware that water drawn from the Flint River had not been treated correctly, and that it would likely contaminate the supply lines as well as the city’s residents. However, the EPA did nothing to correct the issue or warn the people of Flint.
EPA’s Susan Hedman said in an interview with the Detroit News that the office tasked with overseeing the Midwest, EPA Region 5, was aware of the contamination problem in April, but that they only “sought a legal opinion on whether the EPA could force action.”
The opinion wasn’t completed until November.
In separate remarks to reporters, EPA chief Gina McCarthy defended her office, saying that the contamination issue in Flint isn’t their fault, and said the EPA “did its job.”
“EPA did its job but clearly the outcome was not what anyone would have wanted. So we’re going to work with the state, we’re going to work with Flint. We’re going to take care of the problem,” McCarthy told reporters, according to Reuters. “We know Flint is a situation that never should have happened.”
Gov. Snyder has already declared a state of emergency and called in the National Guard to help distribute clean water, but he and his administration are being criticized for moving too slowly on the issue.
The CNN news segment Monday morning, which ran for approximately six minutes and thirty-six seconds, made zero mention of the EPA’s involvement in the pollution scandal. It also made very little mention of the Flint officials who caused the crisis in the first place.
“[Y]ou can’t save a buck at the expense of the health of your citizens!” an indignant Costello told Robbins.
“Look, you know, Carol, I don’t disagree with you. I’m from Michigan. I think that this is absolutely horrendous that this went down. It’s horrendous that these folks had horrible, polluted, toxic water coming out of their pipes not for a week … and nobody did anything,” the CNN legal analyst added.
