The EPA's Silent, Guilty Role in the Flint Water Crisis

By Rebecca Leber, New Republic

24 January 16

Michigan's governor has borne the brunt of the blame, but there's plenty to go around.

ichigan Governor Rick Snyder in recent weeks has come under intense pressure over the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, which was precipitated two years ago when his administration, in an effort to cut costs, changed the city’s water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. The move led to a dangerous increase in lead in the water supply; just 5 parts per billion is cause for concern, especially for children, but Flint’s tap water has had five times that amount. And yet, officials insisted until late last fall that the water was safe for its 100,000 residents to drink.

In response to a public outcry, Snyder has released nearly 300 pages of emails that reveal how poorly state agencies responded to the slow-moving crisis. But while Snyder, a Republican, and his appointees have borne the brunt of the outrage, it turns out the Environmental Protection Agency fell down on the job, too.

Donald Trump, who’s promised a “tremendous cutting” of EPA funds if elected president, said this week the agency is “really guilty of” the Flint “horror show.” For once, Trump is not entirely wrong. 

On Thursday, EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman announced she will resign from her post. But the EPA, while contrite, hasn’t admitted wrongdoing. Like every other agency facing criticism for the water crisis, it has shifted the blame elsewhere—to Michigan’s state officials.

“Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the state of Michigan was responsible for implementing the regulations to protect their residents’ drinking water,” an EPA spokesperson said this week. “EPA’s ability to oversee management of that situation was impacted by failures and resistance at the state and local levels to work with us in a forthright, transparent, and proactive manner consistent with the seriousness of the risks to public health.”

“It is important to understand the clear roles here,” Hedman told The Detroit News. “Communication about lead in drinking water and the health impacts associated with that, that’s the role of [the Department of Health and Human Services], the county health department and the drinking water utility.”

It was only once Flint became a national story, and Snyder and President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency, that the EPA admitted its initial response was too slow. Residents and the American Civil LIberties Union were still petitioning the EPA to act in October, long after the agency first became aware of potential problems. 

In April 2014, Flint’s residents, the majority of whom are black, were assured by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) that “the quality of the water being put out meets all of our drinking water standards and Flint water is safe to drink.” The EPA didn’t know something was amiss until February 2015. Miguel Del Toral, a water expert with the EPA Region 5 office, noted in February that Flint’s water wasn’t being treated for lead since the switch to Flint River and that state tests were understating the problems, according to documents obtained by the ACLU. 

Del Toral raised two main concerns: The water wasn’t being treated properly and the testing showing the water was safe was inaccurate. “I’m worried that the whole town may have much higher lead levels than the compliance results indicated,” Del Toral warned in an April memo to DEQ, which was summarized in the email batch released Wednesday. 

According to a memo from June that was later leaked, Del Toral was concerned that Flint did not use the same chemical treatments for lead and copper after it made the switch in 2014, and that corroded plumbing was likely leaching lead: “In the absence of any corrosion control treatment, lead levels in drinking water can be expected to increase.” Compounding the problem, Michigan instructed residents to “pre-flush” their taps before sampling, leading to depressed reporting of lead levels. 

For the next six months, the agency was in a dispute with Michigan officials over how it interpreted water treatment under the 25-year-old EPA regulation on lead and copper. 

But the EPA’s public position throughout was that Flint’s water remained within a safe range, even as they privately pressured state officials to do more. It wasn’t until last November, shortly after Michigan began acknowledging problems, that the EPA aired Del Toral’s initial concerns publicly.

The agency has since explained it kept concerns private because of delegated roles under law. It’s the EPA’s authority to set treatment and testing standards, but it’s up to the state to ensure its water operations comply. And that’s where the EPA insists Michigan failed. 

Ultimately, state and local water agencies are responsible for correct monitoring and reporting on water quality, and to implement the standards that federal officials set. That doesn’t mean the EPA is blameless. The EPA didn’t act as urgently and as transparently as it could have to help the people of Flint—something it has acknowledged only grudgingly. 

On Monday, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy insisted, “EPA did its job but clearly the outcome was not what anyone would have wanted.” But a day later, the agency said that “while EPA worked within the framework of the law to repeatedly and urgently communicate the steps the state needed to take to properly treat its water, those necessary (EPA) actions were not taken as quickly as they should have been.”

In other words, they screwed up—like just about every government agency involved in this public health disaster.

Malheur Wildlife Refuge Takeover Is No Wounded Knee

By Dennis J. Bernstein, Reader Supported News

24 January 16

or forty years now, Leonard Peltier, leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), has been imprisoned as a result of the armed raid by the federal government on Indian land at the historic Wounded Knee in 1973. Bill Means, veteran of the Vietnam War and the standoff at Wounded Knee, said, “The Feds didn’t serve us coffee and pizzas. They came heavily armed, ready to do battle, and opened fire before they asked the first question.” Means is a co-founder, along with Leonard Peltier, of AIM, and is now on the board of the International Indian Treaty Council.

“The laws are recast and enforced in order to suppress any type of minority movement,” said Means, “to shift all the power of recognition to the white community. So that when the posse comitatus or bunch of racist ranchers take over a piece of land, they do it in the name of their country, and they become immune to the criminal laws of the United States.”

Means reflected on how this scenario might have played out quite differently, if it had been AIM that decided to lead an armed takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. “We know exactly what they’d do. We experienced that back in 1973,” Means told me in a January radio interview. “We were immediately surrounded by over 7 or 8 federal jurisdictions: FBI, U.S. marshals, U.S. Border Patrol, BIA police. I’m missing a few, but you can understand the type of response we get as Indian people.”

Ammon Bundy, right, shakes hands with a federal agent guarding the gate at the Burns Municipal Airport in Oregon on Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. (photo: Keith Ridler/AP)

Far from the history of his ancestors, who walked across the Bering Straits many thousands of years ago to discover North America, these descendants of white culture are “violent newcomers,” Means said. “These are modern-day colonizers. I mean, we already went through this era of homesteading which was, you know, back in the days of 1887 or so. So this is a scary type of uplift in the posse comitatus-type people. I experienced this, as well, back in Wisconsin.”

“It was 1987 when I moved here to the Twin Cities,” said the Native American leader. “There was a struggle for fishing rights going on. And that’s where we were surrounded, again, by law enforcement and vigilantes who were trying to stop our people from fishing, which is a tradition that goes back thousands of years. They actually made a social event out of it, where they would go every weekend, get drunk, and harass the Indian fishermen and women. That was just back in the 80s. And, of course, Wounded Knee in the 70s. Now what’s going on over there is being condoned and almost celebrated, and these people are being portrayed as heroes for standing up to the federal government. But, in fact, when we try to defend our land, and our fishing rights, hunting rights, what do we get? We get the opposite. We get the rednecks, we get the racists, we get the crooked politicians, who are all stepping forward to be a part of this action against Indian people. So we have a complete, shall we say, contradiction from the response of law enforcement. When they’re white, they are alright. If they’re Indian, if they’re Black Lives Matter, then it’s a whole other process.”

Confederate Flags Over Indian Land

Morningstar is a Native American activist and a member of the International Indian Treaty Council. She is also a member of the Pit River Tribe in Southern Oregon. Her tribe shares a boundary with the Paiute, whose land has been “occupied again by armed white people,” this time white ranchers and cattlemen, she says, claiming “sovereignty” over land that has been inhabited by these tribes for thousands of years.

“It’s really laughable that these armed militia have come in and are claiming that they’re the original caretakers of the land,” she said in an interview on January 20th. “We see it so much within these rural communities. They’ve really appropriated the language of sovereignty and caretaking. I live in a very rural community where there are a number of cattle ranchers. And they have stated, ‘We’re the caretakers here. It’s our sovereign right to be here. This is our land.’”

To Morningstar and the people she stands for, Ammon Bundy and his brother Ryan are not heroes. They have zero claim to the land and present “a direct threat” to the local Native American community. She herself has often felt directly threatened while walking in isolated parts of the countryside.

“It’s not a very welcoming atmosphere,” said Morningstar, “as I do wear my sweatshirt that says ‘Got Land?’ on the front, and ‘I’m thinking Indian’ on the back. And I don’t get a very warm response. Confederate flags are very common, the state of Jefferson flags. But these are tribal lands. We’ve been here since time immemorial. And so when the lands were homesteaded, when they were opened up for cattle ranchers, and for farmers, that wasn’t the beginning of U.S. history. We’ve existed for many thousands of years and so it’s very much a concern with the Bundy group and their supporters as well.”

Morningstar is deeply troubled by the takeover of the Malheur Refuge area, which she said contains sacred burial grounds of their ancient ancestors, and extensive personal records about the community and its people. She bristles at the claim by the Bundy brothers that they are acting on behalf of everyone in the area, including the Native American tribes. “They are absolutely not acting on behalf of the local tribes within the area,” she said unequivocally. “The Paiute have 420 members enrolled, half of whom live on and near the reservation. And so they have essentially taken over the bird refuge. The main concern right now is that there are over 4,000 artifacts. There are maps within the BLM offices. These are maps that are not disclosed to the public, and so we’re hearing stories now of the militia members, Bundy’s faction, you know, going through personnel files of the staff members there, many of which include tribal members. They have access to this classified material, and to the 4,000 artifacts.”

Morningstar added that her concern is not only with the potential damage the armed ranchers might do inside the formal structures of the refuge, but with what they have already done as a result of their driving large herds of cattle over sacred Indian land. “When it comes to sacred place protection, it’s definitely an issue, because the cattle are consistently stepping over sacred sites and burials,” she said. “They are contaminating our springs, our waterways, our creeks. They’re inside the rivers and stream ways. We’re having to do a lot of restoration work along the creek ways because we have cattle that are just pushing the soil and dirt into the water.”

The affected tribes have reached out directly to law enforcement and to the Feds, but unlike Wounded Knee in 1973, said Morningstar, when the government responded with massive firepower on the same day as the takeover, here the Feds have been slow to act. “The tribe is working directly with BLM and with law enforcement on it,” she said, “but they are very slow to respond, and there’s irony, of course. When the Wounded Knee takeover took place in 1973, the very same day there was response. There was paramilitary response from the U.S. government. We all know that there were tankers that were brought in. There were air bombings that occurred. And the fact that this takeover has been going on for over three weeks now, and the Feds are taking this ‘let’s sit back and wait’ approach, is very concerning.”

The Danns and the Bundys: The Racist Double Standard at Ruby Valley

In the mid-nineties, there was a similar standoff between Native Americans and federal authorities over grazing rights in Nevada. But as Bill Means is quick to point out, in rural Nevada where this played out, the Native Americans were on solid legal grounds and took the Feds to court. “They stood behind the rule of law, as Indian people, when they took action,” said Means. “Indian people stood behind the rule of law, and they were violently attacked.”

“What we’re talking about in Nevada came under what they call the Western Shoshone Tribe, and it involved a treaty called the Treaty of Ruby Valley,” said Means, an expert on broken treaties between the US and Indian nations. “And the local people said ‘Look, we have a right to our land, rather than to be mined, rather than to be exploited and appropriated by the federal government through their various federal agencies, like the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and other bureaus. The Danns were acting legally under a treaty, but they were harassed, beaten, fined, and arrested for protesting the illegal government policies,” he said. “All of a sudden now [in Oregon] we have sort of the same thing going on, only the Bundy clan is being made out to be heroes.”

Morningstar also raised the issue of the double standard in the case of the Danns. “Carrie and Mary Dann were fighting for their grazing rights under the Treaty of Ruby Valley,” she explained, “and the Treaty of Ruby Valley was a peace treaty that provided passage [for grazing], and they asserted their rights, and very much said that, you know, ‘We’re here, we’ve been here. We’re not paying additional fees.’ But the U.S. government came in during the middle of winter and started running [the Danns’] cattle and horses, by helicopter, and they were corralling them. Many of their livestock died. And these are not millionaire ranchers, these are two elderly Shoshone women. And so it’s, again, very concerning and just outright horrendous, in terms of the way that the native people who are the true caretakers of the land are treated, compared to these millionaire ranchers who are provided with tax subsidies,” said Morningstar.

In an act of desperation, and in the face of extreme brutality, the older brother of the Dann sisters actually set himself ablaze in front of a police roadblock, as captured in the documentary film “American Outrage.” The website for the film describes Carrie and Mary Dann as two “feisty Western Shoshone sisters who have endured five terrifying livestock roundups by armed federal marshals in which more than a thousand of their horses and cattle were confiscated – for grazing their livestock on the open range outside their private ranch.”

The elder Dann’s action, according to Morningstar, was indeed an act of extreme frustration, stemming from the fear of the loss of his very way of life. “There was at one point excessive force used by the BLM federal officers, and so they had ... they were twisting the arms, they were forcefully grabbing these elders, and it turned into a standoff at one point, where the elder [Dann] did say, ‘This is my livelihood. This is all that I have.’ And he ended up essentially lighting himself on fire at the time,” said Morningstar. “The fire was put out, he was hospitalized, and then he was charged a fine on top of it, by the BLM, for emergency response to come out.”

Leonard Peltier and the Bundys

“This February it will be 40 years of Leonard Peltier’s imprisonment,” lamented Morningstar. “He has ongoing serious health issues taking place right now. And we see just the gross mistreatment and dual standard when Indians stand up for their rights, and then to see the fact now that the Bundy occupiers are being called activists. They’re being called protestors. They’ve even used the hashtag occupymalheurofthebirdrefuge. And so they’re considering themselves to be now part of the Occupy movement,” she said. “And they’re able to come and go freely. They’re seen in town and they’re staying in motels. They are shopping at the local stores and eating at the local restaurants. They’re very much able to come and go as they please. And yet we know that there’s sensitive, classified material within the BLM office.”

The local tribes have expressed their deep concerns to law enforcement, and repeatedly asked the Feds to take action, Morningstar said, but their requests have fallen on deaf ears. “The tribe has asked outright to cut off their power, cut off their electricity, so that they’re not allowed to continue with this indiscretion. But the FBI’s stance has very much been that they’ve been on standby.”

“It’s more than a little disturbing,” said Bill Means, “this kind of condoning of the vigilantes. They actually believe that this is divine intervention, or manifest destiny. They actually believe it is their God-given right to take Indian land. And that’s really what’s going on. It’s not about the Feds versus the state, states rights. It’s about stealing Indian land.”

Dennis J. Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on Pacifica Radio, and is the recipient of a 2015 Pillar Award for his work as a journalist whistleblower. He is most recently the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.