Skip to footer

Three officials charged in first round of criminal probe into Flint water crisis

One Flint, Mich., official and two state regulators will be charged in a probe into the ongoing water contamination emergency in Flint that began in 2014.

|
Dominick Reuter/Reuters/File
Michigan Attorney General William Schuette, shown in this 2014 photo, is set to announce criminal charges on Wednesday connected to his investigation into dangerous levels of lead in Flint's drinking water.

Three Michigan officials will face criminal charges approved by the Genesee County Court on Wednesday, in what is expected to be the first round of an extensive criminal probe into the Flint water crisis.

Flint employee Michael Glasgow, along with Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) employees Steven Busch and Michael Prysby, were charged with a total of 13 combined felony and misdemeanor charges.

Justice Tracy Collier-Nix authorized the charges of evidence tampering and willful neglect of office against Mr. Glasgow, who prosecutors say altered water testing results, MLive reports. Mr. Prysby and Mr. Busch each were charged on several counts, including misconduct in office, tampering with evidence, and Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act violations.

The water emergency began in 2014 when Flint switched its water source from the Detroit water system to the Flint River as a cost saving measure. The river water, which was highly corrosive, went untreated and untested until 2015, despite complaints from residents and was not switched back to Detroit's Lake Huron-sourced water until last October. By that time, the highly corrosive water had caused lead to leach out of the pipes and flow from residents' taps.

A state of emergency has been in place in Flint since December, and residents still wary of contamination are using filters or drinking bottled water.

While the crisis raised awareness of potentially contaminated water in United States, to some it also displayed the "limits in running a government as a business," as University of California in San Diego political science professor Thad Kousser told The Christian Science Monitor earlier this year.

"The private marketplace works because of competition, but governments often have monopoly," he said. "When Volkswagen screws up, you can buy a Ford. But when lead starts coming out of your tap, you can't just turn on another tap."

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette's office says Prysby and Busch knowingly misled the Environmental Protection Agency, telling agency officials that the city was using corrosion control when both were aware that it was not. They are also accused of tampering with water tests and hampering a Genesee County Health Department investigation.

Busch is on paid leave following a suspension, while Prysby is working a new DEQ job. Glasgow also testified that Prysby informed him that phosphate would not be needed to treat Flint's potentially corrosive piping.

The Detroit News reported that Attorney General Schuette's action was "the first of more to come." Schuette, along with other investigators and officials, is set to make a "significant" announcement in Flint Wednesday afternoon.

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Three officials charged in first round of criminal probe into Flint water crisis
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2016/0420/Three-officials-charged-in-first-round-of-criminal-probe-into-Flint-water-crisis
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe