[LINK] "Expert says Michigan officials changed a Flint lead report to avoid federal action"

[rfmcdonald]

Mark Brush's Michigan Radio article about the latest stage in the scandal of the lead-contaminated water of the Michigan city of Flint, the apparent cover-up of the contamination in EPA reports, is infuriating.

The Environmental Protection Agency says it’s conducting a full review of what happened in Flint.

For more than a year, state officials assured city residents their water was safe. Those assurances turned out to be wrong.

And it wasn’t until some residents got outside experts involved -- who not only found elevated lead levels in the drinking water, but that blood lead levels were also rising in Flint kids – that the state admitted there was a problem.

One of the more troubling charges made against the state is that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality knowingly dropped lead test samples to avoid exceeding a federal drinking water standard.

[. . .]

State officials maintain they followed the testing rules for lead under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

But others say that’s just not true.

Marc Edwards is an expert on water treatment at Virginia Tech University. He said the first and most important step did not occur in Flint.

The city is supposed to test homes known to either be serviced by lead service lines, or that have lead pipes or pipes with lead solder in them.

Large water systems are supposed to test the "worst-case-scenario" homes to see if they have a problem.

That’s the point of the federally-mandated Lead and Copper Rule. Large water systems are supposed to test the “worst-case-scenario” homes to see if they have a problem.

“They did not do that, and that is the primary reason that they missed the worst of the lead problem,” says Edwards.

Edwards lays the blame squarely on the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality – not the city of Flint.