Ex-Flint manager says he relied on experts in water crisis

The hearing was the first time that several prominent figures in the water crisis - Hedman; Darnell Earley, the state-appointed emergency manager of Flint at the time of the water switch; and Dayne Walling, the city's former mayor - had testified publicly about their roles. She's a mother of three in Flint and has been protesting since the city switched water supplies in April of 2014, while Flint was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager.

"Unthinkable errors all underscore that Flint's crisis resulted from improper treatment of the water, an issue that fell squarely in the bailiwick of (the MDEQ) and EPA", Earley said in the testimony released by the committee.

Among those scheduled to testify Thursday are Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy. It has also led to several lawsuits in state and federal courts, and federal and state investigations.

Earley's testimony comes as the House oversight panel holds two hearings this week on the Flint crisis. The corrosive water lacked adequate treatment and caused lead to leach from old pipes - and there has since been much discussion about who is to blame.

Susan Hedman said legal rules and limited enforcement powers reduced the agency to working with state environmental regulators behind the scenes in an attempt to fix the problems that exposed the city's 95,000 residents to lead in their drinking water.

Earley, a longtime school administrator and municipal official who previously served as city manager in Saginaw, Michigan, took over as emergency manager in Flint in October 2013 - seven months after the Flint City Council approved the water switch and former emergency manager Edward Kurtz signed it.

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Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards, who helped expose the lead problem in Flint's water and is now assisting both the city and state, accused Hedman and the EPA of "willful blindness" and for being unrepentant and unremorseful in the aftermath of the crisis.

In July 2015, EPA official Jennifer Crooks said in a summary of an agency meeting on Flint that "it doesn't make sense to discuss with the state what happened in the past...as the state sees the lead levels climbing, I don't see the benefit in rubbing their nose in the fact that we're right and they're wrong". Elevated levels of lead have been found in children's blood. "In fact, he disputed nearly everything the governor's task force (which concluded the department's mistakes led to the problems in Flint) concluded about his failures".

Chaffetz revealed a memo from a regional EPA official to others that said, "I'm not so sure Flint is the community we want to go out on a limb for". Rather, she told the panel, she said she was sorry for taking an entire day to respond, because she had been out of work for a medical procedure.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House oversight committee, said in his opening remarks Tuesday that Hedman had dismissed lead concerns and that she "rightfully" resigned. It "cannot ever happen again", he wrote in an opening statement for Tuesday's hearing.

CHAFFETZ: I still don't think the final chapter has been written on where the breakdown was.

Cummings said, however, that in all the time he served as Department of Environmental Quality chief, the topic of Flint's water never came up in any cabinet meeting with the governor.