Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette Monday promised a "thorough, exhaustive and independent" investigation into the ongoing Flint water crisis, naming two new leaders into the probe.
"The tragedy of Flint is a tragedy of immense proportions," Schuette told
ABC News, while announcing that "tough" former Wayne County prosecutor Todd Flood has been named as the special counsel of the investigation and "no nonsense" retired Detroit FBI chief Andrew Arena has been added to the team.
The investigation will center on whether state laws had been violated while delivering water to the residents of Flint, Michigan, after the city's water supply was switched from Detroit's to the water coming from the Flint River instead.
The water turned out to be corrosive and led to the leaching of lead from the city's water supply lines, leaving extremely toxic levels of lead to the city's water supply. As a result, residents have been forced to drink, cook, and even bathe with bottled water.
"Things went so terribly wrong," said Schuette Monday. "I think what happened is that confidence in government was shattered, and I understand that. You don't rebuild regain and restore trust overnight, it takes time."
Gov. Rick Snyder earlier this month declared a state of emergency for the county surrounding Flint because of the water.
Monday, he told
Fox News'
"Fox & Friends" that back in 2013, Flint and its home county officials all wanted to make the switch away from Detroit's water. The problems resulted from the "lack of treatment on the follow up" when anti-corrosive chemicals weren't added before the water was piped through.
Shortly after the switch, people started complaining about the water quality, "but lead is odorless and colorless so the real challenge, the real health care problem is the lead piece of this. And that's where the problem came in. This is where government failed. There was far too much effort to talk about doing testing, to follow protocols, to follow the lead and copper rule and not enough focus on common sense."
"There were multiple failures that caused this to happen and I'm responsible," Snyder told the program. "The folks at the state level work for me so I accept that responsibility. And I really want to fix this situation."
Meanwhile, the state government and National Guard have been active in the community, including covering more than 37,000 homes and asking residents if they can help with filters or water, and giving information on getting blood tests.
"We've been very active in the community and there's been tons of volunteers helping. So it's coordinating all this effort to address the problem, to see how we can mitigate the damage," said Snyder, who noted that he did not learn that there were unsafe lead levels until the beginning of October.
"I had the Department of Environmental Quality, the Department of Health and Human Services confirming that water perspective
— there wasn't a lead problem, that's unsafe from a blood lead level — blood test level, that there wasn't also a problem, and that finally got resolved at the end of September, beginning of October when they said they were incorrect in their conclusions," he said.
"That day I declared that we need to take action and that's when we started offering filters, water in terms of resources to people to try to turn this situation around."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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