Virginia Tech lead expert attacks EPA at Flint water congressional hearing
Dr. Marc Edwards said he was dumbfounded by top EPA officials' inability to take responsibility for the lead contamination of Flint's drinking water supply.
A leading expert on lead contamination gave a searing critique of alleged failures at the federal Environmental Protection Agency over the Flint water crisis before a congressional oversight committee hearing Tuesday.
Dr. Marc Edwards, the Charles P. Lundsford Professor of Environmental and Water Resources Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, said in his opening statement that he was dumbfounded by top EPA officials' inability to take responsibility for the lead contamination of Flint's drinking water supply that continues to keep residents from drinking water straight from the tap.
Former EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman said in her earlier testimony that neither she nor the federal agency had anything to do with the conditions that resulted in high levels of lead in Flint’s drinking water, downplaying EPA’s responsibility.
Del Toral: EPA didn't make Flint children a priority
Based on the testimony from Hedman, who resigned during the furor over Flint's tainted drinking water, Edwards said ruefully that it appeared the agency had a policy of "willful blindness in this case to the pain and suffering of Flint residents."
He called EPA administrators "unremorseful for their role in causing this man-made disaster." He added that they were "completely unrepentant and unable to learn from their mistakes."
Hedman had earlier testified that the EPA did not create Flint. But Edwards shot back: "EPA had everything to do with creating Flint."
He said the agency's previous failure to learn from the lead contamination water crisis in Washington, D.C., in the mid-2000s meant that "I was not surprised when Flint occurred," Edwards said. "I was expecting a Flint to occur."
The Virginia Tech professor who was among the first to raise red flags of elevated lead levels in Flint's drinking water in 2015 said that a landlord with a similar track records of lead levels in his tenants would have likely faced criminal prosecution and incarceration.
He said Hedman "aided, abetted and emboldened" a failure among state and federal regulators to respond properly in Flint. "She allowed Flint's children to be harmed."
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