To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
April 15, 2023
by Pete Brown, Detroit Workers’ Voice
The recent (Feb. 3) train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio is not
the first railroad disaster in recent years, nor will it be the last.
Derailments occur on a regular basis, about three per day, in the U.S.
Most are minor, do not involve injuries and little property damage. But
some are significant, and **all** of them, as the chairwoman of the
NTSB emphasizes, are preventable.
In setting up the NTSB, Congress specifically mandated that it have no
regulatory power; its job is to investigate accidents and make
recommendations, but the NTSB is prohibited from issuing safety
regulations. That privilege is reserved to Congress, which can allow
executive departments like DOT to issue regulations in certain limited
areas. Congress, a den of corruption and corporate bribery, reserves to
itself the final say on all regulations. And executive branch agencies
are also subject to political pressure and bribery. Corporate lobbyists
typically take their turn as government regulators, moving in and out
of private and “public” employment as they draft laws and regulations.
This is part of the story as to why the government is so slow to move
on major issues like global warming. A simple order to stop methane
leaks from oil wells, pipelines and refineries can take decades to
draft, get passed, and get implemented. At every point in the process
oil company lobbyists are raising objections and are part of the
drafting and implementation process. Representatives of environmental
groups, workers, trade unions, etc. are pushed aside.
Lessons about how regulatory agencies are “captured” and turned into
enemies of the people can also be gleaned from the Flint water crisis.
This can be seen in another book on the Flint water crisis that has
come to our attention that clarifies things more and emphasizes some
important political points. This book is Anna Clark’s The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy, originally published in 2018, reprinted as a paperback with a new Afterword in 2019.
A major point emphasized by the author is the role of the masses,
the ordinary working class residents of Flint. They were the ones who
complained about the water and brought the issue to the notice of
various government officials who finally – much too late – ordered an
end to use of the Flint River as a source for drinking water. It was
the residents of Flint, the ones victimized by the switch to
Flint River water, who protested and complained to various government
agencies until some of them finally began to suspect something was
wrong. Clark gives credit heroes like the scientist Marc Edwards and
the medical director Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, also emphasizes that it
was the working-class activists who noticed problems, took notes,
tested their water, and denounced the lying government officials about
it. Through their various civic organizations – churches, trade unions,
etc. – activists organized giveaways of bottled water, water filters,
and so forth. Residents with especially bad water were allowed by
neighbors to hook up to their water systems. Eventually, as the truth
emerged, residents joined together in lawsuits that eventually won
hundreds of millions of dollars from the state of Michigan, though some
of the injury to children from exposure to lead is irreparable.
The actions of poor and working class residents is in notable contrast to the city officials of Flint. Even though their official duties had been superseded by the state’s appointment of an Emergency Manager, they went along with the water switch and even promoted it. This included Dayne Walling, the mayor. A native of Flint who was a “boy wonder” Rhodes Scholar and was expected to come up with brilliant ideas for solving Flint’s financial troubles, Walling had his executive powers taken away by the governor. Walling was a Democrat and Snyder a Republican. But Walling never complained, and when the water switch occurred, he was at the Flint water plant, toasting drinks to the wonderful Flint River water and grinning for TV cameras. **(1)** Even though Walling and the city council members had their official powers taken away by the EM, they could have still played an important role if they had forcefully protested actions of the EM. Instead, they meekly accepted whatever the EM decided.
City water officials swore that the Flint River water passed all
tests, especially after treatment, and they were generally correct
(though it took some initial bungling at the treatment plant to get it
right). Flint River water, as it came out of taps at the plant, was
safe to drink. But protesters who saw brown water coming out of their
water taps at home were also correct as they insisted that the water
was terrible. As it passed through aging pipes, without anti-corrosives
added to it, the water became toxic. Instead of checking their tests at
the plant with tests in people’s homes, water officials just went on
insisting that everything was fine and assuring state and federal
regulators that they were adding anti-corrosives, just as federal law
mandated. Without the anti-corrosives, the Flint River water leached
aging metal pipes and introduced iron and lead into the water. It
wasn’t until the mass protests aroused doubts in the minds of some
regulators that some of them began to doubt the reassurances of city
and state officials, which turned out to be lies. Led by “bean counter”
governor Snyder, local and state officials decided to save a few
pennies per hundred gallons of water by not adding anti-corrosives.
This problem arises with any government regulation in the era of
corporate control. Things might look good on paper, to a corporate
lobbyist, but things can turn out quite differently when the
consequences are borne by the working class masses. Feedback mechanisms
can crop up. The regulators themselves might be lying, trying to skim
off expenses or simply exaggerating their success. This shows the need
for working class participation in the regulatory process.
Clark explains the connection between lead and Legionnaire’s
disease. Both were caused by the Flint River water, but how?
Legionnaire’s bacteria are present in many water sources, but they can
be controlled by treatment with chlorine. Just to make sure their water
was safe to drink, Flint water officials added excess chlorine to it.
But instead of helping, this made the water worse; the excessive
chlorides corroded the metal pipes leading into people’s homes. This
introduced lead into the water and also flakes of iron. The metal
reacted chemically with the chlorides, absorbing the chlorine, and
actually rendering the water chlorine-deficient. This allowed
Legionnaire’s bacteria, among others, to flourish. Many people suffered
strange ailments – skin rashes, loss of hair, headaches, etc. But the
worst result was the outbreak of Legionnaires disease, which killed 12
people.
This shows again the need for working class participation in the
regulatory process. The experience of the masses must be taken into
account as new technologies and materials are introduced.
Clark goes into the history of Flint’s development as an industrial
city with a large population of African-Americans. But racist housing
policies squeezed black people into certain areas, beyond which they
were not allowed. These were the areas with the worst city services and
the oldest infrastructure, built during the period when lead water
lines were largely used. (More recent water lines are usually copper or
PVC). So, of course, these were the people most directly victimized by
the Flint River water. Flint’s legacy of racist redlining in housing
underlay the environmental racism that was a result of the water
crisis.
<h4>Regulatory inaction
The Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) accepted without
question reports from Flint city officials that they were testing the
water correctly. And what was the role of the federal EPA? They
deferred to the MDEQ as long as they could. It is not true, as
maintained by some Democratic Party pro-Obama types, that EPA warned
Flint against the switch to Flint River water. The EPA does have rules
about the need for anti-corrosives, and they expected Flint officials
to know what they were doing. The water switch occurred in April 2014.
When, in October 2014, people complained to the EPA about Flint water,
the EPA replied, “The water is fine”, citing officials’ tests at the
plant. In other words, they deferred to MDEQ and blew off the
complaints of city residents. This remained their official, public
position until at least summer 2015.
In early 2015 one of their people, Miguel del Toral, intrigued by
the continuing reports and complaints, traveled to Flint on his own and
tested the water at one house. He was alarmed by the results. He
retested again in the spring and wrote a later-famous memo expressing
alarm to his superiors. He also shared this memo with the home’s owner
(Leanne Waters), who shared it with the ACLU. Their publicist, Curt
Guyette, leaked it to the press. Del Toral’s retest was done in April
2015, his memo was written in May, and the memo’s leak came in July. At
this point, when del Toral’s memo was made public, the EPA disavowed it.
They said it was preliminary, wasn’t meant to be public, and del Toral
was silenced and sent to Siberia, bureaucratically speaking.
This was 15 months after the water switch, nearly a year after the
first public protests in Flint. Children were drinking leaded water in
Flint, and the EPA refused to publicize that fact and refused to warn
the residents. They did exchange some emails with MDEQ and advised them
to do some retesting, but still did not want to “create panic” or
embarrass the state and city governments.
Finally, in September, they began to make some public statements advising citizens to be careful about the water, use filters, etc. This pressure induced Gov. Snyder, in October, to switch back to Detroit water. Still, it took some time for the lead to be flushed out, to still require filtration, etc., and it wasn’t until December that Snyder declared a state of emergency. The EPA and federal government finally followed the state and declared an emergency in Jan. 2016. At every point the EPA lagged behind and made excuses for the city and state governments, which lied to the EPA about water corrosive treatment. The EPA’s excuse is, “We were lied to”, which is true; but they also made no attempt to look beyond the lies to the real-world experience of the people of Flint, which citizens were telling them about. Only Miguel del Toral made the effort, and his memo became an embarrassment to the powers-that-be.
The Clean Water Act actually allows the EPA to declare an emergency
and to take over from state and local governments the clean-up and
restoration of essential services like water. But doing that requires
political will. It would require the EPA to be proactively involved in
guarding the people’s welfare. It would require a vast expansion of
funding for the EPA as well as an expansion of its regulatory powers.
It would also require bringing working class participation into the
affairs of the EPA, listening to people who are affected by policies
instead of simply following the orders of corporate lobbyists.
One lingering lawsuit remains from the Flint water crisis. All claims against the state were rolled into one settlement for something like $622 million. But also, there was a lawsuit filed against the federal EPA by resident Jan Burgess. Burgess claims, rightly, that the EPA knew about the Flint water problems considerably before they did anything about it. Burgess herself wrote to them in October 2014, almost an entire year before EPA officials began advising the use of water filters. It was during those eleven months that most of the harm was done to Flint’s children. Burgess was originally joined in her lawsuit by 150 other Flint residents, but as the case lingers on, stalled in court, most of those have dropped off, and it looks like only two other co-litigants remain. (See the case’s update at https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/639e9857b642790329c7dfd4. From this update, it appears the plaintiffs are trying to obtain a deposition from a woman named McCarthy, who was a supervisor in the Chicago EPA offices. The plaintiffs are trying to get her to explain herself, why the EPA tried to bury del Toral’s memo, etc. But McCarthy’s lawyers argue that she doesn’t have to, because – get this – she’s a “high official.” According to a legal doctrine called “the Morgan doctrine” (after some other lawsuit), “high officials” are immune from explaining themselves.
Who says everyone is equal before the law? The Morgan doctrine --
which is, apparently, accepted law – explicitly says they’re not. High
officials cannot be required to give depositions about their decisions
or actions because, supposedly, it would interfere with their duties.
And this applies to past officials as well as present ones. McCarthy is
no longer a “high official”, since she was forced to resign; but she
can still refuse to talk about it. Children who grew up in Flint will
suffer the effects of lead for decades, but “high officials” are safe
from explaining what they did or didn’t do in the crisis.
As far as state officials are concerned, the present Democratic
Party administration in Michigan has buried prosecutions of Republican
Party officials. Money lawsuits have been settled, but no one is to be
criminally prosecuted. Both parties’ politicians are circling the
wagons, and no one is to be blamed. Mass actions by the residents of
Flint were able to stop the Flint water crisis from becoming worse than
it was, no thanks to the bourgeois politicians and their regulatory
agencies.
As for the federal government, it should be remembered that the
EPA’s inaction took place during Barack Obama’s administration. Anna
Clark says residents of Flint found Obama’s campaign slogan, “Yes, we
can!” inspiring (p. 16). But Obama’s inaction on Flint is less so. Like
Snyder, Obama tried to ignore Flint until it was no longer possible,
and finally in January 2016 declared a federal emergency, making a few
dollars in aid available. In the final weeks of his presidency, Obama
signed a national infrastructure bill that made some money available
for loans to cities for water infrastructure improvements. How much
money? $20 million. And that’s for loans, not grants or actual aid. $20
million might pay for a few cities to study the matter and come up with
plans for improvement, but that’s about all. A recent survey by the EPA
estimates that cities and states will need to spend about $625 billion
in the next 20 years on water infrastructure improvements, including
the replacement of lead service lines. **(2)** The recent Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law signed by President Biden provides a “whopping” $6
billion to get this work started – but that is only ONE percent of
what’s needed! And Biden, like Obama, never says a word about getting
the working-class masses involved in water infrastructure improvements
and regulation.
(1) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBZE8XEJXoo] April 25, 2014: This is the infamous video of Mayor Walling pushing the button to make the water switch from Detroit water to Flint River water. The video also shows Walling and other city leaders toasting the water, “Here’s to Flint!” Walling is flanked by Gov. Snyder’s appointed Emergency Manager, Darnell Earley.
(2) Michael Phillis, “1.16 million lead pipes in Florida, more than any other state, survey shows”. Associated Press, Wed., April 5, 2023. <>
Picture: “Flint vowed to replace lead pipes by 2020. We’re still waiting”, April 4, 2023. <>
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