The game of chess is a complicated game employing zero sum, competitive Machiavellian strategies to protect key political or military principals. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent’s king, and to protect the queen, the most powerful piece in the game, as long as possible. One fallen knight on the political chessboard of the Flint, Michigan water crisis is Susan Hedman, the EPA Regional 5 Administrator whose callous disregard for the health and safety of Flint citizens triggered her forced resignation although she has escaped any criminal liabilities.
Hedman was sacrificed to protect the EPA Queen, Gina McCarthy who could have used her congressionally authorized emergency powers under to the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to seize control of Flint’s environmentally dangerous designs created by the governor and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Congress has given the EPA Administrator under SDWA Section 1431 this authority:
“…upon receipt of information that a contaminant that is present in or likely to enter a public water system or an underground source of drinking water, or there is a threatened or potential terrorist attack or other intentional act, that may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to the health of persons, the EPA Administrator may take any action she deems necessary to protect human health.” [emphasis added]
Thus, Administrator McCarthy failed to exercise her power over both the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and Michigan Governor Synder. As a result, thousands of Flint citizens were poisoned with hundreds of children facing a life-time of medical and intellectual challenges.
CNN reported that low-level employees at the Michigan Environmental Quality Commission were indicted as sacrificial pawns in defense of the King, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. The chess game is on in earnest now in Flint. However, to be clear, it’s not that McCarthy or Snyder are of any consequence as individuals — it is the power that they so diligently serve that demands their protection.
The King and Queen in this scenario enjoy “sovereign immunity.” These politicos acting on behalf of the “sovereign” operate above the law while the battlefield is strewn with the blood and guts of their minions. While poisoned water flows from taps inside homes, the Royals remain above criminal prosecution, if not investigation. According to news reports, Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder has not been questioned by prosecutors (neither state nor federal) in connection to the crisis.
Similarly, there is no indication that the Department of Justice has placed EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy under investigation much less indictment.
But the pawns feel the tenuousness of their situation and with visions of prison in their future. No question, everyone involved in poisoning thousands of Flint citizens should be held accountable. But, at this point, those protected by power have been excluded from the process that is now being exacted against their underlings facing indictments.
It will only be through political activism and unrelenting protest that the actual political players — whose jobs should be defined by “the buck stops here” — will be charged and held accountable.
This week two state employees were charged with misleading the U.S. government about the poisoning: Michigan Department of Environmental Quality employees Stephen Busch and Michael Prysby. In addition, a Flint employee, Michael Glasgow, was charged with altering water test results.
One of the heroes of the Flint water crisis has been Dr. Marc Edwards. Dr. Edwards is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. He is an expert on water treatment and corrosion. It was Edwards’s research on elevated lead levels in Washington, DC’s municipal water supply that gained national attention and caused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to admit to publishing a report so rife with errors that a congressional investigation called it “scientifically indefensible.” He is considered one of the world’s leading experts in water corrosion in home plumbing, and is a nationally recognized expert on copper corrosion. When asked by BAR to comment on the recent criminal charges brought against low-level state employees, he offered:
We felt from the start, that environmental crimes were being committed in Flint by both the state MDEQ and an upper EPA administrator. Apparently others now feel the same way, at least in terms of the state MDEQ. On the basis of our experience and the evidence I have seen, the Flint employee charged did make mistakes, but he was also placed in an impossible situation and is not in the same league as the other bad actors.
When asked about the Michigan Governor’s decision to drink Flint water for 30 days, Dr. Edwards added, “While the Governor’s decision to drink Flint water for 30 days is unlikely to satisfy his critics, he is reinforcing an important and valid public health message — all available data indicate that the filters are producing water with very low lead.”
Had Flint citizens received precautionary warnings and water filters this crisis could have averted. But the same political players who now receive sovereign immunity and protections will remain above the law unless citizens across the country demand accountability.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 464 new monthly donors in the next 8 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy