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The Flint water crisis wasn't the first indication that something was wrong with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
Warnings arose years before that something was amiss with the agency, which has a big role in the Flint water screw-up, Ted Roelofs writes in Bridge Magazine.
Signs of risk included federal concerns about the ability of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to detect lead in a water supply.
In 2010, a federal audit portrayed MDEQ as a department beset by budget cuts, staff shifts and limited resources, and willing to take regulatory shortcuts in safeguarding Michigan’s water.
The agency’s Drinking Water Program had just seen its annual budget slashed to roughly $1.5 million, down $300,000 from the previous fiscal year, said the audit, conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“Frequent hiring freezes have impacted Michigan for about ten years,” the report noted. “This has made it difficult to replace positions.” Bans on contract services and a “cumbersome” employee hiring process didn’t help, either.
Funding cuts forced MDEQ’s Drinking Water Program to fill vacancies “with staff from other programs that have been cut or eliminated,” the audit said. “While this practice preserves jobs, it decreases the technical knowledge of staff and requires tremendous resources to train these staff.”
Jennifer Granholm was the governor in 2010.