Flint Water Crisis: Governance and Consequences

On the issue of water, let's actually get directly to your book. So, We the Poisoned, it's about Flint, Michigan. You've been on the beat covering this from the very beginning. Let's actually sort of go back in time and just walk everybody through exactly what happened with the Flint water crisis, how we got to this point, who are the villains, etc. Yeah, I think that if people have seen Roger and Me, Michael Moore's famous documentary, I think that's a good starting point. Because this couldn't have happened unless there was kind of a controlled demolition of places like Flint. For those that don't know, Flint was like at one time, you know, 1950s, 60s, like the utopia of the middle class. It was a burgeoning city, home of GM, the auto industry. One parent could work. You know, it was it was a booming, booming metropolis. And for a lot of reasons, both national, the offshoring of jobs. deregulation on money in politics and local white flight, redlining, racist rezoning. Flint and Detroit and many other cities were just decimated economically. And the tax base shrank through white flight. And it just, at the turn of the century, the 2000s, beginning of the 2010s, was kind of like a rotting economic corpse. So then enter, at that time, Republican Governor Rick Snyder. At a time like pre-Trump, he was kinda rumored to wanna run for president in 2016. And he was running on running business like running government like a business, which we know how that works out. So what he did was-Like Coke Brothers guy. Yeah, big time and Sheldon Adelson guy too. So what he did was he declared a financial emergency in places like Flint, Detroit, other cities, predominantly black cities. And he- appointed unelected emergency managers. So all the freak out now about democracy is on the line. Well, this is actually a case of like democracy was removed. So he pushed through really draconian laws, appointed unelected emergency managers, call them czars, to basically take over for the elected mayor and city council. And a real desire of local officials in that area, Flint, Genesee County, as well as the governor, was to Regionalized the water system, i.e. privatized. So Detroit basically had the monopoly on water in Michigan. They provided about half of Michigan its water. The water came from the Great Lakes, which is some of the purest water on Earth. The Great Lakes actually provides 20% of the surface water to the world. And Flint had been getting its water from Detroit for 50 years without a problem. But Detroit had been price gouging Flint. So there were like legitimate. complaints from local officials that we don't have control over the rates. Let's just create our own water system. But what they did was basically create a boondoggle. Detroit's pipeline to Flint, they were basically going to create a duplicate water pipeline along the same exact path, which in engineering terms is unheard of. And they were going to pipe from Detroit to Flint in this new water system, raw water, the water that had been coming to Flint. Flint was already treated water. What do you need raw water for? Fracking, farming, auto industry, meatpacking. The people on the ground in Flint and Genesee County and the Snyder administration were bragging this was going to be the blue economy because most of the water was not actually going to be used for the residents. It was going to be used for business and it would be cheaper. But the problem was at that time, like I said, Flint's a rotting economic corpse. They could not borrow any money. They had no credit rating in 2014, 10 years ago, because of all the aforementioned economic struggles. So Snyder's administration, local officials on the ground, and JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, they kind of conspired in this cabal to create a fake emergency that would give Flint an exception to borrow $100 million. So Flint, through a financial scheme, was allowed to borrow $100 million, even though, by the way, Detroit, to keep Flint. On its system, they offered to cut its rate in half. So imagine you go to the mall, everything's half off. So it was never about saving money, because Flint would have saved money staying on Detroit. It was about creating this completely unnecessary new privatized water system for which the majority of the water was not going to be used for residents drinking or bathing. And they basically indebted Flint, which legally was not allowed to borrow any more money, to borrow $100 million for this brand new water system. And by the way, while that new water system was being built, we will use the Flint River. which we were just talking about corporate pollution, General Motors, Dow Chemical, DuPont had dumped all its crap and waste in there for 100 years. And oh, by the way, we'll use the Flint water plant, which is the equivalent of one of these Boeing planes falling apart in midair. The Flint water plant did not even have the proper equipment to treat the water. The media has always just... And you spoke to workers, actually, at the Flint water plant who were like, this is not going to work. So... So that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about is I'm not an expert on water systems, but it seems pretty self-evident. And the residents themselves felt this way, like they were looking at the Flint River and saying, this water is disgusting and you think that this is going to work out. So who raised questions at the time? Were there people within government who were looking at this going, number one? Flint, Michigan, borrowing $100 million. What are we doing here? Number two, we're going from using this, you know, Great Lakes, like glacial water, which is relatively pristine, to using the Flint River. How is that going to work? Number three, we have this incredibly like aging and inadequate water treatment system that's supposed to now shoulder all of this burden. And Detroit is offering us actually a good deal now. And my recollection from your book is like a seat on the board so that there would be permanent like Flint would have a say in what the rates were going forward. Was there anyone with power in government who was saying this is insane? Like, what are we doing here? No, because the power was taken by the governor. Again, the emergency manager was an unelected bureaucrat. So even though they would have ceremonial votes, the Flint City Council could ceremonially vote. It didn't matter because the emergency manager could overtake it. And I don't hear Democrats with their fundraising emails screaming about this. This is actually democracy being removed. But to answer your question, let's start with the governor. My book shows he was warned a year before the water switch that the Flint River water was not safe. He was warned by his own environmental officials that there was a bacterial risk, which proved to be true, if Flint River was used as a full-time water. distribution system. He was warned about carcinogens, which are those TTHMs. I got proof that he was warned about this. So again, remember that Bob Woodward tape with Trump, where it was shown that Trump knew COVID was worse, that he was telling on to the public? Well, Snyder was warned a year before, yet he allowed it to move forward. Secondly, I mean, I got confidential documents and sourcing. I mean, people at the plant. were screaming, workers at the plant were screaming a year before. Hell no, and I quote, hell no, we cannot do this. We don't have the staff, we don't have the equipment, our systems are all out of date because the plant had not been used as a, it hadn't treated water on a full-time basis since mid-20th century. So it was basically a part-time plant for 50 years. But essentially what happened was this Wall Street scam to create this Unnecessary brand new water system had already locked in Flint because of Flint signed on to help finance this new water system. So they were already on the hook for these bonds, which, by the way, if people are reading like, oh, that sucks, but this is unique to Flint. There's bond deals like this happening all over the country because most cities are broke and have to issue bonds to finance things like water systems. So basically. Even though the people at the plant were saying, hell no, we can't do this. Even though two weeks before the water switch, they were so understaffed, they moved workers from the garbage department to the water plant, who had no expertise of water. They were already on the hook to start paying back these bonds for this new water system at the end of the year. Then you move to six months after the water switch, when one of Snyder's league... lawyers was actually sounding the alarm that we need to switch back to Detroit. There's E. coli in the water. General Motors is getting off the water because it's destroying their parts. She was told she was told by Snyder's emergency manager it would be too expensive to switch back to Detroit. And what she what he what he meant by that, we cannot start paying Detroit a million dollars a month because we're already on the hook to start paying back these bonds. So when I say running government like a business, it was all. X's and O's on a balance sheet and the residents were completely disregarded. And I believe liberals and lefties, progressives like to debate, is it race, is it class? I mean, it was both. I mean, this is a poor black community, but they're poor. And right now in East Palestine, it's a poor white community and very similar things are going on there. So essentially, because they created this financial boondoggle, the people of Flint were forced to, while General Motors got off of the water, the people of Flint were forced to continue drinking and bathing in this water until the new water system was built. They cared more about the frickin'cars than they did about the human beings. So based on your reporting, why did they not heed? any of the warnings that this was going to be an absolute catastrophe for this move? I can't get in the governor's head. I can't get in the emergency manager's head. I don't believe that they knowingly switched the water, like knowing it was going to become, you know, poison people. I don't think it was that, you know, evil. I just think it was kind of reckless. I think they kind of just assumed, yeah, if there's, yeah, if there's problems along the way, we'll figure it out. I mean, I have emails literally showing that the governor's chief of staff, like as they were telling the public it was safe, privately is saying like, how can we make the river water safe? They were, you know, like I said, when there was bacteria found, they were just bombing the system with chlorine. So I think they went into it kind of recklessly because who gives a shit? It's Flint. So I think it was recklessness, carelessness. I don't think it was, I don't think they knew that. The people were going to get poisoned. I just think they didn't put a lot of thought and care into it. And there were two sets of things going on. Number one, Snyder, again, was angling to run for president. And his mentality was, I'm going to run as an economic wizard who saved these distressed cities. So he was going to run on, I got Detroit out of bankruptcy. I helped Flint because part of the move to go to the Flint River was theoretically, we're going to be saving. $12 million a year because we're not using Detroit's water system. We're using our own Flint River, which is theoretically free, but they were told that you have to make upgrades to the plant of $60 million. They only made a couple million dollars before the water switch. So basically, I think in Snyder's mind and others, we're going to basically totally cancel out Flint's deficit by getting rid of the Detroit $12 million that we pay them a year. We'll just use the... Flint River for free. Yeah, we'll make a couple adjustments to the plant, but we'll figure it out. And when they realized that the water was bad, instead of immediately moving them back to Detroit, really what they did was just try to put Band-Aids on a gaping gunshot wound. Yeah, let's talk more about that piece, actually. So they flipped the switch. The temporary place, so the long-term plan is this new pipeline that's going to go to the Great Lakes that's running along the already existing pipeline. The temporary plan is to use the Flint River. So they flip the switch, the water starts coming out of the pipes. What happens? What do the residents experience? And how long is it from the time that they start getting sick and coming to, you know, City Hall with water bottles filled with smelly, brown, horrible water? How long from that until there's an actual admission that, oh, yeah, sorry, we are poisoning you? 18 months. Jesus Christ. The switch was pulled in April 2014. The first complaints are actually made to the EPA three weeks after that. The EPA knew about this. I mean, they're not directly responsible for the cover-up, but, you know, silence is complicity. They could have taken emergency action to take over and to step in. They didn't. Same thing is happening right now in East Palestine. But basically what happened is in real time and in the book, you know, I obtained phone calls of the governor's chief counsel calling him frantically at four in the morning. I obtained phone calls of the governor, his chief of staff, his health director frantically on the phone six months after the water switch, 22 times in two days at the same exact time that the Legionnaires outbreak, which was this water back. It's basically bacterial pneumonia. It's worse than basic pneumonia. It's deadly. And they were basically covering it up. That's what prosecutors concluded shortly before he was up for reelection. And they only were forced to make the admission in October 2015 because there was a local pediatrician, Dr. Mona Hatisha. She got her hands on the blood lead levels of children and comparing the blood levels of children before the water switch to after, it was evident that it was a lot. It was spiked. It was significantly higher. They tried to demonize her as, you know, causing a panic and she's cherry picking data. But finally, after it became clear she was right, they finally admitted it. So it's not even clear they would have admitted it if not for. a local pediatrician. And my reporting shows that Snyder in particular, he knew about the deadly bacterial pneumonia legionnaires. He knew about it 16 months before he notified the public. And I think there were a lot of things going on. Number one, I mean, he was ambitious and a sociopath clearly, and was putting a potential presidential run before the safety of the people he represents. And clearly, you know, having a water crisis is not gonna be a... Put it on a bumper sticker for your presidential run. Number two, they wanted to try, again, Band-Aids on a gunshot wound. I think in their mind, they thought they could basically make the water safer and it wasn't as bad. And they were kind of fooling themselves into thinking, oh, the brown water is aesthetic. It's not a health problem. It's just a discoloration, but our numbers are showing the water's fine, even though they were cheating on the water testing. So I think Snyder, in his mind and his people thought, let's focus on our national ambitions and we'll fix the water as we go, which is the equivalent of, you know, Boeing trying to fix the planes as in mid-flight. And you can't tell me if this happened in Ann Arbor, it wouldn't have happened. But if this happened an hour down the road in whiter, wealthier Ann Arbor, if it happened, I mean, immediately it would have been stopped because it would have affected people. in the government's class. Who matters. Yeah, exactly. It's class. I mean, you see it with like Israel and Palestine, the level of dehumanization, like that's what leads you to not care. If it was in his neighborhood with people that he knows and loves and cares about and thinks about as full on human beings, do you think he would have just been like, I'm sure Flint River will be fine. I'm sure these like bacterial outbreaks that I'm being warned about, no big deal. Let's just try it. Let's just use these human beings as basically like science experiments. And, you know, I'm thinking about like moms making formula with tap water for their babies over 18 months. You know, what what are the health that you will have lifelong health impacts that are not reversible? Like give us some of the human stories of what people experience and are still. struggling with and whose health has been completely destroyed for their entire lives now. Yeah. And by the way, we have the answer because Snyder, while he was governor, preemptively replaced the pipes in Ann Arbor without a problem after this. And Flint, 10 years later, they still haven't replaced all the pipes. It's a disaster. It's a disaster. You know, the word genocide is rightly used, I believe, in terms of Gaza. I believe this is a slower moving one because I don't really think it's possible to know the full death count. They didn't even have a health registry for the first few years and 20,000 people have left Flint. So who knows and who's tracking those people. But in my reporting and just people I've spoken with, horrible interactions I've had, cancer is surging right now in Flint and the Health Department of Michigan, under current Governor Gretchen Whitmer, is dragging their feet on doing a full-throttle study. But in NYU talk... NYU toxicologist, her preliminary study has shown that some forms of cancer are up 300% compared to before the water switch. You also have, I mean, every time I go there, liver, people dying of liver problems, kidney failure. There are rare cancers that are forming. You have people that have serious, seriously neurological damage, cognitive issues, memory loss. behavioral problems which affects crime plenty of research on uh heavy metal poisoning uh and high crime in certain areas the children which are now who are now teenagers i mean learning disabilities um regression and reading math everything uh kids flunking out uh there's been an increase in suicide which it's hard enough to be a teenager but add on that your brain has been damaged i have heard from residents as young as a six, seven, eight-year-olds committing suicide. I don't know how, but that's what I was told by some activist leaders. And it's also the trauma. I mean, could you imagine for a second, you're poisoned. The government basically gives you a short-term Medicaid expansion and a kick in the ass. No one is held accountable. And 10 years later, the pipes haven't been replaced. The water is still bad, despite what the EPA tells you. They don't have universal health care and some of them are like basically going bankrupt trying to pay for doctors because they don't have universal health care. But I mean across the board whether it's the physical problems, cancers, and I can just tell you a couple years ago I did a report there and I knocked on 400 doors on a story I was working on there. And almost every block I learned of new people that had just died. on that block, not exclusively elderly, 40s, 50s, 60s. But Flint doesn't have a COVID death count in real time like we did on CNN in the beginning. So it's kind of just one of these silent, whatever you want to call it. I think it's a slower-moving genocide. I think it's a lost generation. And these people deserve a lot, but at the basics, they deserve Medicare for all, lifelong testing. And it's also, it's not just lead, PFAS, bacterial. And people are still posting 10 years later, the media has successfully spun this as over and they put out the EPA's numbers. I mean, I exposed that they cheated on the testing in Michigan and Flint, but people are still posting videos of brown water coming out. I was just there for my book. People online to get me to sign their book are showing me rashes on their skin, current rashes from the water. So you don't, I mean, all you have to do is go there to- to realize this is not some like disaster from the past. It's ongoing. Wow. So let's talk about, we talked about, you know, state and local reaction. Tell everybody about the national government reaction or lack thereof, because, you know, the very famous moment that we all have in mind, I forget what year it is. I'm sure you'll probably remember when Barack Obama drank water that he said was from Flint. Basically, look, it's over. You know, we fixed it. Everything's good. Break down for everybody what the federal government did and that whole photo op and the scandal that it is. Well, Obama, I can't get his head, but I think Obama was a real creature of meritocracy. And he trusted that his EPA head and that his EPA was, you know, doing the best job they could and that the data he was getting was right. I don't think he intentionally was like, hey, you know, forget them. But. I mean, obviously he was not diligent and he was very, very, I believe, reckless and condescending in going there and saying, hey, I was exposed to lead as a kid and I ended up fine. Michael Moore swears that that was not Flint water and it was water from Air Force One. I don't know. But Obama's EPA, basically, they knew about the complaints. They knew that the state of Michigan was not adding the proper corrosion control chemicals to the water. That's why lead. was leaching into the water. As my book shows, they could not add those chemicals because they didn't even have the equipment to add them in the plant. But basically the EPA, it was just very like a neoliberal, well, let's get a legal opinion if we could step in and take over for the state of Michigan. And oh, we'll send the state of Michigan environmental department our guidance, but not mandate it. Well, what's the point of having a federal government and federal agencies if they're not going to step in as the agency of last resort if the state agencies are actually committing crimes? I mean, there were environmental officials, health officials, officials in the governor's office that were charged with crime, including involuntary manslaughter. But the EPA never stepped in, even though they knew all of this. And the federal government, I think it's kind of 40-60, 60% Michigan, 40%. Yeah. the federal government because they knew about this as early as a few weeks after, and they did not step in to stop it. And they did not notify the public. They were basically going back and forth in emails. Well, it's on the state health department to issue a notification on a Legionnaires outbreak. I mean, who cares whose responsibility it is? Tell the residents that your water is toxic. Children are bathing in that, children are drinking it, the elders are bathing in it, elders are drinking in it. So the EPA faces a lot of responsibility. And why I say this is an ongoing disaster, people might not know this because they saw the headline, oh, $600 million settlement from the state of Michigan for Flint, which is totally inadequate. The EPA 10 years later has not settled. So Trump's EPA, Biden's EPA, if it becomes Harris's EPA, they have not settled. They have not even admitted guilt with the people of Flint. And that is a significant number. that the people of Flint are entitled to. So the EPA still to this day is dragging their feet on settling, which is very strange that you got this settlement in East Palestine a year after, which is very quick for these situations. But in Flint, the EPA hasn't settled. I also broke a story years ago, and I got the House Oversight Committee to respond to it, because it's in the book. But I found evidence that the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, his top officials, they deleted their phones. Right before the launch of the criminal investigation, you would think the house wants to look into that. They gave me some vague BS statement. They never looked into it. I also have reporting that. The massive financial scheme that we've already went through. I mean, investigators in Michigan that were investigating the Flint water crisis, they believe that this should be an FBI case because it was to that level of fraud. The FBI didn't want to touch it. So there is federal complicity in this. It's not just the state. And that's why I call it the biggest government cover up of the 21st century. You got the federal government, the state government, the city government, private foundations, Wall Street banks. All in on it together. And, you know, sorry to boomers who might be watching, but Watergate didn't kill anyone. It was just a bunch of knuckleheads breaking into an office. This is killing people. And it's a lot more sinister, in my opinion, than Watergate. All right, guys, this is just a small piece of the conversation we had with Jordan Chardin. He wrote an amazing book called We the Poisoned about Flint, Michigan, and how an entire massive American city was poisoned and the government didn't fix it and didn't care. Crystal and him are going to be doing. talk this Sunday at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C. You're invited to come and partake. They even have a Q&A session. And if you want to see the entire thing, the entire interview we did, I highly recommend it. Go ahead and sign up on Substack. That link is below. Enjoy.

On the issue of water, let's actually get directly to your book. So, We the Poisoned, it's about Flint, Michigan. You've been on the beat covering this from the very beginning.

Let's actually sort of go back in time and just walk everybody through exactly what happened with the Flint water crisis, how we got to this point, who are the villains, etc. Yeah, I think that if people have seen Roger and Me, Michael Moore's famous documentary, I think that's a good starting point. Because this couldn't have happened unless there was kind of a controlled demolition of places like Flint. For those that don't know, Flint was like at one time, you know, 1950s, 60s, like the utopia of the middle class.

It was a burgeoning city, home of GM, the auto industry. One parent could work. You know, it was it was a booming, booming metropolis. And for a lot of reasons, both national, the offshoring of jobs.

deregulation on money in politics and local white flight, redlining, racist rezoning. Flint and Detroit and many other cities were just decimated economically. And the tax base shrank through white flight.

And it just, at the turn of the century, the 2000s, beginning of the 2010s, was kind of like a rotting economic corpse. So then enter, at that time, Republican Governor Rick Snyder. At a time like pre-Trump, he was kinda rumored to wanna run for president in 2016. And he was running on running business like running government like a business, which we know how that works out. So what he did was-Like Coke Brothers guy. Yeah, big time and Sheldon Adelson guy too.

So what he did was he declared a financial emergency in places like Flint, Detroit, other cities, predominantly black cities. And he- appointed unelected emergency managers. So all the freak out now about democracy is on the line.

Well, this is actually a case of like democracy was removed. So he pushed through really draconian laws, appointed unelected emergency managers, call them czars, to basically take over for the elected mayor and city council. And a real desire of local officials in that area, Flint, Genesee County, as well as the governor, was to Regionalized the water system, i.e. privatized. So Detroit basically had the monopoly on water in Michigan. They provided about half of Michigan its water.

The water came from the Great Lakes, which is some of the purest water on Earth. The Great Lakes actually provides 20% of the surface water to the world. And Flint had been getting its water from Detroit for 50 years without a problem.

But Detroit had been price gouging Flint. So there were like legitimate. complaints from local officials that we don't have control over the rates.

Let's just create our own water system. But what they did was basically create a boondoggle. Detroit's pipeline to Flint, they were basically going to create a duplicate water pipeline along the same exact path, which in engineering terms is unheard of. And they were going to pipe from Detroit to Flint in this new water system, raw water, the water that had been coming to Flint.

Flint was already treated water. What do you need raw water for? Fracking, farming, auto industry, meatpacking. The people on the ground in Flint and Genesee County and the Snyder administration were bragging this was going to be the blue economy because most of the water was not actually going to be used for the residents. It was going to be used for business and it would be cheaper.

But the problem was at that time, like I said, Flint's a rotting economic corpse. They could not borrow any money. They had no credit rating in 2014, 10 years ago, because of all the aforementioned economic struggles. So Snyder's administration, local officials on the ground, and JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, they kind of conspired in this cabal to create a fake emergency that would give Flint an exception to borrow $100 million.

So Flint, through a financial scheme, was allowed to borrow $100 million, even though, by the way, Detroit, to keep Flint. On its system, they offered to cut its rate in half. So imagine you go to the mall, everything's half off.

So it was never about saving money, because Flint would have saved money staying on Detroit. It was about creating this completely unnecessary new privatized water system for which the majority of the water was not going to be used for residents drinking or bathing. And they basically indebted Flint, which legally was not allowed to borrow any more money, to borrow $100 million for this brand new water system.

And by the way, while that new water system was being built, we will use the Flint River. which we were just talking about corporate pollution, General Motors, Dow Chemical, DuPont had dumped all its crap and waste in there for 100 years. And oh, by the way, we'll use the Flint water plant, which is the equivalent of one of these Boeing planes falling apart in midair. The Flint water plant did not even have the proper equipment to treat the water. The media has always just...

And you spoke to workers, actually, at the Flint water plant who were like, this is not going to work. So... So that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about is I'm not an expert on water systems, but it seems pretty self-evident. And the residents themselves felt this way, like they were looking at the Flint River and saying, this water is disgusting and you think that this is going to work out. So who raised questions at the time?

Were there people within government who were looking at this going, number one? Flint, Michigan, borrowing $100 million. What are we doing here? Number two, we're going from using this, you know, Great Lakes, like glacial water, which is relatively pristine, to using the Flint River. How is that going to work?

Number three, we have this incredibly like aging and inadequate water treatment system that's supposed to now shoulder all of this burden. And Detroit is offering us actually a good deal now. And my recollection from your book is like a seat on the board so that there would be permanent like Flint would have a say in what the rates were going forward.

Was there anyone with power in government who was saying this is insane? Like, what are we doing here? No, because the power was taken by the governor. Again, the emergency manager was an unelected bureaucrat. So even though they would have ceremonial votes, the Flint City Council could ceremonially vote.

It didn't matter because the emergency manager could overtake it. And I don't hear Democrats with their fundraising emails screaming about this. This is actually democracy being removed.

But to answer your question, let's start with the governor. My book shows he was warned a year before the water switch that the Flint River water was not safe. He was warned by his own environmental officials that there was a bacterial risk, which proved to be true, if Flint River was used as a full-time water.

distribution system. He was warned about carcinogens, which are those TTHMs. I got proof that he was warned about this.

So again, remember that Bob Woodward tape with Trump, where it was shown that Trump knew COVID was worse, that he was telling on to the public? Well, Snyder was warned a year before, yet he allowed it to move forward. Secondly, I mean, I got confidential documents and sourcing. I mean, people at the plant.

were screaming, workers at the plant were screaming a year before. Hell no, and I quote, hell no, we cannot do this. We don't have the staff, we don't have the equipment, our systems are all out of date because the plant had not been used as a, it hadn't treated water on a full-time basis since mid-20th century. So it was basically a part-time plant for 50 years.

But essentially what happened was this Wall Street scam to create this Unnecessary brand new water system had already locked in Flint because of Flint signed on to help finance this new water system. So they were already on the hook for these bonds, which, by the way, if people are reading like, oh, that sucks, but this is unique to Flint. There's bond deals like this happening all over the country because most cities are broke and have to issue bonds to finance things like water systems.

So basically. Even though the people at the plant were saying, hell no, we can't do this. Even though two weeks before the water switch, they were so understaffed, they moved workers from the garbage department to the water plant, who had no expertise of water. They were already on the hook to start paying back these bonds for this new water system at the end of the year.

Then you move to six months after the water switch, when one of Snyder's league... lawyers was actually sounding the alarm that we need to switch back to Detroit. There's E. coli in the water.

General Motors is getting off the water because it's destroying their parts. She was told she was told by Snyder's emergency manager it would be too expensive to switch back to Detroit. And what she what he what he meant by that, we cannot start paying Detroit a million dollars a month because we're already on the hook to start paying back these bonds. So when I say running government like a business, it was all. X's and O's on a balance sheet and the residents were completely disregarded.

And I believe liberals and lefties, progressives like to debate, is it race, is it class? I mean, it was both. I mean, this is a poor black community, but they're poor.

And right now in East Palestine, it's a poor white community and very similar things are going on there. So essentially, because they created this financial boondoggle, the people of Flint were forced to, while General Motors got off of the water, the people of Flint were forced to continue drinking and bathing in this water until the new water system was built. They cared more about the frickin'cars than they did about the human beings. So based on your reporting, why did they not heed? any of the warnings that this was going to be an absolute catastrophe for this move?

I can't get in the governor's head. I can't get in the emergency manager's head. I don't believe that they knowingly switched the water, like knowing it was going to become, you know, poison people.

I don't think it was that, you know, evil. I just think it was kind of reckless. I think they kind of just assumed, yeah, if there's, yeah, if there's problems along the way, we'll figure it out.

I mean, I have emails literally showing that the governor's chief of staff, like as they were telling the public it was safe, privately is saying like, how can we make the river water safe? They were, you know, like I said, when there was bacteria found, they were just bombing the system with chlorine. So I think they went into it kind of recklessly because who gives a shit? It's Flint. So I think it was recklessness, carelessness.

I don't think it was, I don't think they knew that. The people were going to get poisoned. I just think they didn't put a lot of thought and care into it. And there were two sets of things going on.

Number one, Snyder, again, was angling to run for president. And his mentality was, I'm going to run as an economic wizard who saved these distressed cities. So he was going to run on, I got Detroit out of bankruptcy. I helped Flint because part of the move to go to the Flint River was theoretically, we're going to be saving.

$12 million a year because we're not using Detroit's water system. We're using our own Flint River, which is theoretically free, but they were told that you have to make upgrades to the plant of $60 million. They only made a couple million dollars before the water switch. So basically, I think in Snyder's mind and others, we're going to basically totally cancel out Flint's deficit by getting rid of the Detroit $12 million that we pay them a year. We'll just use the...

Flint River for free. Yeah, we'll make a couple adjustments to the plant, but we'll figure it out. And when they realized that the water was bad, instead of immediately moving them back to Detroit, really what they did was just try to put Band-Aids on a gaping gunshot wound.

Yeah, let's talk more about that piece, actually. So they flipped the switch. The temporary place, so the long-term plan is this new pipeline that's going to go to the Great Lakes that's running along the already existing pipeline.

The temporary plan is to use the Flint River. So they flip the switch, the water starts coming out of the pipes. What happens? What do the residents experience?

And how long is it from the time that they start getting sick and coming to, you know, City Hall with water bottles filled with smelly, brown, horrible water? How long from that until there's an actual admission that, oh, yeah, sorry, we are poisoning you? 18 months.

Jesus Christ. The switch was pulled in April 2014. The first complaints are actually made to the EPA three weeks after that. The EPA knew about this. I mean, they're not directly responsible for the cover-up, but, you know, silence is complicity. They could have taken emergency action to take over and to step in.

They didn't. Same thing is happening right now in East Palestine. But basically what happened is in real time and in the book, you know, I obtained phone calls of the governor's chief counsel calling him frantically at four in the morning.

I obtained phone calls of the governor, his chief of staff, his health director frantically on the phone six months after the water switch, 22 times in two days at the same exact time that the Legionnaires outbreak, which was this water back. It's basically bacterial pneumonia. It's worse than basic pneumonia. It's deadly. And they were basically covering it up.

That's what prosecutors concluded shortly before he was up for reelection. And they only were forced to make the admission in October 2015 because there was a local pediatrician, Dr. Mona Hatisha. She got her hands on the blood lead levels of children and comparing the blood levels of children before the water switch to after, it was evident that it was a lot.

It was spiked. It was significantly higher. They tried to demonize her as, you know, causing a panic and she's cherry picking data. But finally, after it became clear she was right, they finally admitted it. So it's not even clear they would have admitted it if not for.

a local pediatrician. And my reporting shows that Snyder in particular, he knew about the deadly bacterial pneumonia legionnaires. He knew about it 16 months before he notified the public.

And I think there were a lot of things going on. Number one, I mean, he was ambitious and a sociopath clearly, and was putting a potential presidential run before the safety of the people he represents. And clearly, you know, having a water crisis is not gonna be a...

Put it on a bumper sticker for your presidential run. Number two, they wanted to try, again, Band-Aids on a gunshot wound. I think in their mind, they thought they could basically make the water safer and it wasn't as bad. And they were kind of fooling themselves into thinking, oh, the brown water is aesthetic. It's not a health problem.

It's just a discoloration, but our numbers are showing the water's fine, even though they were cheating on the water testing. So I think Snyder, in his mind and his people thought, let's focus on our national ambitions and we'll fix the water as we go, which is the equivalent of, you know, Boeing trying to fix the planes as in mid-flight. And you can't tell me if this happened in Ann Arbor, it wouldn't have happened. But if this happened an hour down the road in whiter, wealthier Ann Arbor, if it happened, I mean, immediately it would have been stopped because it would have affected people.

in the government's class. Who matters. Yeah, exactly.

It's class. I mean, you see it with like Israel and Palestine, the level of dehumanization, like that's what leads you to not care. If it was in his neighborhood with people that he knows and loves and cares about and thinks about as full on human beings, do you think he would have just been like, I'm sure Flint River will be fine. I'm sure these like bacterial outbreaks that I'm being warned about, no big deal. Let's just try it.

Let's just use these human beings as basically like science experiments. And, you know, I'm thinking about like moms making formula with tap water for their babies over 18 months. You know, what what are the health that you will have lifelong health impacts that are not reversible?

Like give us some of the human stories of what people experience and are still. struggling with and whose health has been completely destroyed for their entire lives now. Yeah. And by the way, we have the answer because Snyder, while he was governor, preemptively replaced the pipes in Ann Arbor without a problem after this. And Flint, 10 years later, they still haven't replaced all the pipes.

It's a disaster. It's a disaster. You know, the word genocide is rightly used, I believe, in terms of Gaza.

I believe this is a slower moving one because I don't really think it's possible to know the full death count. They didn't even have a health registry for the first few years and 20,000 people have left Flint. So who knows and who's tracking those people.

But in my reporting and just people I've spoken with, horrible interactions I've had, cancer is surging right now in Flint and the Health Department of Michigan, under current Governor Gretchen Whitmer, is dragging their feet on doing a full-throttle study. But in NYU talk... NYU toxicologist, her preliminary study has shown that some forms of cancer are up 300% compared to before the water switch.

You also have, I mean, every time I go there, liver, people dying of liver problems, kidney failure. There are rare cancers that are forming. You have people that have serious, seriously neurological damage, cognitive issues, memory loss.

behavioral problems which affects crime plenty of research on uh heavy metal poisoning uh and high crime in certain areas the children which are now who are now teenagers i mean learning disabilities um regression and reading math everything uh kids flunking out uh there's been an increase in suicide which it's hard enough to be a teenager but add on that your brain has been damaged i have heard from residents as young as a six, seven, eight-year-olds committing suicide. I don't know how, but that's what I was told by some activist leaders. And it's also the trauma. I mean, could you imagine for a second, you're poisoned. The government basically gives you a short-term Medicaid expansion and a kick in the ass.

No one is held accountable. And 10 years later, the pipes haven't been replaced. The water is still bad, despite what the EPA tells you.

They don't have universal health care and some of them are like basically going bankrupt trying to pay for doctors because they don't have universal health care. But I mean across the board whether it's the physical problems, cancers, and I can just tell you a couple years ago I did a report there and I knocked on 400 doors on a story I was working on there. And almost every block I learned of new people that had just died.

on that block, not exclusively elderly, 40s, 50s, 60s. But Flint doesn't have a COVID death count in real time like we did on CNN in the beginning. So it's kind of just one of these silent, whatever you want to call it. I think it's a slower-moving genocide. I think it's a lost generation.

And these people deserve a lot, but at the basics, they deserve Medicare for all, lifelong testing. And it's also, it's not just lead, PFAS, bacterial. And people are still posting 10 years later, the media has successfully spun this as over and they put out the EPA's numbers. I mean, I exposed that they cheated on the testing in Michigan and Flint, but people are still posting videos of brown water coming out. I was just there for my book.

People online to get me to sign their book are showing me rashes on their skin, current rashes from the water. So you don't, I mean, all you have to do is go there to- to realize this is not some like disaster from the past. It's ongoing. Wow. So let's talk about, we talked about, you know, state and local reaction.

Tell everybody about the national government reaction or lack thereof, because, you know, the very famous moment that we all have in mind, I forget what year it is. I'm sure you'll probably remember when Barack Obama drank water that he said was from Flint. Basically, look, it's over. You know, we fixed it. Everything's good.

Break down for everybody what the federal government did and that whole photo op and the scandal that it is. Well, Obama, I can't get his head, but I think Obama was a real creature of meritocracy. And he trusted that his EPA head and that his EPA was, you know, doing the best job they could and that the data he was getting was right. I don't think he intentionally was like, hey, you know, forget them.

But. I mean, obviously he was not diligent and he was very, very, I believe, reckless and condescending in going there and saying, hey, I was exposed to lead as a kid and I ended up fine. Michael Moore swears that that was not Flint water and it was water from Air Force One. I don't know. But Obama's EPA, basically, they knew about the complaints.

They knew that the state of Michigan was not adding the proper corrosion control chemicals to the water. That's why lead. was leaching into the water. As my book shows, they could not add those chemicals because they didn't even have the equipment to add them in the plant. But basically the EPA, it was just very like a neoliberal, well, let's get a legal opinion if we could step in and take over for the state of Michigan.

And oh, we'll send the state of Michigan environmental department our guidance, but not mandate it. Well, what's the point of having a federal government and federal agencies if they're not going to step in as the agency of last resort if the state agencies are actually committing crimes? I mean, there were environmental officials, health officials, officials in the governor's office that were charged with crime, including involuntary manslaughter. But the EPA never stepped in, even though they knew all of this.

And the federal government, I think it's kind of 40-60, 60% Michigan, 40%. Yeah. the federal government because they knew about this as early as a few weeks after, and they did not step in to stop it. And they did not notify the public.

They were basically going back and forth in emails. Well, it's on the state health department to issue a notification on a Legionnaires outbreak. I mean, who cares whose responsibility it is?

Tell the residents that your water is toxic. Children are bathing in that, children are drinking it, the elders are bathing in it, elders are drinking in it. So the EPA faces a lot of responsibility.

And why I say this is an ongoing disaster, people might not know this because they saw the headline, oh, $600 million settlement from the state of Michigan for Flint, which is totally inadequate. The EPA 10 years later has not settled. So Trump's EPA, Biden's EPA, if it becomes Harris's EPA, they have not settled.

They have not even admitted guilt with the people of Flint. And that is a significant number. that the people of Flint are entitled to.

So the EPA still to this day is dragging their feet on settling, which is very strange that you got this settlement in East Palestine a year after, which is very quick for these situations. But in Flint, the EPA hasn't settled. I also broke a story years ago, and I got the House Oversight Committee to respond to it, because it's in the book.

But I found evidence that the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, his top officials, they deleted their phones. Right before the launch of the criminal investigation, you would think the house wants to look into that. They gave me some vague BS statement. They never looked into it.

I also have reporting that. The massive financial scheme that we've already went through. I mean, investigators in Michigan that were investigating the Flint water crisis, they believe that this should be an FBI case because it was to that level of fraud.

The FBI didn't want to touch it. So there is federal complicity in this. It's not just the state. And that's why I call it the biggest government cover up of the 21st century.

You got the federal government, the state government, the city government, private foundations, Wall Street banks. All in on it together. And, you know, sorry to boomers who might be watching, but Watergate didn't kill anyone.

It was just a bunch of knuckleheads breaking into an office. This is killing people. And it's a lot more sinister, in my opinion, than Watergate.

All right, guys, this is just a small piece of the conversation we had with Jordan Chardin. He wrote an amazing book called We the Poisoned about Flint, Michigan, and how an entire massive American city was poisoned and the government didn't fix it and didn't care. Crystal and him are going to be doing.

talk this Sunday at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C. You're invited to come and partake. They even have a Q&A session. And if you want to see the entire thing, the entire interview we did, I highly recommend it.

Go ahead and sign up on Substack. That link is below. Enjoy.

Transcript for:Flint Water Crisis: Governance and Consequences

Transcript for:
Flint Water Crisis: Governance and Consequences