MLIVE: Congresswoman calls for EPA to pay now for failed oversight during Flint water crisis

FLINT, MI -- U.S. Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet says the federal government needs to acknowledge its oversight failures during the Flint water crisis and start negotiating a settlement with city residents.

“The (Environmental Protection Agency) failed to keep children and families safe during the water crisis,” the Bay City Democrat said in a statement to MLive-The Flint Journal. “It is outrageous that a decade has passed without the EPA admitting its mistake and paying the citizens of Flint what they are owed.

“The EPA Administrator (Lee Zeldin) should settle this lawsuit right now.”

McDonald Rivet’s comments come in the same week that U.S. District Court Judge Linda V. Parker denied the EPA’s third request to dismiss consolidated Flint water crisis lawsuits brought against it by Flint residents.

It’s the last remaining water crisis defendant that has refused to settle such pending litigation.

Other primary players in the crisis -- the state of Michigan, city of Flint, and four private companies -- have spent nearly $700 million to settle cases against them.

EPA officials this week declined to comment on the water crisis lawsuits.

In court filings, agency attorneys have argued the state had primary enforcement responsibility for Flint water and that the Tort Claim Act shields EPA from liability.

But McDonald Rivet and others have said the federal government isn’t without blame.

EPA’s Office of Inspector General has said the agency had the authority and sufficient information to issue an emergency order to protect Flint residents from lead-contaminated water as early as June 2015, but failed to act.

A report by the Congressional Research Service also said EPA had the authority to aid in the water emergency much earlier than it did.

In May, the EPA lifted a Safe Drinking Water Act emergency order in Flint that’d been in place since 2016 after years of water testing showed lead levels in city water had consistently been within federal limits.

McDonald Rivet said then that she expected the federal government to “continue participating in (the) effort and do right by the residents of Flint” and promised to “hold them accountable if they drop the ball.”

In addition to the case overseen by Parker, a second case against the EPA is pending in federal court.

Judge Judith E. Levy has told attorneys for the government and roughly 1,000 Flint children to be prepared for a Jan. 26 bench trial in Ann Arbor in that case.