You are employed by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Your job is to make sure the water in the state of Michigan is safe to drink for the citizens. Recently the people in the city of Flint have been complaining of poor water. They claim that their water smells like sulfur and chlorine and that in many cases the water from the tap is the color of rust. It also is being suggested that the water is causing health problems. A little research has yielded up the fact that the city managers switched the water source from Lake Huron to water from the river that runs through town.
This decision was not your decision to make but now you must decide on a course of action. Others in your department have chosen to not require the Flint water plant to utilize up-to-date corrosion control, but they have told the Environmental Protection Agency that they were doing so. They claim the town is so small it will not matter at all. Other employees have taken a few samples of water to check it but you are afraid some of the water samples that tested high for lead have been thrown out, but you cannot prove this. What steps should you take immediately and why?
1-Fivethirtyeight.com What went wrong in Flint?
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-went-wrong-in-flint-water-crisis-michigan/
2-Elevated Blood Lead Levels in Children Associated with the Flint Drinking Water Crisis
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2015.303003
3-We helped uncover a public health crisis in Flint, but learned there are costs to doing good science
https://theconversation.com/we-helped-uncover-a-public-health-crisis-in-flint-but-learned-there-are-costs-to-doing-good-science-54227
4-Moving Forward After Flint
https://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2016/3/moving-forward-after-flint
5-Informal and Formal Rulemaking
https://www.wise-intern.org/orientation/documents/crsrulemakingcb.pdf