By Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers criticized environmental officials at a hearing on Wednesday for not acting sooner when they found out drinking water in Flint, Michigan was polluted with dangerously high levels of lead.
"I never thought this could happen in America," and in a state, "surrounded by fresh water of the Great Lakes," Brenda Lawrence, a Democrat of Michigan, said at a House Oversight panel examining the water crisis in the working class city of 100,000 people.
The panel issued subpoenas to officials who did not show up to testify about water found to have lead levels that hamper brain development and cause other health problems. Thousands of children are believed to have ingested the polluted water in Flint, which is about 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Detroit.
Lawrence asked Keith Creagh, the director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, why his agency did not act on a report by a federal Environmental Protection Agency water expert that showed the water was polluted. She did not get a clear answer.
"We all share responsibility in the Flint water crisis, whether it is the city the state or the federal government, we all left the citizens of Flint down," said Creagh, who took the job last month.
Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, complained that the Republican-led panel did not invite Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, to testify at the hearing.
Representative Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania criticized Snyder and his hand-picked emergency managers for Flint who were responsible for switching the source of Flint's tap water from Detroit's system to the Flint River, a dumping area, in April 2014.
Flint is grappling with the health and political fallout over the switch after the more corrosive river water leached lead from old pipes into the system.
"He got caught red handed poisoning the children of Flint and the residents of Flint," Cartwright, a Democrat, said of Snyder. "There's no two ways about it. That's the headline here."
A Snyder spokesman responded in an email: "It's unfortunate when people who are not working toward a solution inject partisan politics and incendiary rhetoric into an emergency that can best be addressed by people working together."
Snyder will ask state lawmakers in his next budget proposal to approve a $30 million water payment relief plan for Flint residents to keep their water service on and reimburse them for lead-contaminated water they cannot drink, his office said.
A busload of Flint residents traveled to Washington to attend the hearing. "We're serious about making sure that the people responsible for this manmade disaster are held accountable," said Bernadel Jefferson, a bishop.
Lawmakers also slammed the EPA for not sending Administrator Gina McCarthy to Flint until this week, even though the agency has known about the crisis for months.
The head of the oversight panel, Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, a Republican, said he subpoenaed EPA's Susan Hedman to appear at a deposition in Washington later this month.
Hedman, who announced last month that she would resign on Feb. 1, had played down the memo by the EPA's Miguel del Toral that said tests had shown high levels of lead in the city's water, telling Flint and Michigan administrators it was only a draft report.
The EPA has agreed to provide all of Hedman's emails by the end of the week, Chaffetz said.
Chaffetz said his panel had also issued a second subpoena to Darnell Earley, who was Flint's state-appointed emergency manager when the city switched from Detroit's system.
The crisis could also hold up a wide-ranging bill on energy issues. Democrats in the Senate threatened to block a bipartisan energy bill if it fails to include immediate aid for Flint.
Federal authorities have started a criminal probe into the contamination.