A Flint official said on March 29 that he wanted to treat water to avoid lead contamination, but was overruled by the state.
Before the city began drawing its drinking water from the Flint River in 2014 in an effort to cut costs, officials first held a meeting going through a checklist of final developments.
During that time, the supervisor for the plant’s laboratory, Mike Glasgow, said he asked the district engineer, Mike Prysby of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, how often employees needed to check the water for proper levels of phosphate, a chemical they intended to add to avoid lead corrosion from the pipes.
According to Glasgow, Prysby’s response was, “You don’t need to monitor phosphate because you’re not required to add it.”
Glasgow said he and a consulting firm engineer were surprised at Prysby’s response, since treating drinking water is a regular procedure.
“Then,” Glasgow said, “we went on to the next question.”
