The head of the Environmental Protection Agency announced on Monday that he is lifting the Safe Drinking Water Act emergency order for Flint, Michigan, the city whose 100,000 residents had to grapple with lead-contaminated water.
It’s another big win in EPA administrator Lee Zeldin’s efforts to “drive a dagger” through the heart of “climate change religion."
“It’s been a long, arduous journey,” Zeldin said in a video posted to X. “Water sampling shows that Flint’s water standards are now in compliance with lead standards.”
According to a press release, the EPA will leave the rest of the city’s ongoing rehabilitation efforts in the hands of state and local governments.
But while Zeldin is celebrating the city’s now “pristine” water, Benjamin Pauli, a Flint resident who chairs the city’s Water System Advisory Council, told Daily Kos that his messaging paints an inaccurate picture.
“They are actively canceling really critical lifelines of support that are sustaining on-the-ground work around water and other environmental issues here as we speak,” he said.
“Our crisis was about a lot more than just lead levels,” Pauli emphasized. “Ensuring that Flint has safe and reliable water in the long run is not only a matter of bringing down lead levels but creating institutional arrangements that allow residents to raise concerns effectively and receive meaningful follow up.”
Instead, Zeldin's EPA just yanked funding for Flint’s Water System Advisory Council, a body that Pauli said is “designed to put Flint residents into direct conversation with the people managing their water.”
Pauli explained that the council served as a “lifeline” between citizens and the providers of a clean, trustworthy water source.
Zeldin—who has frozen hundreds of grants since President Donald Trump tapped him to head the EPA—pulled the plug on the council in April.
Related | EPA chief crows about killing regulations while climate change worsens
“To have that taken away at the very same time that the administrator is touting his support for Flint and the technical assistance that he's supposedly offering is pretty ironic,” Pauli said.
In 2014, Flint’s water source was switched to the Flint River, ultimately leading to a public health crisis. Due to corroding lead pipes and other failed public responses, the community was long exposed to extremely high levels of lead and Legionnaires’ disease.
Today, while lead levels are finally below a certain standard that would be deemed unsafe, Flint residents’ trust in government is still shaky—in part due to government officials who initially failed to address the poisoning of citizens in the first place.
“Unfortunately, in the coming months, people will likely be portrayed as if they are just determined to be victims, that they are 'anti-science,' that they're just rejecting reality,” Pauli said. “But the point is that our water system still has weaknesses. It still has issues that need to be addressed.”
Zeldin’s decision comes three months after his visit to Flint, where he promised to remain “fully engaged” with the city as its leaders continue to rebuild toward a “stronger future.”
But residents like Pauli have “seen this coming for a long time.”
“I think the EPA was ready to withdraw this order years ago, and was mostly concerned about how that would appear to residents and the potential implication of withdrawing its support altogether,” he said.
However, it’s not just the writing on the wall that is disheartening for people like Pauli who have been fighting to rectify Flint’s water crisis for so long.
More so, it’s that the people making these calls seem to be doing so from a glass tower.
“Part of what's been disempowering about the emergency order is that the folks who are responsible for deciding whether or not to lift it are not really known to community members,” he said.
Pauli also served on the EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which provided recommendations to the EPA for the nation’s underserved communities.
But NEJAC has been removed from the EPA’s list of advisory committees, a likely victim of Trump’s obsessive attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts—aka the GOP’s dreaded DEI bogeyman.
“With the firing of EJ personnel, the cancellation of EJ initiatives, and the disbanding of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council to EPA, Flint and other marginalized communities will now have fewer places to go for help,” Pauli said.
Campaign Action Alix Breeden May 20, 2025 at 12:00AM From Daily Kos
0 Comments