TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Staff and funding shortages and poor data management are preventing Michigan environmental regulators from making sure that state residents have safe drinking water, federal officials said Thursday.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said deficiencies in Michigan’s drinking water operations aren’t limited to Flint, notorious for lead contamination of its system for 18 months starting in spring 2014. Investigations primarily blamed the state Department of Environmental Quality, which failed to require anti-corrosion pipeline treatments when the city changed its water source.
In its newly released report, the EPA evaluated the statewide effectiveness of Michigan’s safe drinking water program. The study was based largely on examination of the state environmental department’s files from October 2013 through September 2015, when the Flint crisis was at its height.
>>Inside woodtv.com: Complete coverage of the Flint Water Crisis
The review “revealed a number of significant challenges,” the report said. Among them: too little money, too few people, and inadequate reporting and management of electronic data.
“Staff departures and retirements have caused a significant loss in expertise and technical knowledge … which presents a threat to the future implementation of an effective program,” the report said, adding that the department “must focus on obtaining long-term sources of funding.”
Water data management is “inefficient and antiquated,” the report said, and efforts to fix the problem have been hampered by concentration of information technology staff into “a broad agency department without drinking water expertise.”
“Laboratory reporting is very inefficient,” it said, urging the department to make better use of electronic data systems.