Management system fail under your leadership in this instance . In this instance, it would be much to the case i that have. As you wished they would have asked more questions and pushed harder. Is that a yes or no . In this particular case, with respect to to the water issue, thats a fair conclusion. Its a very important issue, since it negatively impacts the health and well fair of children, impacting their ability to laesh and be successful in life. Your own former adviser, dennis sheranack learned the lesson, because he said that government was allowing the citizens to be on the losing end. Were you wrong to run that government like a business . In terms of running it like a business, a government is not a business. It isnt. Why should you say it should be run like one . In terms of accountability and measurement and delivering results to the people and in terms of not just flint but the state of michigan, im proud we did things as healthy michigan bringing medicaid to citizens, and bringing dentedal care to children with no dental care. You can talk about what you want, but im going to ask what i want to walk. When the elected leaders wanted to switch back to Safe Drinking Water, your hand picked manager overruled them saying it would be incomprhensible do you agree . In retrospect, it would have been funding the cost. Lets talk about the cost. You had the money, you amass a budget surplus. So, why wouldnt you think that it was worthy to apply those resources in this situation . Im sure youre familiar being in congress, the chief executive, the governor or president doesnt simply spend money, we needed authorization to the legislature. I had no control. Did you go and ask for the authority . We asked for the grant that we could at that time in terms of helping with the water in flint. Do you know the gentlewomans time exp e expired. Thank you, the only other statement i would like to make is it would seem to me that the buck stops there. The gentlewoman will suspend. Gentlewomans time expires. We will now recognize the gentman from new jersey. To both of you, im troubled today because of the testimony we had a couple of days act, that would indicate that even though theres enough blame to go around, there were a number of times where people acted like it was not their fault. Governor, your Emergency Management testimony from the witness here, was troubling, he acted like, well, you know, i didnt know, i didnt know. So, governor, do you believe that there were people who made mistakes within your agency at multiple levels, in terms of addressing the health and welfare of the people of flint . Yes. Ms. Mccarthy. Im going to ask you the same question, because the witness that resigned indicated that there was nothing that they could have done differently and there was no fault on her part or the part of the epa, as it related to this unbelievable, horrific event. So, do you believe that the epa is partially at fault . I believe that we could have taken different action and been more aggressive. Thats not the question. Are you partially at fault, yes or no . Im not playing a blame shifting game, sir. It would be easy you do agree that you are partially at fault . The system failed, we were part of that system. Let me, do you both of them indicated that the rules with regards to copper and lead are somewhat ambiguous, that they needed more clarity. We have heard that. Would you agree with that, governor . I would go much further than that, its a dumb and dangerous rule. All right. Ms. Mccarthy. Do you agree that the current rules as they are are ambiguous and need clarification . They definitely need clarification and they need to be strengthened and we are taking a look at that let me stop you there. Heres my concern, when anybody says, theres nothing at fault. We started doing research. Clean water, safety, clean water, drinking safety act, 1991, required rules to be updated every six years. Yes. Do you know how many times its been updated fully since 1991 . I dont know i do. The answer is zero. Zero in terms of fully updated. Its zero. It was modified slightly in 2007. And so, here we have this Safe Drinking Water standards, that needed to be updated and yet, the epa did nothing about it. Now, i could go further to say, well, maybe the epa didnt know but we did a Little Research on that too and to quote the geao in 2006, said indeed, that you needed to update your rules. Are you aware that the geao has a problem with the copper and lead rules . Im aware they were last updated in 2002007 under the pr administration. Thats what im aware of. Okay, so let me ask you further. I want to your documents which were actually regulation documents saying when you were going to update the rules. And so, in 2010, you said that you were going to have a proposed rule in 2012, andmxyk with the fact that the law requires you to do a new rule every six years, at least revisit it and that you have not revisited it in ten years . And that you keep changing the goal post. Do you not see some fault there . The revisions started in ernest in 2012, and by 2013 you said, according to your own document you said that you were going to have them done in 2013 . We have a we have a Stakeholder Group that is very actively told us that we cannot make tweaks to this, we have to make some substantive changes issues that would have been helpful in the case. That does take more time than making small tweaks and that is what we are working on now. And im glad we now even more today than we did before. We are going to take a look at it and get let me tell you why im concerned with that, in the same time, about the small tweaks yes. The epa has passed 3,571 rules in that timeframe while the people of flint and maybe washington, d. C. Are waiting on you have the wrong priorities ms. Mccarthy. I yield back. If they had properly implemented the law as it exists we would not be sitting here today. As it currently exists we would not be sitting here today. But you are in charge. Are you the administrator. Actually, the state is in charge no, you are in charge of the lead and copper rule. You are in charge. No, sir. You think the governor is in charge of the lead and copper rule. Writing the rule. Im telling you that we didnt need a change to the rule to have prevented this problem from happening. It was the way in which mdeq actually interpreted it and implemented it. Mdeq has said it and the Governors Task force has said it. You are wrong. We will come back to this, lets recognize the gentleman from pennsylvania for 5 00. Mr. Boyle. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Governor snyder, over the past two years, you and the individuals you hand picked to carry out your administrations actions, missed so many opportunities along the way to protect the people of flint. When the water changed color to brown and orange, your administration said the water was safe. When people reported rashes, hair loss, odor, and even sewage, your administration said the water was safe. When e. Coli and Fecal Bacteria were found in the water and boil water alerts were distributed, your administration said the water was safe. When a harmful byproduct of disinfection in the water began to spike after the switch, your administration said the water was safe. When legionnaires disease began to infect and later kill citizens, your administration said the water was safe. Governor, dont you have a moral responsibility to resign . My commitment is to fix the problem. This is a case where we should have demanded more answers, i said that in my opening statement. And dont you have a moral responsibility, as the governor of an administration that failed and poisoned its own people, dont you have the moral responsibility to resign . What i would say is, when you have experts that you relied on, they failed. They worked for me. So you have a responsibility for that. I kick myself every day wishing i would have demanded more answers and asked more questions, but to put it in context, when somebody bad happens and this is a terrible tragedy. This has been the most humbling experience of my life. I believe for the citizens of flint it has been far worse than a humbling experience. I want im making a commitment to solve the problem. People deserve better. Let me i think that answer speaks for itself. I think that ultimately when people are at the head of a government, they have to take responsibility for their administrati administrations failure. Ms. Mccarthy, i want to switch to you, while this has been possibly the largest and most glaring failure of government since hurricane katrina, im concerned about the extent to which this could be a canary in a coal mine. So, let me ask you specifically about my home state of pennsylvania. In 2014, the Pennsylvania Department of health identified 18 cities in my state that have higher lead exposer than flint does. So, what is epa doing now, outside of flint to ensure that other locations dont end up in exactly the same situation . Well, thank you for raising that. Because that is one of the issues that has a spotlight on it, we should try to make something good happen of this. We actually, i have written to every governor and every agency, the ones responsible for implementing and enforcing the Safe Drinking Water act, to ask them to look at their protocols and what their guidance is, to explain to them what we know they should be doing, to actually post their protocols on to relook and make sure they are implementing the law as its intendsed and every test they take should be posted on the web. They should post every lead line on the web. I know people have lost faith in government as a result of this. The best way we can help them is to have everything so transparent that individuals can hold us accountable. One of the challenges we faced is we cannot get a straight answer. People dont deserve that out of their government. I will take responsibility for not pushing hard enough, but i will not take responsibility for causing this problem. It was not epa at the helm when this happened. Thank you. And i yield back. Thank you, we will now recognize the gentleman from wisconsin for 5 00. Right, i have difficulty for a variety of reasons. That is why some of us like less government, its hard to get it to work. My first question is for Governor Snyder. Like every governor you inherit, in your case, you said, over 40,000 employees, you didnt pick them. Even if you have an employee over a period of time, that is lazy and not doing their job, its difficult to get rid of them. You have gotten rid of a few of them. But in general, if you go through the five or six employees, were they political appointments or Civil Servants that you inherited. The experts in the water safety division, you will find their experience was somewhere between 20 to 30 years of government experience. So, you know, you can be an expert, but if you dont care, doesnt matter how expert you are, or how many classes you took in school. So largely the people that you got rid of were people that were around 20 years, Civil Service protection that sort of thing. Yes, the head of the water division, that was terminated, had 28 years experience. I know its difficult for a governor to come in and clean house with Civil Servants and im sorry it had to have this to make it to come to light. One of the most callous employee we had was susan hedman. She reached out to secretary jackson, and i wish secretary jackson could be here to explain what in the world she was doing hiring her. Your agency had image huge mistakes. You cannot deny that they made huge mistakes. Can you rattle off the people that you feel were the most responsible for the mess. Del toro was around there fighting to get the answers out here as far as i can see, when susan hedman was trying to keep them in the dark. Would you rattle off the people you feel are most at fault in p epa . I think that could be one of the easiest things that i could do, to find a couple of career bureaucrats to pin the problem on. Im not going to do that. I dont think it was career bureaucrats, i think it was susan hedman. She did not know about the issue until late in june. She took immediate action. She actually worked, was it june or july . I forget, i apologize. She took immediate action to reach out and put a death statement out that was picked up in local newspapers about the lead concerns, we did everything according to the numbers. The reason im so impressed with susan, she immediately came and resigned, because she could have waited to find somebody to blame it on. But instead, she wanted full attention to flint a the ability for epa to help resolve the situation and she resigned. Wait, maybe you missed something. When did she resign . She resigned in late january. Thats not immediate. Because she was working the issue. That is five or six months. Im sorry, sir, she was working the issue every day. The question was, did we have too much interaction with the state trusting individuals who were not giving us the right information and she worked really hard. In fact, it was susan who forced our way on to the task force to be helpful in designing a strategy moving forward. It was susan who suggested not to go back to the detroit water. It was susan who suggested that bottled water would be necessary. So, she was taking the steps she needed to try to resolve the problem. It seem to me that if the del toro memo was made public, that would have raised the sense of crisis sir, it was made public, it was public the day he sent it out. The only thing she was reacting to stood with the memo rather than down playing the memo, highlighting the memo. The you look at the entire chain of emails, you will see that miguel was the personal that everyone in that region turned to for advice on how to handle this. He was part of our task force. He was part of the decisions every step of the way. We in no waysidelined him, it is actually something that mdeq started by saying he was a rogue employee. It was susan hedman that called mdeq, and said, to stop doing that, that is not the case. He is part of our team. And a valuable member. I think its incredible that if all the people went through of all the people went through, you can still not identify anybody that did a bad job, its amazing to me. I have asked the office of the Inspector General to give their eyes on it. I cannot possibly know everything that happened. Do i think the system failed . Yes, do i think epa could have been more aggressive . If we knew we were not getting the right information, absolutely. Even when we figured that out, we talked to the state for too long, it should have been elevated, i would have loved to have an opportunity to intervene in a more aggressive way. All right. Ms. Maloney of new york is now recognized for 5 00. Administrator mccarthy, would you please check on the level of lead in new york citys water and get back to me and im grateful that there are professional employees working for the health and to protect the health of the american people. And i want to thank you for the job that you are doing. Thank you. The people, people in flint were drinking high levels of lead in their water and Governor Snyder, you utterly failed in your responsibility to protect them. Earlier, you testified that we needed action. We needed action by the epa. We needed action by the city council. But even after you have found out that there were problems, that it was in paper, in front of you, and with your staff, once you knew even when you knew, you delayed and you put peoples lives in danger. On april 25th, 2015, epa official miguel del toro sent an email to pat cook at mdeq on the state level, expressing concerns that no Corrosion Control was being used in flint and he wrote and i quote, im worried. Im worried that the whole town may have much higher lead levels than the compliance results indicated and i would like his note put in the record, please. But Governor Snyder, you didnt add corrosi on. N control in april. You did not add it in may. You did not add it all summer long. And you didnt add it in october. And even when you switched back to the detroit water, you didnt add it then. So you never added Corrosion Control, the entire time that your citizens were drinking out of the flint river. And isnt that true, yes or no . Yes or no. In terms of yes or no. Get back to me in writing if you cannot answer yes or no right now. There should have been Corrosion Controls from day one, and they were not there. Excuse me, i asked for a yes or no. Get back to me in writing and i can give you a paper trail for six months you knew and you did not do anything about it. And epa, it was epa that warned you. It was epa that warned the state, and i find that unconscious able and im asking you to warn me if theres any problem in the state of new york. Please. And im grateful we have professionals who can do this, who can act, and they did act. Now, let me turn to another delay. The october 2, 2015, you rehens but did not declare a state of emergency until january 16th, 2016. And that was three months later and i find that unkconsciousabl and you did not call the National Guard in until later. Until january 12th. And Governor Snyder, on november 13th, 2015, the deputy state director of Michigan State police sent an email to one of your Legal Councils with the subject line, declaration questions. He wrote and i quote, as you know, the governor can declare at any time for any reason a state of emergency. That email was sent on november, yet, you still waited two more months before you declared a the emergency. And how can you explain that to the people of flint who are now incredibly sick . The truth is, you dragged your feet. Because you didnt want to take responsibility. And in fact, that very same email from that last november lays out clearly. It states and i quote, the state will formally own the event if we put a governors declaration in place, this could be viewed as the state having owned up to how the water issue was caused. End quote, and Governor Snyder your people knew in april that you should be using Corrosion Control and you did nothing for six months. You dragged your feet in declaring an emergency based on political and financial concerns. Say whatever you want, say whatever you want about being in the dark, about the warning signs, but even when you did know, even when you did kno