Michigan governor: Staffers lied about Flint water crisis

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is accusing his staffers of lying to him about lead and other contaminants in Flint’s drinking water supply.

Snyder has long accused state environmental and health regulators of giving him incorrect information about the safety of the Michigan city’s water after its switch to using the Flint River in April 2014 until late last year.

{mosads}But on Monday, he accused employees at the state agencies of lying to him.

Snyder said at a Detroit event that experts told him at a briefing in September 2015 that information coming from outside the state government about Flint’s water was incorrect, according to the Detroit Free Press.

He said staffers told him, “That there really isn’t a problem in Flint. That these outside experts aren’t correct,” the newspaper reported. But the next day, after he pushed the experts, they reversed course.

Snyder maintains that was the first time he learned Flint had lead in its water.

He has been a major figure in Flint’s ongoing water contamination crisis, which was caused by corrosion in water pipes in the city of 100,000 residents. State and federal testing has not yet cleared Flint’s water for consumption.

Snyder said at the Monday event that state employees showed “an absolute lack of common sense” surrounding Flint’s water.