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SUZETTE HACKNEY

Hackney: How Indiana can avoid Flint’s fate

Suzette Hackney
suzette.hackney@indystar.com

We have watched in horror as the tap-water crisis in Flint, Mich., has played out on the faces and bodies of toddlers. We’ve seen scores of angry residents display the amber-colored liquid running from their faucets. What a tragedy.

To save money in 2013, Flint’s state-appointed emergency manager moved to make the Flint River the city’s primary source of drinking water. The city began using the river in April 2014, and touted it as “both sensible and safe for us to use our own water as a primary water source in Flint.”

Two months later, residents first began complaining about the quality of the drinking water. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality began monitoring Flint’s water based on protracted federal regulations. But what the state failed to do was quickly respond to the fact that the highly corrosive river water in city lines was leaching lead into the drinking water supply.

Flint’s children now have elevated levels of lead in their blood; dozens of cases and deaths caused by Legionnaires’ disease, a bacterial infection that could be linked to the contaminated water, have cropped up; and residents have reported mysterious rashes and abrasions on their skin.

Could such a public health crisis occur in Indiana? It’s possible.

Leaders from the Hoosier Environmental Council visited the IndyStar’s Editorial Board this past week to discuss environmental issues facing the state. Pending legislation that would weaken Indiana’s ability to ward off or respond to environmental emergencies was at the forefront of the discussion.

House Bill 1082 would prohibit the state’s Environmental Rules Board from adopting regulations or standards that are more stringent than corresponding rules established under federal law and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

What some legislators seem to ignore is the fact that such a law would leave Indiana vulnerable to slow federal policies, which may not immediately identify or fix an emerging problem. Lead or some other contaminant in water, for example, requires immediate action.

“State water operators in Flint failed to put anti-corrosive chemicals into their water and all that lead ended up there, but we think there are sufficient gaps in federal law that could make a Flint disaster happen here in Indiana,” said Jesse Kharbanda, the Environmental Council’s executive director.

Kharbanda said that under federal Safe Drinking Water Act regulations, a public water system could have indications of lead in its system for up to 24 months while still legally operating.

“What a far-sighted, public-health oriented environmental rules board would do is say that this is unwise public policy and that the state should act to reduce that time line from 24 months to say, two months,” Kharbanda said.

It’s puzzling that our lawmakers, who regularly trash the EPA and accuse the Obama administration of meddling too much in our affairs, would want to nullify the work of local environmental experts in favor of outside regulators.

Remember, our Republican-led General Assembly considers many EPA regulations as overreaching, yet this bill would neuter the power of the state. Similar anti-environmental legislation died in previous sessions, and I am hopeful House Bill 1082 experiences a similar fate.

Stripping away such authority from Indiana’s Environmental Rules Board and prohibiting its ability to develop policies that go beyond the federal government is foolhardy. Just ask the residents of Flint.

Email IndyStar columnist Suzette Hackney at suzette.hackney@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter: @suzyscribe.