Flint to stay on Detroit water for another year

LANSING – The City of Flint will stick with the Great Lakes Water Authority for another year — until October of 2017 — to give it time to construct a newly required stretch of pipeline and allow for testing of water Flint will treat from its new source, the Karegnondi Water Authority, officials said Tuesday.

The Michigan Strategic Fund, an arm of the Michigan Economic Development Corp., approved a loan of up to $3.5 million Tuesday to help Flint pay for the $7.5-million pipeline the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is requiring to allow treated KWA water to be tested for six months before it is sent to Flint residents to drink.

The $285-million KWA pipeline between Flint and Lake Huron is almost completed. But the EPA wants an additional 3.5-mile pipeline constructed so that Flint residents can continue to be supplied with drinking water from the GLWA in Detroit while raw KWA water, treated at the Flint Water Treatment Plant, is tested for six months.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is expected to pay $4.2 million of the pipeline cost through a grant, with the loan covering the balance of the cost. The line is expected to be completed around March 1.

Although the money the state agency approved Tuesday is in the form of a loan, with 2% interest and 15 years of payments beginning in October 2018, state officials said they are looking at various funding sources to repay the loan so cash-strapped Flint will not be on the hook for the money.

Flint’s emergency contract for Detroit water, which has already been extended, is currently scheduled to end next June 30. “Should Flint continue to be under a public health emergency at the time of the end of that contract, the GLWA would be willing to extend it,” authority spokeswoman Amanda Abukhader said Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for Flint Mayor Karen Weaver had no immediate comment on the loan approval.

Wayne Workman of the state Treasury Department said one reason Flint’s payments are not scheduled to start until 2018 is to allow the state time to find a grant source to cover the cost of the loan. The state has appropriated about $234 million for the Flint drinking water crisis, and one possibility is that some costs will come in below budget, allowing the Legislature to re-allocate $3 million or more toward the pipeline cost, he said.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder publicly acknowledging a crisis in Flint resulting from lead contamination of the city’s drinking water. That acknowledgment followed more than a year of complaints from Flint residents about the color, taste, and smell of the water while state officials downplayed or dismissed their concerns.

Flint, which had been a customer of already treated Lake Huron water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, began drawing its water from the Flint River and treating it at the Flint Water Treatment Plant in April 2014. The cost-cutting move, made while the city was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, was to be an interim measure while the city awaited completion of the KWA.

Flint switched back to the Detroit water system, by then known as the Great Lakes Water Authority, in October of 2015, after officials acknowledged a public health crisis which caused toxic lead levels to spike in the blood of Flint children. The water source switch which caused lead to leach into the water system also may be linked to a jump in fatal Legionnaires’ disease cases in the Flint area. The DEQ has acknowledged it made a mistake when it didn’t require the city to add needed corrosion control chemicals to the Flint River water.

State and federal investigations are ongoing. So far, Attorney General Bill Schuette has brought criminal charges against eight current or former state employees and one City of Flint employee.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4.