New ACLU video gets tough with Flint officials over lead levels

A new video from the Michigan ACLU offers some new findings, as well as some very uncomfortable interviews with city officials, as the organization continues to seek justice for residents who have hazardous water coming out of their faucets. Among the findings in this video:

• Documentation obtained by the ACLU demonstrates that Flint was not kicked off the Detroit system but decided to discontinue using Detroit water.

• Flint's water testing relied on faulty or missing documentation.

• Flint quietly stopped using corrosion control chemicals, a decisions that contributed to the high lead levels researchers are finding in Flint water.

The video is narrated by our old MT news editor Curt Guyette, who asks some very tough questions of Howard Croft, Flint's director of public utilities. Croft basically talks his ass off, doing anything but answering the direct questions put to him. At one point, asked by a Flint resident if the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and Flint's emergency manager undermined his ability to do his job, Croft pauses for ten, long, discomfiting seconds, looking deeply worried, before saying he can't answer the question.

The video is worth watching, if only for that alone.