Analysis... Continued from p. 9
dards, even as they were fudging the test methods. They said they were testing the highest-risk households, even though documents showed they had no idea which those were. The Michigan DEQ’s top spokesman, Brad Wurfel, said in July 2015 [
http://j.mp/LeadLevelCoverUp] that “Anyone who is con- cerned about lead in the drinking water in Flint can relax.” Perhaps this goes to show that reporters should not put too much stock in the words of agency spokespeople — Wurfel resigned December 29, 2015, joining his boss, DEQ director Dan Wyant. Environmental journalists should love the transparency provi- sions in the Safe Drinking Water Act itself— and exploit them. As written in 1974, the SDWA included proactive disclosure require- ments that still are among the strongest in any environmental law. In a nutshell, it mandates an open regulatory process and re- quires agencies to tell customers if their drinking water is contam- inated. Certainly, these goals were evaded by local, state and federal officials in the Flint fiasco. More generally, studies have found that many drinking water systems do a poor job of meeting disclosure requirements [
http://gao.gov/products/RCED-92-135]. Still, the law gives re- porters a strong foundation for investigating not only any contam- inants in local drinking water, but also the integrity of the regulatory and enforcement process meant to protect public health. In the wake of Flint, the Associated Press reported Jan. 26 that Sebring, Ohio, a rust-belt city near Youngstown, discovered lead in its drinking water — and also discovered that the water utility had kept them in the dark about it for months.
It’s like what journalist and commentator Bill Moyers told SEJ members [
http://j.mp/MoyersAddress] at their 2005 annual confer- ence in Austin, Texas: “News is what people want to keep hidden. Everything else is publicity.”
Joseph A. Davis has written about the environment for four decades. He is director of SEJ’s WatchDog Project.
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27 SEJournal Spring 2016
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