The following editorial was published by USA Today on January 21. Snyder and other officials will be called to testify next month at a congressional panel about the crisis over lead-contaminated water. GM's Flint plant sought permission to switch to a different water supplier after finding rust on newly machined parts. And children may be the ones to suffer.

Marco Rubio told reporters Thursday that he had been briefed on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, before calling for accountability and solutions. The element can cause problems pertaining to mental and physical development in children. The damage might not show up for years, and there is no treatment to reverse certain developmental effects.

The frustration has mostly been directed at Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who appointed an emergency manager to run Flint.

Faced with a water contamination crisis that could imperil the health of thousands of people and has has pitted residents against municipal and state officials they have accused of negligence, the Stevens family has had to learn a kind of household triage. "We can't tolerate increased lead levels in any event, but it's really the city's water system that needs to deal with it".

The board meeting came one day after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said a top regional official would resign because of the crisis.

Snyder's office released a statement saying the state would cooperate with EPA.

The taskforce also found that "throughout 2015, as the public raised concerns and as independent studies and testing were conducted and brought to the attention of MDEQ, the agency's response was often one of aggressive dismissal, belittlement, and attempts to discredit these efforts and the individuals involved". In bureaucratic circles, this may be considered taking action. "And because it's not treated with any chemicals, Flint has the finest drinking water in the country". They were thwarted at every turn.

The aging pipes have been leeching lead into the city's drinking water, as a result of a decision in 2014 to switch the city's water supply - and a failure to treat that water for its corrosiveness. It wasn't until independent tests by a scientist and doctor found the risky levels of lead. In September, a pediatrician compared blood tests which revealed lead poisoning in children.

As it turned out, she was correct. "GM [General Motors] dumped in it for a hundred years and never cleaned up... because they filed for bankruptcy".

EPA is committed to improving the public health protection provided by the Lead and Copper Rule and is actively considering revisions to the rule. They are giant bureaucracies that can be enormously wasteful and bear close watching for that. Which is all the more reason government should jump into action at the first hint that progress has switched into reverse.

In Flint, government made life worse by failing to do its job. An attorney representing the residents, Trachelle Young, was quoted by CNN as having said that "the residents have been getting billed for water that they can not use" and that such practice is unfair to the residents. While there is no direct evidence that Flint's plight was ignored because it is a city in decline, where a majority of residents are African-American and 42 percent fall below the poverty line, you can't blame residents for wondering how quickly the situation would have been addressed if it had happened in Grosse Pointe Farms or some other tony Detroit suburb.