Chaffetz Slams EPA’s McCarthy over Flint Water Crisis: ‘You, Too, Should Step Down’

Rep. Jason Chaffetz unloaded on EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy today after she admitted no one at the EPA had been disciplined following the Flint, Mich., water crisis. "You, too, should step down," he thundered. 

Chaffetz, in a sharp exchange with McCarthy, noted how the EPA was aware of the lead contamination but never brought it to the public's attention.

Here's part of the exchange:

CHAFFETZ: “Administrator McCarthy, did the EPA — in your mind, did the EPA do anything wrong?”
 MCCARTHY: “I don’t know whether we did everything right. That’s the challenge that I’m facing.”
CHAFFETZ: “The challenge you’re facing right now is my question, and my question is, did the EPA do anything wrong?”
 MCCARTHY: “I think we could have been — I would hope that we would have been more regressive. I would hope that we would have escalated this issue. If we could have done absolutely anything to stand on a rooftop and scream about the challenges we’re having —“
CHAFFETZ: “So, you’re just not — here’s the fundamental difference. First of all, we have jurisdiction here in Congress on the EPA. I don’t have jurisdiction on the governor. I don’t have jurisdiction on — I have jurisdiction to call him up here, and Republicans did call him up here. He volunteered to be here. And we are investigating this. This is our third hearing on this topic. But here’s the fundamental difference, and I hope you and I hope everybody understands this — I see responsibility, I see people that are getting fired, I see changes, I see admission that there was fundamental wrong that happened in the organization. But then when I turn to the EPA, has anybody been fired? That’s a question.”
MCCARTHY: “No, sir.”
CHAFFETZ: “Has anybody been dismissed?”
MCCARTHY: “No, sir.”
CHAFFETZ: “When the EPA region 5 administrator there, Susan Hedman —“
MCCARTHY: “Mm-hmm.”
CHAFFETZ: “The day you finally did take decisive action, when you were questioned about that, you said that her act of stepping down was courageous.”
MCCARTHY: “I did.”
CHAFFETZ: “I’m going to ask you again, did the EPA do anything wrong?”
MCCARTHY: “The EPA worked very hard. Let me make one —“
CHAFFETZ: “OK. No, no, no, because I have another question for you.”
MCCARTHY: “OK.”
CHAFFETZ: “No, hold on. Did the — Mark Edwards has testified here twice. He doesn’t have a dog in this fight other than he wants good, quality health for people, and he wants good, clean water, and he happens to know the science behind the water. On those two hearings, did Mr. Edwards say anything that you think was wrong, or maybe — or inaccurate? Do you think Mr. Edwards said anything inaccurate or wrong in those two testimonies?”
MCCARTHY: “I think he was not at all informed about what EPA did. I think he knows nothing about the law which he readily admits —“
CHAFFETZ: “He knows nothing —“
MCCARTHY: “He doesn’t know how we’re supposed to work in the system. He doesn’t understand that the problem itself was the responsibility of the states. Oversight was our responsibility. We took that seriously and we conducted it. Does that mean I don’t have regrets? Because I’d really like to —“
CHAFFETZ: “That’s a whole different standard. That’s cheap. Oh, yeah, we’ve just got regrets. No, that’s cheap. That’s cheap.”
MCCARTHY: “Well, sir, you have to look at how the law works, and we did —“
CHAFFETZ: “Yeah, you know what, and it failed! You failed. You have — you said, ‘if there is anything I could do, if there was any switch I could pull.’ You had that under the law and you didn’t do it.”
MCCARTHY: “No, sir, I did not have that answer the law.”
CHAFFETZ: “Yes, you did. If there is an imminent threat, you can pull that switch, and you finally did in January. Administrator, you are wrong.”
MCCARTHY: “There is two parts to that, sir. You skipped the second.”
CHAFFETZ: “What’s the second part?”
MCCARTHY: “You need to have the information to determine an imminent threat —
CHAFFETZ: “So, why do we even need an EPA. If you can’t do that —“
MCCARTHY: “I’m sorry. Let me take —“
CHAFFETZ: “No, I am asking the questions.”
MCCARTHY: “OK.”
CHAFFETZ: “Yes, OK. In February is when you first arrived on the scene, and it wasn’t until January of the next year that you actually did something. That’s the fundamental problem. Don’t look around like you’re mystified. That’s what happened. Miguguel del Toro showed up in February. You didn’t take action. You didn’t. And you could have pulled that switch —“
MCCARTHY: “We consistently took action from that point forward, consistently —“
CHAFFETZ: “There are a lot of people in this audience from flint. Nobody believes that you took action. You had those levers there. Mark Edwards from Virginia Tech, bless his heart —“
MCCARTHY: “We —“
CHAFFETZ: “No, just listen for a second.”
MCCARTHY: “OK.”
CHAFFETZ: “— had the opportunity. They have said things like ‘We failed to get EPA to take lead in water risks seriously.’ And another quote of his ‘And this is possible because the EPA has effectively condoned cheating on the monitoring in 2006.’ He read your op ed that you put out, one of the most offensive things I could imagine, and he says you absolved any wrongdoing of the EPA in the flint disaster. If you want to do the courageous thing like you said Susan Hedman did, then you, too, should resign. Nobody’s going to believe that you have the opportunity, you had the presence, you had the authority, you had the backing of the federal government, and you did not act when you had the chance. And if you’re going to do the courageous thing, you, too, should step down. My time has expired.”