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• 1 2024-08-16T01:59:20+00:00 Legal and Political Aftermath 3 plain 2024-08-16T05:48:03+00:00 The Flint water crisis led to several criminal investigations and prosecution of government officers and workers who participated in the decision-making and response mechanisms. In 2016, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette told the public that they had filed criminal charges against some of the state and local employees from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the City of Flint (Dellapenna, 2017). These charges varied from misconduct in office to involuntary manslaughter in connection with deaths resulting from Legionnaires' disease associated with the water crisis. The criminal proceedings have been lengthy and some of the charges were dropped and others brought time and again. These investigations and trials are still ongoing and have maintained the presence of the issue and influenced the narrative of who is to blame for the crisis (Ruble et al., 2019). However, the legal process has also been accused of being slow and difficult in establishing criminal responsibility in an organization of this scale.
  Regarding the consequences of the Flint water crisis, civil lawsuits and settlements have been applied quite often. The highest settlement was achieved by the state of Michigan in August 2020; the amount awarded was $600 million to support the people of Flint in the water crisis (BBC News, 2020). This agreement was to resolve tens of thousands of legal suits that were taken against the state by Flint residents. A lot of the settlement money was for children who were exposed to lead-contaminated water because of possible future health consequences that the children might go through (Dellapenna, 2017). Other defendants who have agreed to make specific payments are engineering companies and the Environmental Protection Agency. Criticisms have regarded this as insufficient since they only give money to the residents and do not consider the long-lasting damages. The legal procedures that have been addressed in the case have helped illustrate the hardships that people undergo while trying to seek justice and compensation for environmental disasters and negligence by governments.
  Following the Flint water crisis, there have been different policies that have been put in place. This is together with reforms to ensure that such catastrophes do not happen again. At the state level, Michigan has set up higher standards for water testing and reduced the action level of lead in drinking water (Hill, 2022). It also provoked the change of the federal Lead and Copper Rule, which regulates the process of testing lead in drinking water and when a community has to act . Also, measures have been taken to enhance the disclosure and openness of decisions made on matters concerning health and the environment. Some policies have been directed towards the general matter of environmental justice and the ability of the affected groups to have a louder say in matters concerning their environment and health (Dellapenna, 2017; Ruble et al., 2019). However, critics have claimed that most of these policy changes have been inadequate or have been implemented at a slow rate to effectively address the problems of the system as brought out by the Flint crisis.