Corrosion mystery solved, but Flint's struggles continue

(AP) — Shortly before this poverty-stricken city began drawing its drinking water from a local river in a cost-cutting move nearly two years ago, officials huddled at the municipal water treatment plant, running through a checklist of final preparations.

Recalling the meeting Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press, Glasgow said he was taken aback by the state regulator's instruction; treating drinking water with anti-corrosive additives was routine practice.

By the time Gov. Rick Snyder announced in October 2015 that Flint would return to its earlier source of treated water, the Detroit municipal system, dangerously high levels of the metal were detected in the blood of some residents, including children, for whom it can cause lower IQs and behavioral problems.

Glasgow's account of the meeting, given first at a state legislative committee meeting Tuesday and then in more detail in an interview, supplied the biggest missing piece of the puzzle about Flint's water contamination crisis that has stunned experts, elected officials and the city's beleaguered citizens for months: how a municipal process that is considered ordinary went so terribly wrong.

It was a story of harried water plant staffers scrambling to meet a deadline for a water system switch, political appointees making changes to save money for a city swimming in debt, and a state engineer confidently but erroneously describing federal guidelines for ensuring water quality.

Snyder fired the department's top drinking water official; another remains suspended.

[...] worried parents will be watching their children for symptoms of lead poisoning as local, state and federal officials try to restore broken trust.

State health officials cast doubt on a Flint doctor's findings that lead levels in local children had spiked after the water source change.