Emergency managers charged over Flint’s water

Associated Press

FLINT, Mich.

A criminal investigation of Flint’s lead-contaminated water turned to former key officials at City Hall on Tuesday as Michigan’s attorney general announced charges against four people accused of keeping residents on a contaminated system that caused the crisis.

Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose separately were state-appointed emergency managers in Flint in 2014-15 when the city was using the Flint River as a source of drinking water. Ambrose also served earlier as a financial adviser to the troubled town.

They were charged with four crimes, including conspiracy and misconduct in office.

Howard Croft, Flint’s former public-works director, and Daugherty Johnson, the former utilities director, were charged with conspiracy and false pretenses.

Attorney General Bill Schuette said Earley and Ambrose committed Flint to $85 million in bonds to join a new regional water pipeline to Lake Huron while at the same time using a city water plant that was not equipped to properly treat the river water before it went to roughly 100,000 residents.

They claimed that debt-burdened Flint needed to sell bonds to clean up a lagoon, Schuette said, but the money went as the city’s share to Karegnondi Water Authority to build the pipeline, which still is under construction.

“This case is a classic bait-and-switch. ... The lime sludge lagoon was not an emergency,” said special prosecutor Todd Flood.