Flint, Michigan Tap Water: Lead Effects, Settlement, and EPA Suit

Flint, Michigan’s tap water was contaminated with lead and bacteria from April 2014 through October 2015 after state-appointed emergency managers switched the city’s water source to the Flint River without requiring the corrosion control treatment that keeps metals from leaching out of old pipes. The water today meets every federal and state safety standard, nearly all of the lead service lines have been replaced, and the EPA formally lifted its emergency order on May 19, 2025.¹ The legal consequences are a different story: two rounds of criminal prosecution against state officials ended without a single conviction, and the $659.25 million civil settlement for residents is only now reaching people’s bank accounts, more than a decade after the crisis began.

What Went Wrong with the Water

Flint had bought treated Lake Huron water from Detroit for decades. By 2011, the city was running a $25 million deficit, and Governor Rick Snyder placed Flint under state control through a succession of emergency managers who answered to the state treasury rather than to local voters.²³ To save money while waiting for a new regional pipeline to be built, the city began drawing from the Flint River in April 2014.⁴

The river water was far more corrosive than what Detroit had been supplying. Standard practice is to dose drinking water with corrosion inhibitors that coat the inside of pipes and keep lead and iron from dissolving. Flint officials never added those chemicals, and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, the state agency responsible for enforcing federal drinking water rules, told them none were required.³⁵ The aggressive water stripped the protective coating from Flint’s aging pipes, and lead leached into the supply reaching thousands of homes. Residents noticed the water was discolored, smelled foul, and tasted off. Officials called the complaints cosmetic and kept telling the public the water was safe.²

The missing treatment had a second consequence. Chlorine levels in the distribution system fell, creating conditions for bacteria to grow. A Legionnaires’ disease outbreak between June 2014 and October 2015 sickened at least 87 to 90 people and killed 12, with researchers later estimating that roughly 80 percent of those cases were attributable to the water switch.⁶⁷ A FRONTLINE investigation found that another 20 survivors died from complications in the years that followed.

How Residents Forced the Truth Out

For more than a year, state and local officials insisted the water was fine. Four people broke that story open.

Flint resident Lee-Anne Walters contacted the EPA in early 2015 about her family’s tap water. Miguel Del Toral, a regulations manager at EPA Region 5, investigated and wrote a June 2015 memo documenting dangerously high lead levels and the absence of corrosion control. His superiors tried to suppress it, and the MDEQ worked to discredit his findings.⁸⁹

Walters also contacted Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech civil and environmental engineering professor with expertise in lead corrosion. Edwards tested 30 samples from her home: the lowest reading was 300 parts per billion, the average was 2,000 ppb, and the highest exceeded 13,000 ppb. The EPA’s action level is 15 ppb.¹⁰ In August 2015, Edwards and his team collected samples from 269 Flint homes and documented widespread contamination. They also showed that state sampling methods, including flushing taps before collection and using narrow-mouth bottles, had been reducing the lead that showed up in official tests.¹¹

Pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha at Hurley Children’s Hospital compared children’s blood lead levels before and after the water switch. The share of Flint children under five with elevated blood lead doubled citywide, from 2.4 percent to 4.9 percent, and nearly tripled in the hardest-hit neighborhoods, from 4 percent to 10.6 percent.¹² State officials attacked her data when she went public in September 2015, then conceded weeks later.¹³ Flint switched back to Detroit water on October 16, 2015.¹⁴ A federal emergency declaration followed in January 2016, authorizing FEMA to provide water, filters, and test kits.¹⁵

What the Lead Did to People

About 9,000 children were exposed to lead-contaminated water across the eighteen months.² Lead is a neurotoxin with no safe exposure level, and in young children it causes permanent damage to brain development that affects intelligence, behavior, memory, and achievement across a lifetime. For infants on formula mixed with tap water, concentrations as low as 10 ppb create an estimated 25 percent risk of exceeding the CDC’s danger threshold for blood lead.¹²

A Harvard analysis of the children who grew up through the crisis found elevated rates of ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, and depression above national averages. In the Flint Registry, a health-tracking program with more than 21,000 enrollees, nearly half of parents report their children have behavioral problems. The city saw an 8 percent increase in students needing special education and measurable drops in math scores for third through eighth graders after the crisis.¹⁶

Adults carry their own damage. Research estimates one in four Flint residents has post-traumatic stress disorder, and more than a third of adults in the registry have been diagnosed with depression. Residents report chronic high blood pressure, skin rashes, and hair loss. Data from the period after the switch shows a 12 percent drop in fertility rates and a 15.5 percent increase in low-birth-weight babies.¹⁷

Several ongoing programs track and treat residents. The Flint Registry connects nearly 22,000 enrollees to healthcare resources. The Pediatric Public Health Initiative run by Hanna-Attisha through Michigan State University and Hurley Children’s Hospital provides lead testing, neuropsychological assessments, nutrition programs, school health services, and literacy support. Michigan expanded Medicaid eligibility for Flint children to cover long-term care.¹⁷¹⁶ Researchers at Michigan State and Hurley are also running the Flint Tooth FAIRY Study, which analyzes baby teeth from children born during the crisis to reconstruct historical lead exposure more precisely than blood tests allow.

Is Flint’s Tap Water Safe Now?

Yes, by every regulatory measure. The monitoring period covering the second half of 2025 showed a 90th-percentile lead reading of 6 ppb, well below the federal action level of 15 ppb and Michigan’s tighter 12 ppb standard.¹⁸ The EPA lifted its 2016 emergency order on May 19, 2025, after finding the city had completed every requirement. Oversight has shifted to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy under a 2024 administrative consent order.¹

The pipes themselves have mostly been replaced. A 2017 court-ordered settlement with the Natural Resources Defense Council required the city to pull every lead service line. As of July 2025, nearly 11,000 lead pipes had been replaced and over 28,000 properties excavated and inspected, covering roughly 98 percent of residential lead lines.¹⁹ About 500 lines remain, mostly at vacant properties or homes where residents previously declined the work; those are scheduled for removal in 2026.¹⁸ The work was not always on schedule. A federal judge held the city in contempt in 2024 for missing replacement deadlines.

Criminal Cases: Zero Convictions

Two separate rounds of criminal charges were filed against state officials. Neither produced a single conviction.

The first round, under former Attorney General Bill Schuette, charged multiple officials and secured some plea deals. When Attorney General Dana Nessel took office, her team dismissed all pending charges in June 2019, calling the earlier investigation flawed.²⁰

In January 2021, a one-person grand jury returned indictments against nine individuals on 42 total counts, including:²¹

Former Governor Rick Snyder, two misdemeanor counts of willful neglect of duty.
Former health department director Nick Lyon, nine counts of involuntary manslaughter tied to Legionnaires’ deaths plus one count of willful neglect.
Former chief medical executive Eden Wells, nine counts of involuntary manslaughter, two of misconduct in office, and one of willful neglect.
Former emergency managers Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose, multiple counts of misconduct in office.
Former senior adviser to the governor Richard Baird, perjury, misconduct, obstruction of justice, and extortion.

The indictments collapsed in June 2022 when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a one-judge grand jury has no legal authority to issue indictments. Charges were dismissed against every defendant over the following months. The attorney general’s office tried to convert the indictments into standard criminal complaints, and judges rejected those efforts. The Michigan Supreme Court upheld its ruling on October 31, 2023, ending the criminal proceedings. The state spent at least $60 million on these prosecutions.²⁰²²

The Civil Settlement and How Payments Work

In 2021, U.S. District Judge Judith E. Levy approved a $626.25 million settlement with the State of Michigan, the MDEQ, and the city of Flint in the consolidated class action In re Flint Water Cases.²³ Two later settlements raised the total to $659.25 million: $8 million from engineering firm Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam (approved May 2024) and $25 million from Veolia North America (approved October 2024).²⁴

The fund is weighted heavily toward children. The allocation reserves 64.5 percent for children aged six and younger during the crisis, with additional shares for older children. Adults receive 15 percent, residential property claims 3 percent, and business losses 0.5 percent. Two percent has already gone to special education programs in Genesee County.²⁵

Actually getting money to approved claimants has moved slowly. Court-appointed Special Master Deborah Greenspan reported in September 2025 that 25,759 individuals had been approved for payment, including over 13,000 children.²⁶ The payment portal went live on December 12, 2025, and residential property payments began that month. By May 2026, more than 10,500 property-claim award letters had gone out and nearly 7,900 approved individuals had received payment. Adult personal-injury payments were authorized by the court in March 2026 and are expected to begin mid-2026. Children’s payments have not yet started.²⁷ Individual payouts are expected to range from roughly $1,000 to $100,000, with the largest amounts going to young children with documented elevated lead levels.²⁸

The Lawsuit Against the EPA Is Still Open

Two consolidated federal lawsuits against the EPA remain pending. Filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act and captioned Burgess v. United States, the cases allege that the EPA’s failure to use its emergency authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act prolonged residents’ exposure. More than 7,500 plaintiffs seek $722.4 million in damages. The EPA has moved to dismiss on governmental immunity grounds. As of late 2025, no ruling had been issued, and the cases were expected to move toward trial in 2026.²⁹³⁰ The $659.25 million already distributed through the Flint Water Cases settlement does not come from the EPA and does not resolve these separate federal claims.

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