Original subtitles

Yes, sir.

- Just pull down here.

West Virginia was in the midst

of the largest drinking water crisis in recent US history.

National news had been covering the chaos,

but no one knew why this had happened.

- President Obama approved a disaster declaration

for West Virginia.

Nine counties are dealing with a chemical spill

that contaminated the water supply.

- Roughly 300,000 people in West Virginia

have been without tap water.

The rush for water was immediate.

After that sold out, so did juice, soft drinks,

anything liquid, leaving customers scrambling for ice.

What are you gonna do

about showering or cleaning or bathing?

- Well, honey, you gonna melt this down.

That's what you gonna do.

Like you did back in them old days.

Put 'em in a little tub.

Put 'em in there, and just take a, you know,

like a birdbath.

700 people in the Charleston area

have called poison control centers.

- The smell was so strong

that we had to actually cover our faces up.

- I think there should be a thorough investigation

of what happened and why this incident happened

at Freedom Industries.

- I'd say if they knew more about the chemical itself,

that's probably what's got so many people

scared to death now.

Nobody knows that much about it.

The water company people, you'd think they coulda figured

out what's safe, what's not safe, before they fired them

intakes up and polluted every water line

throughout the valley.

Yeah, you're coming up on it.

It's got a hole rusted through it.

See, they've got all this containment boom in here.

That's probably where it was breaking outta the wall.

You'd think these people woulda cared more

and do more visual inspections to prevent something

like this from ever happening.

They knew the water company was just down the road.

It'll probably take 'em months, but they'll cut all them

tanks up and haul it to scrap, make one big field out of it.

As long as it's settin' there,

the people is gonna remember it.

And that's the main thing.

They want it all to go away.

- We've had the daughter to the hospital.

She had a severe rash, and her neck started to swell,

and it doubled in size.

Is this your first trip to Charleston?

- I haven't been to Charleston before,

but I used to come to West Virginia when I was a kid.

We had family here, my uncle.

He passed away when I was 10.

I haven't been back here since, but I remember loving it.

He taught me how to shoot a bow and arrow,

and played in streams.

It was kind of a novelty, being from California.

We don't get a lot of water.

I still can't believe you guys lived so close

to Freedom Industries.

You mind if we go up there?

- Sure, we can go, if you like.

Oh, there you go, there's the smell.

- Yeah, you smell that now, do ya?

Whoa.

- This is a detergent for coal.

The chemical that leaked out.

But you know, this is really just a drop in the bucket

because we live in chemical valley.

You know, have you heard that term yet?

Oh shit, I totally forgot.

It seemed that within the chemical valley,

Freedom Industries was a relatively small company.

Their primary business was buying,

selling, and mixing chemicals.

They hadn't talked to any reporters

since their last press conference the.

- Our intent is to be totally...

Stay in front of the microphone.

- Oh, okay. - Look at us.

- Okay.

Are there no systems in place

to alert you of a leak at your facility other than a smell?

- At this moment in time,

I think that's all we have time for, so thanks for coming.

Thanks for your time.

- Woah, woah, woah. - We have more questions.

Hey, hey, hey.

It was a PR disaster, and it had a pronounced

effect on the people I spoke to in town.

So, if this was a whodunit mystery...

- There's no whodunit.

Freedom Industries did it.

They are the sole culprit.

So if this happens again in the future,

we would say that that other company was the sole culprit?

- Most certainly.

Who are you gonna blame?

- It's just unconscionable that Freedom Industry could not

have known about the leak, did not report the leak,

and did not know how much the leak had happened.

It's unconscionable to me.

My outrage and everybody else's outrage should be that.

The water company and state officials

waited more than six hours before informing the public.

But ultimately, they had little choice.

The smell demanded an explanation.

Regarding the Freedom Industry site,

we will not be making any comments.

Nor will it be permitting access to the site.

It didn't require an engineer to see

that the tanks and walls were falling apart.

But why was an industrial facility

even allowed to get this bad?

Was the story of Freedom Industries just a distraction?

- We have enough regulations on the books,

and what the administration oughta be doing

is actually doing their jobs.

Why wasn't this plant inspected since 1991?

I am entirely confident that there are ample regulations

already on the books to protect the health

and safety of the American people.

Somebody ought to be held accountable here.

- Well, a lot has been made over,

well, DEP, you haven't been to the site since '92

or maybe you've only been two times in the 2000s.

And right, wrong, or indifferent, simply visiting

those sites would not have prevented this problem.

The DEP, or Department of Environmental.

Protection, regulates all of the industry in the state.

They're essentially the environmental policemen.

Randy Huffman, he's in charge of it,

and he plays a major role in this story.

Let's say, in the instance of Freedom,

you had gone and inspected the tanks.

What would that have revealed?

- We would've probably walked the site, looked for the

obvious, evidence of material leaking from the tanks,

visible holes in the secondary containment.

But there were visible holes.

- I, I, I,

it's unfortunate, you know, assigning, trying,

the blame is on Freedom.

The blame is on the company for having tanks

that were not up to any kind of standard.

I mean, I'm reluctant to say this on camera.

I joked to somebody about this the other day.

It takes cigarettes 30 or 40 years to kill ya.

I can't imagine that, you know, a couple days of MCHM,

well, but, that's not even, I just say that in jest

because it's not fair for me to say.

I'm not a health professional.

- Hey, this is Dr. Gupta from the Health Department.

So, there is very limited information

on this chemical to begin with.

We're seeing people are suffering on the

I don't have a lot to offer them right now.

They have faith in me, and that's the reason

they are calling me.

You sent me an email about somebody calling

about their 97-year-old grandmother?

Dr. Gupta runs the local health department.

He also turns out to be the other

major player in this story.

For some reason, he was the only official

who seemed concerned that this chemical

might have negative health effects.

- I'm not keeping any registry at this point,

and the reason for that is that

we're not getting a lot of support from a lot of people.

Resistance from people who don't want

to know what's going on.

Obviously, the folks at state and federal level

are so strongly convinced that there are going

to be no long term impacts of this.

I have not yet found the evidence

on which they've based their, such strong convictions upon.

Spell your name for me and your correct title.

- Laura Jordan, L-A-U-R-A J-O-R-D-A-N.

External Affairs Manager for West Virginia American Water.

Is the water safe?

- Yes.

The water is safe to drink.

- I want to issue a challenge to all the experts

and officials that are testing our water

and tellin' us it's safe.

Whatever they're tellin' us to do with the water,

you do it first, and I'll be happy to follow.

- It still smells like licorice.

I just poured this this morning straight from the tap.

Even though the water still had an odor,

officials were saying it was saying it was safe for use.

- I want help for my daughter that's sick from this.

This was thanks to a determination

that had been made by the CDC or Centers for Disease Control

who said that one part of MCHM per one millions parts

of water or one PPM was okay to drink.

This is the equivalent of squeezing one drop of MCHM

into a 10 gallon fish tank.

But here's what's strange.

Only a few days later, they issued a statement

advising pregnant women to find an alternate

drinking water source due to a limited availability of data.

- I'm not saying the water's safe.

They're saying the water's safe.

The water company's saying the water is safe.

The CDC is saying the water is safe.

When people shower or use the water other ways,

they're having self-reported associations with rashes,

eye irritations, asthma attacks.

We should be more forthright and say,

we cannot tell you if this is not related to the chemical,

but we're sure gonna find out.

With its 15 million customers,

American Water is the biggest private water company

in the United States.

And their Charleston operation services the largest area

on the East Coast, more than 2,500 square miles.

And water here is some of the most expensive in the country.

But looking around, neither of these facts made any sense

because water was everywhere.

Why were people paying so much money to pump

water halfway across the state from a single source?

Get out of that water.

I ain't tellin' you no more.

- I've been drinkin' it since they lifted the do not use,

but nobody else in the household will.

We're supposed to trust these people to provide us

with clean, safe drinking water.

Then we got a creek right here that just had 108

gallons of slurry go down it.

I'm all for coal.

I'm 100% for coal, 100% against Obama.

I guess in a lot of ways I'm just fed up with things

happenin' around here, but I can't go nowhere 'cause I don't

know how to do anything other than mine coal.

- You used to never have a problem.

Then they put mines up here, mines up here and stuff,

and all that sludge and whatever they use.

- Slurry.

- Even into the aquifer it's dripping,

and then for years they said, oh it smells funny.

But it's okay to drink it.

Half the people in this trailer park died from cancer.

That's why they changed

all these. - And the well ain't no good.

To city water. - To city water and the next

thing you know, well, we're gettin'

contaminated freakin' water.

- Even your clothes will look like that.

- This is what come out of the spigot.

- I guess the water started back with the coal mines,

which was about a mile down the road here,

which my grandfather worked in.

And my dad worked in it, and I worked in it.

The mines has done good up until just recently.

You start lookin' back at some of the things

that's happenin' to you or to other people,

and the sickness that's goin' on.

When I wake up in the morning, I think if I'm still living.

I think it's a great day.

Besides coal, the other big industry here

is chemical, and it was still unclear if the industry

at large had played a role in this crisis.

Chemical alley is about a 25 mile stretch of the.

Kanawha River that has tons of chemical

manufacturing facilities on it.

For your all's knowledge, people see cameras, and they think

they kind of like, job security.

So some people are friendly and welcoming of it,

but a lot of people aren't because it gets bad publicity.

The plant's gonna shut down, and they're not

gonna be able to feed their kids.

That's where the coal-fired power plant is

that they have for that facility.

This is where they dump all the toxic stuff,

and actually for a long time they didn't know

what Union Carbide dumped.

And I know this because I worked there.

When I was 16-years-old, there was an explosion

at the Methomyl-Larvin unit in Institute.

I tried to like tape up the windows and doors of my house

like they told us to do in school, and by that time

I was already exposed, so that incident

kind of just changed my life.

Okay.

We are learning new information

about the second substance found in the West Virginia

chemical spill, the chemical PPH.

- I know that many of you here would like an update

on the new material that was found yesterday.

Part of my team here from DEP.

- Governor, thank you for...

- On the day of the spill, when we asked the question,

what's in the tank, the question that we asked

should have revealed this as well.

By this, Randy means that what actually spilled

was a mixture of chemicals, and 5.6% of it

was this other chemical called PPH.

Imagine that this beverage is what spilled,

and they didn't find the lemon juice.

Both state and federal regulators were doing testing.

How had this gone undetected?

- Mike might be able to answer the test results.

- I just haven't seen the most recent test results.

So did Freedom Industries

have any records about PPH?

- Well, they had their in document that what they were

shipping in and shipping out, but it was pretty rough.

They also had three tanks of this material,

and they were shipping in between tanks.

Why did the DEP allow them to operate like this?

So is your background in environmental science

or anything like that?

- I came out of college with a mining engineering degree.

There were no jobs in the mining industry at the time.

This was the mid '80s.

I came to work for what was the Department of Energy

at the time in state government as a last resort.

We could regulate CO2 out of existence in this country,

and it's not going to have any measurable impact globally.

Looking through the archives, Randy Huffman,

he had the kind of report card

that you hide from your parents.

Loosening regulations, turning a blind eye to thousands

of miles of dirty streams, granting pollution waivers.

The DEP had even gone so far as to sue their federal

counterpart, the Environmental Protection Agency when the

federal agency tried to enforce the clean water act.

"This is 100% victory.

"We won," said Randy Huffman.

For a while, it was reported that the DEP simply

didn't review the waster water pollution reports

of companies around the state.

These added up to over 25,000 violations

of the Clean Water Act.

"For whatever reason, we weren't getting it done,."

Huffman said, "It was a glitch, and they got"

"off track with it."

25,000.

- I believe in the production of coal,

it's value to our country, and I will continue

to do everything that I can to fight the EPA

and its misguided attempts to cripple this industry.

After reviewing some of the past.

State of the State addresses given by the governor,

it seems that fighting environmental regulation,

well, that was something that brought Democrats

and Republicans together.

And this is how the states Democratic.

US Senator won his seat.

- I'm Joe Manchin.

I sued EPA, and I'll take dead aim at the Cap and Trade Bill

because it's bad for West Virginia.

It seemed that the EPA's proposed emissions

program was also bad for his coal business,

a business that had earned him millions.

Now, at that time, he was the state's governor,

and here's what Joe Manchin did right

at the beginning of his term.

- The first official new sign of West Virginia's progress

started going up today, which shows

the true beauty of West Virginia.

It's a little hard to read, but he actually

changed the slogan of the state to Open for Business.

So I asked a retired employee from the DEP

if this translated into weaker enforcement.

- Yes, Joe Manchin, in my opinion, did initiate

a more lax environmental enforcement atmosphere

while he was in office and even it seems even until today.

Joe Manchin had appointed Randy Huffman

nearly 10 years ago, and it seemed he was still doing

the exact job that he'd been hired to do.

- They tell us all it's the flu.

It's not the water at all.

It's somethin' else, and they send us home like this.

And then you know, we go home and sit there and cry.

And it's wrong how they're doin' us.

- It's not the hospital's job to make sure they ask

questions every time somebody comes with a rash.

They're too busy for that.

Their job's not surveillance.

We need a program that will actually encourage people

to come in, describe their symptoms.

That needs to be followed over several years.

That's the way you prove connections,

the chemical and other things.

Two weeks ago.

It should have been done.

- You know, I'm not interested in writing tickets

or assessing fines.

I don't need to collect money from people just because.

Give the benefit of the doubt to organizations,

and assume people aren't out there trying to break

the law, but they would like to comply.

And give 'em a shot at it.

- Do you though, that like that ideology lets

companies like Freedom through the cracks?

- No, I don't.

- Maybe you can correct this.

In the five years before 2008, something like 25,000

violations of the Clean Water Act occurred,

but you know, fines were never issued.

- Ah, yeah, 35,000 is not that many.

So I'll say that.

This is a whole lot more complicated than something

that you can just put in a sound bite and say, here's 35,000

violations for which there never was a penalty.

Nearly three weeks had gone by,

and yet for some reason, the water still had a smell.

So people didn't trust it.

And they also didn't trust the state or federal officials

who were saying that the water was safe to drink.

- It's three weeks.

We haven't been told anything.

- You're trying to force feed us underneath the table.

- Purging is not working.

American Water didn't even bother to show up.

There was only one official there to take all of the heat.

How often do you do it?

Do you do it every month, every year, once a week.

It was hard to tell if Randy Huffman

was playing dumb or he really didn't know anything.

- I'm not aware of any full spectrum testing

that's been done.

I wouldn't make any judgments on that at all.

No evidence that we've seen.

I'm just not aware of 'em.

I'm sure it'll reveal something we didn't know.

I apologize, but I'm not familiar with the protocols

at all that the water company used to do their sampling.

I have a question.

- Freedom's been ordered to remove the tanks.

No, there will not be another tank farm on that site.

Nobody else is gonna be there.

- We need to understand the basics of this.

We are the first human beings this chemical

has ever been experimented on.

It's tested on rats and some of the other lab animals.

I vehemently disagree with any official anywhere

who's saying well, this is flu, or this is something else

'cause it's not.

- Don't let anyone around you convince you

that you don't see and you aren't experiencing

what you're experiencing.

Dr. Gupta has really stepped up, and I have yet in 22 years

of work seen a health official do that, so thank you.

- We're working closely with the legislature

on some specific rules.

- Here's the thing.

Regulation without enforcement is pointless.

- It was brutal.

It might have been the worst experience

that I've had in this job.

The police escorted me to my truck 'cause they were

concerned for my safety.

I wasn't, but they were.

I think they just wanted somethin' to do.

While Randy and his agency may be responsible

for a lot of problems in the state,

as it turns out, the inspection of above ground

storage tanks wasn't one of them.

- I could send inspectors to that site every day.

I'm not gonna know that that hole is gettin' ready

to rust the rest of the way through and leak the material.

What we need to prevent this problem

is something that we don't have.

Some kind of policy decision by Congress

or by our state legislatures at some point was made.

One thing was for sure.

The politicians didn't want any of this blame

coming back to them.

I've heard there's a lot of political corruption

and that lobbyists wield a lot of influence here.

- That would be more so in Washington than here.

The idea of regulation as in ensuring the safety

of storage tanks, we always assumed that that was in place.

That's the type of regulation everyone wants.

But when it came to making this law,

Chris also had a little extra motivation.

- I mean, I've been drinking all day.

I had just gotten out of the shower right before our date.

I thought about the baby and what was gonna happen.

He used to take 45 minute showers.

I used to get clean.

- I don't feel comfortable with my biggest organ

being exposed to somethin' that they know nothing about.

I don't feel comfortable with my daughter's or my husband's.

Across the state, there was a contest

to determine the best drinking water in the world.

I wanted to see how this water that had been declared

safe for use stacked up against the competition.

- You tell me.

- It's really incredible.

I mean, it's like a big bottle of licorice.

On odor I would score it as low as I could.

The people who test this say it's acceptable to drink?

Is that right? - That's what they say.

- Let me smell it again because that's atrocious.

Oh.

- I would love to give you our Beverly Hills 90H20 water,

the first sommelier crafted water in the world.

- Yes.

- I tried to get it entered here,

but they wouldn't accept it.

- Too bad.

The first, oh, my grandmother always said,

and she survived two world wars, when water has an odor,

don't drink it.

This has.

- I will tell you this is the best trade I've ever made.

- Yeah, I think so, too, yeah.

I think so, too.

And I will trade this with a trash can.

Everyone's upset about their water bill.

You know that, right?

I know they are.

Can you at least give us a break?

- You can smell MCHM in water below

the protective health limit.

As a water company...

- I'm sleepin' great.

- Give the people in this valley some confidence.

- We have to follow what's given to us

as health-based guidance.

It is a fear-based issue because people can smell it.

- I'm understanding that not one of you up here

are willing to say unequivocally, it's safe,

and I would assume that you would have

to have zero parts per billion, trillion, no nothing.

- We monitor for 100 contaminants at various times

throughout the year, and if anyone thinks that every

water treatment system has absolutely zero of all

of these chemicals or compounds, they're mistaken.

There are limits set.

- Water utilities simply don't have the information

on how to remove 50,000 chemicals in the water.

- Right.

- So the Environmental Protection Action

sets those standards.

There's little information available.

That's just surprising to me, which is why we got involved.

I'm not here to convince you the water is safe.

I'm here to figure out if it is.

Dr. Andy Whelton had just arrived

with a team of students.

He's an independent scientist and a water protection

strategist who used to work in the military.

- There's simply not a lot of data associated

with what chemicals are in waterways and water sources.

In fact, the EPA only requires water companies

to test for 76 chemicals, and since MCHM wasn't

on this list, it was legal for it to be in the water.

But MCHM has an extremely rare quality.

You can smell it in parts per billion.

It's like putting one drop of MCHM

into a 10,000 gallon fish tank.

- In the drinking water industry, we're looking

for that one device that can tell us everything.

Because it doesn't exist, we have to rely

on multiple devices to tell us a little bit

of information about the water that we're looking at.

But aren't there more than 80,000

chemicals used in commerce?

- Right, and because they...

So you're saying there's no way to test for them?

- There is no tri-quarter to determine which of the

80,000 chemicals is present.

Because there was an odor, that was exactly

how it was detected.

So imagine, without the smell, the chemical

would have gone unnoticed.

People would have drank MCHM without knowing.

Just insist on leaving your complaint

and your intent not to pay.

The CDC would never have had to determine

that one part per million was safe.

- A lot of things just didn't make sense.

How did the CDC come up with the screening levels?

We all have the same question.

Is my water really safe?

I value and trust the opinions of the CDC and the EPA.

- Thank you very much, Governor.

Is your water safe?

What I can say is that you can use your water

however you like.

- We had expected them to come in, and ease people's fears.

Instead, they just threw a little gasoline on the fire.

- There are no studies on humans for this substance.

- After the water use ban has been lifted,

if we're still smelling the water in the way we are,

there is some amount of chemical somewhere.

- The CDC has set a screening level.

Doesn't mean there is potentially zero in there.

- You know, they gave us a one part per million.

Then they came to town and wouldn't say

that it was safe to drink.

The Centers for Disease Control everybody relies on.

And at that point, everybody was sort of dumbfounded.

So for some reason the most important

health agency in the entire world was no longer willing

to use the word, safe.

- In refusing to declare the water safe, I think we're

setting ourselves up in the future for something

that we may not be proud of.

- This is an independent project.

We're pleased to have you, and we appreciate your help.

Dr. Whelton.

- As far as the testing phase, we go out tomorrow.

Dr. Whelton went from working on his own dime

to working for the governor.

It was now his job to do what the CDC could not.

Eastman Chemical, they make about nine billion

dollars every year.

They're the original creator of MCHM,

which means they're required to create a Safety Data Sheet.

Tells you all these symptoms it affects.

It's the only information that's available

to the public and to emergency responders.

- The people in my world, that's what we rely on.

We go out on a truck wreck or something,

and there's a tank leaking, we gotta look at a data sheet.

That's all we have.

But if you look at a data sheet for MCHM,

nearly every field reads no data available

including most important symptoms and effects.

However, there was one useful piece of information,

the average amount of MCHM it takes to kill a rat.

- Any time you talk about what levels are safe

for people to expose to, that's a big deal.

But how the CDC determined what amount

was acceptable is kind of shocking.

Without knowing if MCHM causes cancer or reproductive harm

the CDC decided what amount was safe

from this piece of information, how much Eastman Chemical

says it takes to kill a rat.

This would explain why the CDC told pregnant women

not to drink the water.

It seemed that they didn't know what the effects might be.

- These are studies that are done in secrecy.

They're not available to the public

or the regulators to review.

- Companies have had trade secrets for as long

as they've been in business so that the competition

wouldn't have access to their information.

But you don't have to look far

to find an example.

According to the Safety Data Sheet of PPH, the second

chemical on the spill, it's identity was withheld as a trade

secret, but this is actually the norm.

There's a government accountability report

that revealed 95% of new chemicals contain

some information claimed as confidential.

95%.

But MCHM was no longer confidential because Eastman.

Chemical had released the studies.

At least one thing stood out.

There was a note from a lead researcher.

It said that their first study of MCHM

had bad rats, so the results were of limited value.

And the rats had exhibited something called hematuria.

It turns out the rats were peeing blood.

Was it normal to blame undesirable results on the rats?

What what do you mean?

So you're a lawyer.

Who are you suing?

- Everybody.

The clinical finding in the lab notes

that was never put in any report

was not that there was just hematuria

but that in some of the rats, the blood was actually

green that was in the urine.

- Where was this study because I didn't see it?

- Well, you couldn't find that by looking at the study.

You'd have to sue Eastman and get into the discovery

process and then get their lab notes.

Are you looking for a spot?

- Yeah, let's go.

Hold onto your everything here.

Here you go.

People joke with me all the time.

They know that I fish, and they'll say, oh,

you catch any three-eyed fish out there?

Oh, you catch some deformed ones every once in a while,

but fish are just like people.

Any time I'm in this area, there's always

that like sweet smell.

Can you smell it?

- Yeah.

I forget what they make down there.

But they're permitted to dump a certain

amount in here, right?

That's how it works?

- Yeah, they're permitted to dump

a certain amount of certain things.

You know, I don't know.

No, they test their outfalls.

They test what's in the outfalls, and then they report

that to us once a quarter.

That's a good question.

How do I know if they're tellin' the truth?

We've never, ever had that kind of problem

'cause they typically will contract that out

to a third party to come in and do the sampling,

and then prepare the report.

We'll look at their reports.

Later that night, I went to the EPA's website

to see how many facilities his agency

had actually inspected.

Only 11, less than any other state, but while I was here

I saw something that surprised me.

There were huge numbers of violations in every state.

The national average for facilities dumping more

than they're supposed to was 38%.

West Virginia was actually below the national average.

The Clean Water Act requires a fine of not less

than 2,500 dollars or more than 25,000 dollars

per day of violation, so how much are companies

actually being fined in total?

Here's the average total fine in West Virginia.

California was the highest.

But in many states, the fine wasn't even above

the required daily minimum of 2,500 dollars.

In Illinois, the fine is less than a parking ticket.

It made sense why weak enforcement might be happening

in West Virginia, but I couldn't understand

why it seemed to be happening everywhere else.

- It's not a giant, but it's fish.

It was the last day of the legislative calendar,

and they were holding a vote on what was now

colloquially known as the tank bill.

If it passed, it would be the strongest piece

of environmental legislation the state had seen

in a generation.

- Environmental pollution's really not a problem

when it doesn't affect you, but what happens if it does?

- This sounds like a real fiimby issue.

It's in my back yard.

- Concerned citizens comin' to the capitol to voice

their opinion on the water situation in Charleston.

Well, I was told I wasn't allowed to sit

on the floor, so I'm gonna sit up

in the gallery with the people.

- 59 days since our water was poisoned.

This is the exclamation point on the end

of our success in dealing with the water crisis this year.

- The question now is on passage of the bill.

All those in favor will vote green.

All those opposed will vote red.

Prepare the machine.

Near the stroke of midnight,

the tank bill passed unanimously.

Incredibly, West Virginia had just become the first state

to enact this type of a law.

It was down to the wire,

but the process isn't done.

It is for this legislative session,

but there's next year as well.

- It now goes from words to actual work

that my department has to do.

So there are a lot of tanks out there,

and there's a lot of stuff in this bill that has to be done.

No.

- Before I have questions, but today,

based on the evidence, the information,

the chemical levels of people's homes,

the water is safe to drink.

The water no longer had a smell,

and Dr. Whelton made his announcement to an empty room.

It was fall of 20014, and the DEP had finished inspecting

storage tanks across the state.

They found 1,100 were in such bad shape,

they had to be decommissioned.

1,100.

Was it this bad around the country?

Maybe unregulated chemicals had been spilling

with regularity, chemicals that you couldn't smell,

and if that's the case, then Freedom Industries

was just horribly unlucky.

Four former Freedom officers have been indicted

by a federal grand jury.

It's alleged the defendants violated the Clean Water Act.

According to the FBI, Southern lied

about his role with the company

prior to being named president.

He now faces 30 years in prison.

- Dr. Gupta.

Hey, how are ya?

- It had been a full year since the crisis.

Congratulations on your new role.

- Thank you very much.

- Dr. Gupta was now in charge of health

for the entire state.

Now, does this mean you're part of state government?

Yes.

What's that like?

Things seemed good, almost better than good.

That is until I sat him down for his interview.

Something was off.

- Of course, we've had since multiple developments,

positive developments, and I think we've been able

to strengthen a number of things across in the state.

We're working to further strengthen over the next year

or two many more things that we have been even over

and above, on top of prior what we've done before.

Perhaps he couldn't speak freely

because there was a government handler in the room.

Right, right.

You're not completely under the control of...

- There you go.

- The powers that be.

- There you go.

- Andy, I'm sorry.

What exactly are you trying to say about MCHM?

Does that mean that MCHM is twice as toxic

as what Eastman reported?

That throws the whole system into question.

If the science was this wrong with one chemical,

science that's usually confidential,

what were the odds that companies were fabricating

safety data on a far larger scale?

And how are they getting away with it?

- The water doesn't smell like licorice anymore.

And people have resumed their normal lives.

Lobbyists have had a year to really plot and plan.

They were very, very quiet last year,

and that was strategic.

Perhaps this meant that there was an opportunity

to see who really controls chemical policies

and the safety of water.

So what's up with the tank bill?

- So a year goes by.

Now, people are saying well, maybe we should

go back and revisit it.

It basically undoes all that was done last year,

and it makes any kind of a regulatory framework

for tanks irrelevant and meaningless.

- Who are the groups then that are behind this?

- Nobody wants their name on the bill.

You can almost figure it out when you look

at the legislation and see who benefits most from it.

That tells you a lot.

The bill specifically said just because your oil

and gas related means you're exempt.

There was no other scientific research behind it.

- Do you think that what happened last year

changed you at all?

- Yeah, I think so.

It changed not just me, maybe it was just me.

Maybe my perspective is what's changed,

but it got some people at the table, citizen activists.

Their idea is not to change this philosophical change

in the world, but it's about dealing with practical

issues such as keeping your water clean.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

1:15, I'll see you up there.

You guys just missed the governor walking out.

- Do you mind taking a camera with you?

Then you just hit this on the side.

- And it videos.

There had been a massive train derailment.

At least 18 tankers had spilled oil into the river.

It seemed like a bad time to try to undo last year's bill.

So my understanding is that there is an effort to remove

at least 99% of all the tanks from needing to be inspected.

- There's such a huge influx of so many lobbyist groups

behind individual members.

Until I learn more about it, I can't speak to what the bill

completely will do, but it doesn't look good.

The lobbyists hovered around

the center of the capitol.

Are you guys oil and gas, or are you something else?

- I'm city.

- You are filming us right now.

Hi.

You can cut it please, thank you.

- I represent a series of businesses, oil and gas,

manufacturing, larger employers.

So were you involved in drafting

the legislation at all?

- No.

Who would that be?

- That's a great question.

And I have not seen her here today.

Even the Democratic Senator who created

the original tank bill was now supporting the gutting of it.

I read through the piece of legislation that there's

no third party inspection.

There's no anything.

- You assume that everybody are telling the truth,

but every once in a while, the IRS will audit you.

- If I cheat on my taxes, 300,000 people.

- So this was a bill that was introduced by industry folks.

Speaking of industry folks,

what did Rebecca Randolph send you?

- Oh, I don't know.

You can have it.

- 100 years of the West Virginia Manufacturer's,

oh, Swiss chocolates.

Oh, that's nice.

- Aren't they the most powerful of all the lobbyists?

- Private Coal Association also has a lot of say.

- Any way you need to contact her, it's right here.

Maybe I'll keep this one.

The derailment had forced American Water to shut down

one of its treatment plants.

It refused all of my interview requests,

so it was a rare opportunity to find out

their stance on these changes.

- I think that any attempts right now to try to weaken

water protections, especially with events like this

and last year's event being so fresh in people's mind,

I can't imagine anyone being on board with that.

The Manufacturers' Association is a coalition

of businesses who lobby for their shared interests.

It includes chemical companies like DuPont, Dow, and Bayer.

But there was one name on this list I didn't expect.

It seemed that the water company was putting their

bottom line before the safety of their only product.

You have a new job.

You have nine other people working for you,

and the stakes are really high, so in you're

in a very different political environment.

But why not try and protect this regulation?

- There's plenty of folks out there that can do that.

I cannot afford to do it.

Here's my responsibility and my role,

and I intend to fully do that.

It's very important that we keep scientific evidence

in front and center of every policy-making

and not go in reverse because that's exactly

what some of the times the other side is trying to do.

- We've got a lab just had to shut down because they had

a lab person admit to fabricating results,

fabricating the same analytical data you're talking about

that they're supposed to self report.

They were doing tests for a lot of coal companies

and other folks.

I don't know who the ones were for

that they actually fabricated.

I don't know the specifics on that.

But the bottom line it doesn't matter is it brings

into question the integrity of the whole operation.

- So you gonna run for governor in two years.

- I'm gonna run from the capitol, not to the capitol.

I was trying to find

Rebecca Randolph obviously today.

She wasn't in.

Do you think she'll be in tomorrow?

There's a bill up at two o'clock.

Like a stakeholder's meeting?

Yeah, I know she'll be here for that.

- So right behind me in the corner over there

a stakeholders meeting is going on.

And I don't know who all's involved in this,

but we've been told that Rebecca from the Manufacturer's.

Association is there along with anyone

who is considered a stakeholder to the state.

I'm just gonna go in.

- So it's similar to the language on page 18,

but a little bit different.

I couldn't believe it.

Every major lobbying group was in that room

rewriting the tank bill in front of me.

- I mean, I hear everyone on how they're already

regulated and maybe that's good enough.

What else could have been done to minimize the risk

in the Freedom thing and to me, it goes back

to certification and inspection process.

I mean, where do you guys see the issue

with what we're already covering though?

- Had that been going on for some period of time,

years, that leak would've never happened.

Randy seemed to be putting up

a pretty good fight.

- The more hazardous or dangerous it is,

then it needs to be included in level one.

- We don't think that's workable for us.

- We're already covered under

adequate stringent regulations.

- That's not gonna work, guys.

I'm just tellin' y'all.

We'll go back to a groundwork for an exemption

to coal mining operation and individual.

I think we've done all the damage

we can do today.

There you have it.

That's a how a law is weakened beyond recognition.

But where had these changes come from in the first place?

Rebecca?

Hi, Cullen Hoback.

- Oh, hi.

- I've been trying to get a hold of you.

Were you relevant in terms of crafting the bill itself?

- I mean, we had some input.

Candidly what I'm gonna tell you on camera,

I mean, is that our folks will be the first ones

to get in line to do what's necessary

when considering protection of the resource

that we're trying to protect.

- Are you going to work to change the bill

from its current form to make it so it covers more

of the tanks that are out there?

'Cause like right now it just literally undoes last year.

- I don't, I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

It was once again the last day of session,

and they were about to vote on changing the tank bill.

The bill had been undone with little fanfare.

Another Freedom Industries was primed to happen again.

Senator Hall?

- Yes.

Are you the lead sponsor on SB423?

- Yes, I was.

- Did you write the bill, or...

- No, I didn't write.

I mean, the attorneys wrote it.

Whose attorneys wrote it?

- Well, shoot, I mean, it was done,

I can't even tell ya.

The Manufacturer's Association, I don't know.

I don't know who did it.

- But surely someone came to you with the bill,

and they said, would you be the lead sponsor on this?

- People from the Manufacturer's Association did.

What's your interest in knowing who gave me the bill?

- Well, I've just been following the water crisis

from the beginning.

- Okay.

- And so because the bill...

- Well, let me tell you what I tell people.

Somebody else got a speeding ticket,

and everybody else got a fine.

That's the way I view it.

That's it.

You know, it just gave an opportunity

for people to come in and just cause all sorts

of regulatory problems for us that weren't necessary.

So I'm happy 473 passed.

I'm glad my name is on the top.

- It's not a bad bill.

It's a good bill.

The guy didn't even know the number

of his own bill.

It's 423, not 473.

Maybe it's because he didn't write the bill.

It was the Manufacturer's Association.

Maybe he should be fist-bumping them.

Industry wasn't just undermining laws that protect water.

They were literally writing them.

Just how far did this kind of control reach?

Did you see what hit the news the other day, right?

- Well, I mean, I know I was bathing in it

for those two and a half months.

Hi.

Come here.

Let's get a snack.

Did you look at the stuff that the National.

Toxicology Program released?

- I didn't.

Well, one thing they ended up saying about MCHM

is that it could cause reproductive harm.

- His muscle development was a little off, but...

The symptoms associate with that

are developmental.

- Yeah, that's crazy actually.

That's weird.

But he's fine now, but he was about six months behind

in muscle development for a while, so.

- You know, we were worried, and we of course

had that in the back of our mind that,

there was no medical monitoring.

There was no doctor visits that happened

every single year to check in or anything like that

to show, I guess, a conclusion.

On your data?

The study proving MCHM was twice as toxic?

But why would the CDC go out of their way

to hide the truth about MCHM?

It didn't make sense.

January of 2016, it's when the international spotlight

turned towards the lead contamination

in the drinking water of Flint, Michigan.

- It used to be cars were made in Flint,

and you couldn't drink the water in Mexico.

Now, the cars are made in Mexico,

and you can't drink the water in Flint.

It makes you feel bad as a parent to know

that you've been poisoning your child all this time.

Why are you worrying?

- Because.

- I'm afraid it's not gonna be fixed.

- We're gonna have problems with kids in special education

services, cognition, behavioral problems, focusing.

It was a shot in the dark,

but maybe this contamination held the key

to opening up this story.

- A lot of people in Flint have lead pipe like this

going from the water main that runs down the street

into their homes.

Scientists from Virginia Tech came up

to test the water in Flint.

- The corrosive water actually ate up every

metallic pipe in the system.

Government officials it turns out,

did know about the lead.

- We are fully cooperating with investigations

and will hold those individuals accountable.

Unlike MCHM, lead doesn't have an odor.

This had enabled officials to cover this up

for over two years.

But I had a hard time that officials

would knowingly poison 8,000 kids

just to save a few bucks on water.

- The parts per billion in her house was over 13,000.

13,000.

I've never seen a level that high.

And the state removed her house from the sampling protocol.

Like, where are the red flags that were going off

in people's brains?

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is one of

two main people that brought this contamination to light.

She looked at the blood results of more than

1,700 children from Flint.

- So we were attacked.

The state said I was causing near hysteria.

That their numbers were not consistent with our numbers.

When the state tells you you're wrong, it's hard

not to second-guess yourself.

They have a team of 50 epidemiologists.

You're supposed to sample from homes

that have lead plumbing.

They sampled from homes that didn't have lead plumbing,

so there was a lot of kind of manipulations

of how the water lead levels were being done.

So it continued the almost two years of denial, denial.

There's a problem.

I was reminded of the CDC refusing.

Dr. Whelton's results.

Why were these agencies covering up the facts?

What's strange is that it didn't even seem like

the politicians were in on it.

Here's the governor of Michigan testifying before Congress.

- We'd go back to the experts over and over again.

We were told the water was safe.

That was wrong.

It wasn't just one department.

As it continued on, we got information not only

from the DEQ but the Department of Health

and Human Services that they didn't see

elevated levels in blood.

These departments that he's describing,

they're analogs to the ones that Randy Huffman

and Dr. Gupta run.

- Here's my briefing from the night before,

and it's information from both those departments

dismissing people.

I get so mad that I never should have believed them.

So we had cases where it took outside experts.

That's tragic.

- So this is scary.

You've got reproductive toxins, some cancer hazards.

Well, at least they're labeled.

- Yeah.

DC prepared me and my team for Flint.

Dr. Marc Edwards, outside expert

in Flint, number two.

It turns out this wasn't even the first time

he had gone toe to toe with federal agencies

over lead in drinking water.

- I had fought a 12 year battle in Washington DC

exposing government science agency corruption.

The Center for Disease Control, the USEPA,

the environmental policemen we pay to protect us

were actually the environmental criminals.

I mean, I know longer trust the CDC.

Why?

Because the upper levels of CDC is proving

themselves untrustworthy to me.

The amount of harm in Washington DC is 30 times worse

than what happened in Flint, Michigan.

They poisoned thousands of children,

covered it up for about seven years.

I had to betray some of my best friends, people I went

to graduate school with, who were working with the EPA

and creating fabricated reports.

Is it lobbyists?

Is it the politicians who appoint them?

- Well, how could the Catholic church do what it did?

Make it in your interest to engage in unethical behavior

to cover up problems, and if you can get away with it,

you will do that.

Ultimately, there was a Congressional hearing

where they were chastised publicly,

but no one was ever held accountable.

It seemed history was repeating itself.

Here's the head of the EPA at the Congressional

hearing about Flint.

Has anybody been fired?

That's a question.

- No, sir.

- No, sir.

- EPA covered this up every step of the way.

They will protect their reputation above all else.

- Oversight was our responsibility.

We took that seriously, and we conducted it.

Does that mean I don't have regrets?

- One heroic employee there, he wrote a memo

that said EPA should exert emergency powers.

But in response, he was told that they weren't

sure Flint was the kind of community they wanted

to go out on a limb for.

And so this EPA official was ignored over and over again.

He was so fed up that after 27 years of working

for the EPA, he had this to say.

"People trying to do the right thing are constantly

"being subjected to intense scrutiny as if we were

"doing something wrong."

"It's all of this, don't find anything bad crap"

"at EPA that's the reason I desperately want to leave."

"EPA is a cesspool."

This would explain why in the months after Flint

when other communities tested their water systems,

it turned out that Flint was just the tip of the iceberg.

- Pittsburghers are likely drinking water laced

with toxic lead.

- Chicago parks shut off hundreds of drinking fountains.

The water in Garfield, Texas.

- 10% of Portland homes.

- All drinking fountains at Ohio's most important

and historic building.

According to an investigation

conducted by Reuters, nearly 3,000 areas

had lead poisoning rates far higher than in Flint.

- And then you ask the question, well, if they're

doing that for lead in water, what else are they hiding?

- How can we trust any of the science

that's coming out of the EPA, if this is the culture there?

- That's the reality.

You cannot.

It seemed that the EPA and CDC were

too busy protecting their own reputations to be trusted.

If Dr. Edwards was right, it's what I'd been missing.

- The fact is most whistle blowers regret it.

I was at the top of the game at EPA.

In my case, the EPA funded the University of Georgia

to publish 20 years of fake data to counteract

research I published at UGA documenting

adverse health affects.

- How are you sure the data was being falsified, made up?

- The scientists admitting under oath the data were faked

and that they believed people were getting sick.

In one case, a federal judge ruled the data were fabricated.

The CDC is doing exactly the same thing that EPA is doing.

The most astounding part of that is that even

when the CDC and EPA admit their data are fake

and they're caught, they still will not remove it

from the scientific literature.

Political appointees go through the revolving door

between government and industry.

They're washing each other's hands.

Who runs independent tests outside

of these agencies to ensure the drinking water is safe?

- That's the scary thing.

Almost no one.

There are other chemicals going into the

water that are not being tested, not being reported.

And there is a method for figuring out

what those chemicals are.

- It's wicked expensive to do chemical testing.

If you're looking to find something,

you need to know what you're looking for.

And that's a huge undertaking.

The plan was to test near major

industrial sites in the river.

If we found any chemicals at a high concentration,

we would test for that same chemical in taps downstream.

It was impossible to test for everything,

so we picked chemicals that were the most likely suspects.

So have you been drinking the water?

- I haven't since the whole thing started.

You know, you have one bout with rare cancer,

and you're real careful after that.

I have a son in law who works for DuPont.

Yeah, we're right down from it now.

Yeah, I'm real curious

what they're puttin' in the water.

- I am, too.

I am, too.

All right.

What's that, Rick?

There's a boat coming towards us?

We can fill these up on the way.

- All right, let's get out of here.

Two months later, the scientist that I'd been

working with at USGS or United States Geological Survey

sent me an email with the results.

His response was surprising.

There was no smoking gun.

They found very little of the chemicals that they expected

to be in the river.

And we had done our testing near what should have been

the release points.

Either we had done something wrong,

or they really weren't releasing

all that much into the river.

However, there was something that I didn't understand.

In the lab report, there are all of these unidentified

tiny little peaks.

What was the big thing that you uncovered?

- People in towns and cities across America

were getting sick that lived next to where

land application of sewage sludge was occurring.

See, material that settles out at sewage treatment plants

is mostly human feces mixed with industrial waste,

and it's free fertilizer.

Some of it's sold at Home Depot and other outlets.

Every chemical that could possibly cause harm

to human health is there.

So I went about to document these illnesses and deaths

and found out that they were linked to an EPA policy.

In the early '70s passed the Clean Water Act.

That made a very expensive industry to pollute

our rivers and lakes, so once their lobbyists got involved

and they got in bed with EPA and vice versa,

what they wanted was, there's no clean soil act.

Let's just dump all this on land, not regulate it,

and make it free for us.

That's what happened in 1993.

That was the first Clinton administration.

The agency was reorganized science-wise,

so it became very political at that point.

- So industry is basically flushing

chemicals down the drain?

- Now, they don't have to build a pipe

to the river and pay for it.

They flush it down the toilet.

- That would explain why when I tested the river,

it was cleaner than I expected.

- Yeah, it's now going everywhere we

school playgrounds, parks, golf courses, farms, forests.

It rains, so it runs off into creeks and streams.

It goes into the rivers and lakes.

- I have to admit it sounds a little far-fetched to me.

- Well, you see what happened in Flint.

The mere fact that scientists cannot publish data

that shows what the government's doing and what

universities are doing, that explains all this.

- How old are the people who died?

- From small children to elderly people.

Looking back at the data from the river,

it now made sense.

All of these little peaks, they represented chemicals.

Instead of there being huge amounts of just a few chemicals,

there were small amounts of hundreds, if not thousands.

And they couldn't be identified because we didn't

know what to look for.

Very little research is being done in this field.

However, there were a number of studies that had looked

for low levels of drugs appearing in rivers.

Drugs that people consume and then flush down the drain.

Antidepressants, steroids, antibiotics, even meth,

every drug researchers had looked for was in the river

in the parts per billion range.

And when they tested fertilizer made from sewage sludge,

in many cases the drugs were there, too,

but at exponentially higher levels.

This research was indisputable.

It had been replicated by multiple

agencies across the globe.

Dr. Lewis was right.

Clearly these peaks were not all benign.

If these chemicals were all appearing in river samples,

then were they getting into our drinking water as well?

Some of your chemicals

are starting to come off.

- Each of those peaks is a chemical?

- This whole area underneath here is probably

200 different chemicals are coming off right now.

- This sample was from my own

tap water in California.

It turns out that there is a way to identify

some of the peaks.

The sample can be run against a huge database of chemicals,

and sometimes you can find a match.

So we tested downstream of the chemical valley.

If we did find a chemical of concern, I believed

that Dr. Gupta and possibly Randy Huffman would help us

proving that regulators can put science before politics.

Now, there were other chemicals found.

This is the one that I thought was

the most concerning of the bunch.

It says one, one, two, two tetrachloroethane.

It has a quality match of 96 that we found

in four of the five locations.

It's three to four times more toxic than MCHM.

California considers it to be a carcinogen.

A little less than one part per billion.

But what I'm really trying to understand is like,

is this a big deal or not?

- These are small numbers, but they're significant

numbers to my mind, you know.

This is coming out of the water plant.

- I didn't realize those were drinking water samples.

That's a huge deal.

So the analytics were done by USGS labs?

Yeah.

They do great science.

- The lead chemist who did this research,

he has 130 scientific papers published.

He felt very confident that this chemical was there.

- One of the guys who used to work for me,

he's a PhD chemist, he seems to think it's real.

I mean, I expected to be unconvinced.

I did, too.

- I'm convinced.

It's real.

Have we gone upstream?

We didn't find any high concentrations

of this in our river testing.

But it could be leaching out of soil.

It doesn't mean it was dumped.

- That doesn't mean it's still not a crisis

because if it's happened this time, it's happened

in the past, and it will happen again in the future.

If you had buy-in from state agencies, tell the public

about this, that would be good if they'd play.

- Yeah, but Jeff McIntyre's the president

of West Virginia American Water.

I think you need to give it a shot.

So I sent an email to the key players

in American Water.

I hadn't heard back.

It looks like reception's locked.

That's weird.

It's the middle of a work day.

Okay.

I am here to speak to either Laura Jordan or Jeff McIntyre

about some data regarding a chemical in the water.

They're behind closed doors.

Can you have one of them give me a call back?

All right, I just need to be able to share this data

with somebody who can look at it

and make an informed decision.

So these concentrations pretty much match

what we found in the river.

- So you found it in taps, too.

- Yeah, correct.

We weren't able to pinpoint a source, so I'm thinking

maybe it's due to rainfall.

- You didn't sample in the Ohio River.

- No, I haven't done that yet.

That would be something that'd be really good to do,

especially after everything thaws.

- We just don't know.

We just gotta do some research and see what we find

and if we can find anything.

You have any plans to share this information

with our state health department, Bureau

I mean, they regulate drinking water.

- Well, I sent Dr. Gupta all of the data.

He hasn't made time yet, so.

- Okay.

A big event was planned in the shadow

of the capitol to celebrate safe water.

Dr. Gupta and the president of West Virginia

American Water were both keynote speakers.

- How much information is to be shared?

When we don't know something,

I will tell you we don't know it.

Thank you for having me today.

- Yeah, but what's the minimum detection limit?

That's really important.

All I know with a very high degree of certainty

is that it was in the water two months ago.

Like, if you had someone from your department

go and run tests...

I mean, I sent you all the data.

But if the chemical is in fact there,

then it's something that requires a degree of speed.

Do you think that the public should at least

have the ability to make a decision about this

from the available data?

It would only be carefully disseminated information

that explains exactly what we know and what we don't know.

Thank you, Dr. Gupta.

- I do think people have a right to know if any

substances are going to end up in their drinking water.

I think people do have a right to know that up front

whether these substances are classified

as hazardous or non-hazardous.

In the coming days, his department

would look for any holes they could find in our data

implying that we had somehow added this chemical

into the samples ourselves.

Behind the scenes, officials had already cast so much doubt,

the local press seemed nervous to run the story.

It was hard to blame them as it reminded me of something.

Dr. Edwards had said.

- You have to fight this on your own because who else

wants to pay a price?

I had exhausted every option except for one.

Can I hold that for one sec?

- Yeah.

- While we wait for those answers to come in,

I have an announcement to make.

So four months ago, I went the Kanawha River,

and I took samples.

It was an audience full of health department

and water company employees.

I hoped that maybe they would respond to facts.

These tests came back at a range of

between .5 and .85 parts per billion.

These levels are not considered to be safe

in eight states in this country.

This should warrant further investigation

by your state officials.

Thank you.

- So I think it's kind of reprehensible to come up

and make a statement when you think you're sure,

but I can tell you I am sure.

And there is no concern with the Huntington water supply

relating to that chemical.

Imagine if officials had waited two months

after the original spill.

They wouldn't have found anything.

Not to mention that the soil was now frozen.

To my knowledge, no testing by the regulatory

agencies was ever done.

The carcinogen I had brought attention to

in West Virginia, it was just the one chemical

that we could detect, and it was unregulated.

So legally it could be in the water.

But there were still thousands of chemicals

that the system couldn't find a match for,

chemicals you couldn't smell.

And we don't know if they're harmful or not

because the studies are all confidential,

and the science could be fake like it was with MCHM.

Besides, who's going to look for something

that they don't want to find?

Changing culture, both industry

and government is a tough thing.

It's not easy.

I mean, I'm absolutely working to change the culture within

our side of it, and it's not that easy.

We can exonerate ourselves in our own minds anyway

if there's a villain.

That's why it's so easy to be a victim.

- Science is based completely on trust.

If scientists and engineers aren't trustworthy,

the public will turn against us.

And I think it's already happening.

And they will turn to other sources of authority

who are historically less reliable.

You could enter a new Dark Age.

- Failed environmental leadership has contributed

to two of the worst government-created environmental

disasters in decades, which have undermined

the American people's faith in the agency.

This is why I believe Trump nominated attorney general,

Pruitt, to serve as the administrator

of the Environmental Protection Agency.

- Mr. Pruitt, you have sued the EPA 19 times to stop

clean air and water protections.

Do you believe there is any safe level of lead...

- Senator, that's something I've not reviewed

nor know about.

I've not looked at the scientific research on that.

In 2017, Scott Pruitt, the new head of the EPA

began dismantling his own agency.

- We are going to end the EPA intrusion into your lives.

He fired nearly everyone on the independent

scientific advisory board.

Then began removing scientific research from public view.

- This is a wholesale wiping out of historical record.

The science that's we've developed and the actions

we've taken and why we took them.

You can disagree with many of those actions.

But what you can't do is simply deny history.

It was the culmination of regulators

behaving unethically, of politicians leveraging science

for their own benefit, of the public losing trust

in a broken system, but science isn't broken,

which means the system can be rebuilt.

But until that happens, it's probably best you remember

that we're all downstream of something.

♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh

♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh

♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh

♪ Feel our flesh as we misbehave

♪ Drifting in the undertone

♪ Before you go

♪ It's safe now

♪ The water's just fine

♪ We close our eyes now

♪ I'm blind, and you are

- Sir are you gonna plead guilty?

♪ Oh, oh, oh

♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh

♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

♪ Your body and breath will now keep me

♪ Breathing past midnight

- You've gotta stop politicizing either side

and get back to the science.

- That was all right.

♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh

- Each of these individuals attempted to bury

or cover up the Michigan Department of

and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

♪ Oh, oh, oh

♪ Oh, oh, oh

♪ On the shore

♪ To you I call

♪ We cannot fall

♪ Hide 'til spring time

♪ Sing