密歇根新闻广播 州前健康主席参加弗林特水危机工作小组报告会

This week the Flint Water Advisory¹ Task Force released its 116-page report.

Although Gov. Snyder appointed the task force, he and his administration were not spared in its frank findings.

At the formal release of the task force report, co-chair Chris Kolb singled out the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality as having, as the report said, "a degree of intransigence² and belligerence³ that has no place in government."

"It is extremely troublesome to me," Kolb said at the release, "that an agency whose primary role is to protect human health and the environment came to these decisions, and they never backed off those decisions no matter how many red flags they saw."

On Wednesday's Stateside, the other co-chair Ken⁴ Sikkema noted⁵ the Emergency Management Law contributed to the Flint water debacle.

"By having an emergency manager that has virtually dictatorial⁶ control over a city, you lose the checks and balances that representative government provides," he told us.

Dr. Matthew Davis is another member of the task force, and a professor of pediatrics and internal medicine at the University of Michigan Health System.

From the top, the report has some strong language. It opens: "The Flint water crisis is a story of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction, and environmental injustice⁷."

Davis tells us the task force made several important points in the report, but that first sentence pretty well sums up many of the lessons learned through the investigation⁸.

"The state government and, to some degree, its partners at local levels and at the federal level, did not respond in the appropriate way to several indications that things were quite horribly wrong with the water supply that was being used for drinking water in Flint. The color was wrong, the taste was wrong, the smell was wrong, there were infections from E. coli initially⁹ and later legionella that may be related to the water supply as well."

So what does the report recommend be done to change the bureaucratic¹⁰ culture and what's being called the political ineptitude¹¹ that lead to the lead poisoning of an entire Michigan city?

"What needs to happen on several levels is a change to be more responsive to concerns expressed by the public," Davis says.

"One of the challenges that we brought up in our report is that with the emergency manager law, there was no ability for the local population to go to their locally-elected officials and get something done in terms of responding to their concerns about the water."

The emergency manager law was sort of billed as a way to shortcut¹² the local council and take immediate¹³ action, but Davis tells us that may have done more harm than good. He says emergency managers lack the actual experience required to make decisions such as switching a water source.

"In other words, the emergency manager is focused really on just the fiscal¹⁴ health on something like a city, or a school system in the case of Detroit right now, and not to handle the full breadth of decisions that need to happen at the local level. And unfortunately, what happened here was a grave failure in terms of not having the appropriate expertise¹⁵ at the right time to do right by the people of Flint with their water supply," he says.

The report also criticizes the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services for its mishandling of the outbreak of Legionnaire's disease in Flint and Genesee County. Davis served with the DHHS as the Michigan Department of Community Health's Chief Medical Executive when the first wave of Legionnaires' cases cropped up in 2014.

"Unfortunately, I was not aware of the Legionnaires' cases," Davis says. He explains that when cases occur within a county, that county is expected to follow up on them, and DHHS only gets involved at the county's request.

"The county did ask for that help and asked for the help from the epidemiological team. The chief medical executive, the role that I had, is only asked to be part of those discussions when there's some question or when … asked to provide input," he says.

The epidemiologists are trained to handle the evaluation¹⁶, and in this case Davis says they responded to the Genesee County Health Department to assist in the investigation of the 2014 Legionnaires' cases.

"Should I have been part of this task force?" Davis asks. "I take that question very seriously, and it's something that I thought about a lot when I was asked to be part of the task force."

He tells us he was asked to be part of the task force because he understands the inner workings of the DHHS and because he could apply his experience as a physician and his knowledge of public health policy to the questions presented before the task force.

Davis says there was also some question over whether, given his role at DHHS, he could be fairly critical of the department in terms of its role in the Flint water situation.

"I think that anyone who sees the report that we released yesterday will see that we were more than critical," Davis says.

Davis tells us one of the task force's key recommendations is to presume that all children in Flint have been exposed to harmful levels of lead and treat them as such.

It has been said that only a small fraction of Flint's children were actually lead-exposed, but Davis tells us they simply "don't have information that suggests there are many, many kids in Flint who are safe just because they weren't tested."

Additionally, he explains that the lead test performed on the children only indicates their lead level for the past 30 to 35 days, and so it's possible a child may have been exposed to lead, but their levels could have normalized by the time they ended up in the doctor's office.

"Given what we know is true about the lead in the water in Flint, it makes sense from a scientific point of view and especially for the health and wellbeing of those kids to be very thorough in our follow-up for them."

1 advisory   

adj.劝告的，忠告的，顾问的，提供咨询

参考例句：

• I have worked in an advisory capacity with many hospitals.我曾在多家医院做过顾问工作。
• He was appointed to the advisory committee last month.他上个月获任命为顾问委员会委员。

2 intransigence   

n.妥协的态度；强硬

参考例句：

• He often appeared angry and frustrated by the intransigence of both sides.他似乎常常为双方各不相让而生气沮丧。
• Yet for North Korea,intransigence is the norm.不过对朝鲜来说，决不妥协是其一贯作风。

3 belligerence   

n.交战，好战性，斗争性

参考例句：

• He could be accused of passion,but never belligerence.可以说他很冲动，但不能说他爱挑事。
• He was almost back to his belligerent mood of twelve months ago.他故态复萌，几乎又像一年前那样咄咄逼人了。

4 ken   

n.视野，知识领域

参考例句：

• Such things are beyond my ken.我可不懂这些事。
• Abstract words are beyond the ken of children.抽象的言辞超出小孩所理解的范围.

5 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

6 dictatorial   

adj. 独裁的，专断的

参考例句：

• Her father is very dictatorial.她父亲很专横。
• For years the nation had been under the heel of a dictatorial regime.多年来这个国家一直在独裁政权的铁蹄下。

7 injustice   

n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利

参考例句：

• They complained of injustice in the way they had been treated.他们抱怨受到不公平的对待。
• All his life he has been struggling against injustice.他一生都在与不公正现象作斗争。

8 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

9 initially   

adv.最初，开始

参考例句：

• The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
• Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。

10 bureaucratic   

adj.官僚的，繁文缛节的

参考例句：

• The sweat of labour washed away his bureaucratic airs.劳动的汗水冲掉了他身上的官气。
• In this company you have to go through complex bureaucratic procedures just to get a new pencil.在这个公司里即使是领一支新铅笔，也必须通过繁琐的手续。

11 ineptitude   

n.不适当；愚笨，愚昧的言行

参考例句：

• History testifies to the ineptitude of coalitions in waging war.历史昭示我们，多数国家联合作战，其进行甚为困难。
• They joked about his ineptitude.他们取笑他的笨拙。

12 shortcut   

n.近路，捷径

参考例句：

• He was always looking for a shortcut to fame and fortune.他总是在找成名发财的捷径。
• If you take the shortcut,it will be two li closer.走抄道去要近2里路。

13 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

14 fiscal   

adj.财政的，会计的，国库的，国库岁入的

参考例句：

• The increase of taxation is an important fiscal policy.增税是一项重要的财政政策。
• The government has two basic strategies of fiscal policy available.政府有两个可行的财政政策基本战略。

15 expertise   

n.专门知识(或技能等)，专长

参考例句：

• We were amazed at his expertise on the ski slopes.他斜坡滑雪的技能使我们赞叹不已。
• You really have the technical expertise in a new breakthrough.让你真正在专业技术上有一个全新的突破。

16 evaluation   

n.估价，评价；赋值

参考例句：

• I attempted an honest evaluation of my own life.我试图如实地评价我自己的一生。
• The new scheme is still under evaluation.新方案还在评估阶段。