
It was good governance, or so it seemed.
Those in receipt of a press release issued on Nov. 13, 2023, by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy touting infrastructure improvements made in the city of Benton Harbor courtesy of the state over the two previous years would be hard-pressed to think anything otherwise.
Left unsaid was any mention of the lead water crisis that had upended everyday life for the predominately Black residents in this Lake Michigan shoreline community founded in 1837.
The city’s lead service lines, roughly 4,500 in number, were replaced with new copper pipes by an executive directive signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in October 2021, three years after the crisis began.
For all that was celebrated in the state’s press release, it was a far cry from where things stood in Benton Harbor in late 2021.
At that time, city residents felt all but abandoned by the state, according to community leaders. Local constituents also wanted their lead water lines replaced.
As it stood, home water taps showed off-the-charts lead levels of 889 parts per billion — nearly 60 times above what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for usage — in a six-month monitoring period ending on June 30, 2021.
During the whole time, the state never issued a public health advisory for the city, even after Benton Harbor was officially notified by EGLE of a lead exceedance level of 22 parts per billion in its water supply on Oct. 22, 2018 — the amount was more than the 20 parts per billion what the city of Flint had averaged during its water crisis disaster that began in 2014.
Before Whitmer and state agencies began replacing the lead pipes after more than three years had lapsed, it was activists in the city who were doing what they believe should have been the state’s work.
Almost immediately following the 2018 report, the Benton Harbor Community Water Council, a 13-member grassroots group, began distributing thousands of cases of bottled water a year. At the same time, they educated the public on the known health risks associated with lead exposure.
“In a Black city like Benton Harbor, who really cares? They (state officials) don’t care about people here having bad water, having contaminated water, having lead-infested water,” says Rev. Edward Pinkney, lead pastor of Benton Harbor’s God’s Household of Faith Church and president of the Benton Harbor Community Water Council.
Pinkney and others believe the state only became interested in ending the water crisis in September 2021, when its hand was essentially forced in an effort to avoid embarrassment and a political fallout for a first-term governor seeking re-election in 2022.
At the same time, Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel had undertaken rigorous attacks and filed criminal complaints against former Gov. Rick Snyder and state department officials for their role in the Flint water crisis. The criminal charges were eventually dismissed.
As Whitmer began to focus on the problem in Benton Harbor, the state’s lead agency on water quality, EGLE, was still dealing with a corrosion control quagmire in the city that was much of the department’s making.
In January 2019, when EGLE officials and Benton Harbor agreed to attempt combating lead contamination in the city’s water supply using corrosion control, two issues were known up front.
Prior to the city’s lead level exceedance in 2018, Benton Harbor had only been monitoring its water supply for the presence of lead every three years.
The state corrected that by placing the city under six-month monitoring periods, where random samples of city tap water coming out of homes would be tested to detect for lead.
The other issue, the fact Benton Harbor hadn’t been implementing adequate corrosion control in its own public water system for some time, would take care of itself with a concerted effort.
Overall, success or failure hinged upon finding a mix of chemicals capable of coating the city’s lead service lines to prevent contaminants from continuing to seep into water being delivered into Benton Harbor homes and businesses.
EGLE and the city needed a solution that could take lead levels down somewhere below 15 parts per billion, the level the EPA considers safe.
To that end, Benton Harbor proposed utilizing a proprietary phosphate blend developed by its consultant, Elhorn Engineering Co. Dubbed “Carus 8600,” the blend consisted of a 70/30 percent orthophosphate/polyphosphate mix.
On the surface, nothing seemed concerning when Benton Harbor submitted a permit application to EGLE on Jan. 24, 2019, requesting to install the phosphate blend in the city’s public water system. Using phosphates to treat public water is a common occurrence.
The differences between types and their strengths are an entirely different matter.
Orthophosphate is widely considered a strong corrosion inhibitor when pitted against lead. Polyphosphate, meanwhile, is highly effective in fending off iron and other materials that cause water discoloration, but is weak in terms of lead protection.
When combined, and if concentrated correctly, a blend of orthophosphate and polyphosphate can provide a one-two punch against lead contamination and iron discoloration in tap water.
No one at EGLE raised any issues with the phosphate types being proposed by Benton Harbor through its consultant, or the application itself, for nearly a month — until one agency expert started flashing caution.
In a Feb. 21, 2019, email to EGLE staff, Brian Thurston, at the time the agency’s community water supply section manager, expressed concerns with Benton Harbor’s permit application, warning: “The attached permit does not show how the consultant (Elhorn Engineering) is planning to reach OCCT (optimal corrosion control treatment).”
Thurston, who did not support approving Benton Harbor’s application, also believed the phosphate blend used in Carus 8600 was off.
In his view, the solution was lacking in orthophosphate, the known corrosion inhibitor that Benton Harbor’s public water system needed most because of its ability to prevent seepage from occurring in lead service lines.
Before closing out the email addressing issues with the permit, Thurston asserted: “In my opinion, a higher initial dose of orthophosphate is (needed for Carus 8600) to quickly establish a protective film in the Pb (lead) service lines.”
Despite Thurston’s issues with the application as submitted, and skepticism regarding the Carus 8600 blend expressed in internal agency communications just days earlier, EGLE green-lit Benton Harbor’s permit on Feb. 25, 2019.
The agency’s approval was based on the condition that Benton Harbor monitor and issue reports on the effectiveness of the corrosion inhibitor.
One month after receiving its permit from EGLE, and satisfied with that condition, Benton Harbor started feeding the Carus 8600 blend into its public water system on March 25, 2019.
Although no one would realize it until months later, one of the most consequential mistakes of the city’s water crisis had just occurred. The Carus 8600 product would fail two consecutive six-month monitoring periods, just as EGLE’s Thurston had predicted.
Tap water samples in the six-month period from Jan. 1 through June 30, 2019, showed detectable lead was at least at 27 parts per billion. The highest level found in one city tap was 59 parts per billion.
When Carus 8600 had the benefit of working over the course of a full six-month monitoring period, the results were even worse.
The tap water samples covering July through Dec. 31, 2019, showed detectable lead was at least at 32 parts per billion. One city tap showed a lead level of 72 parts per billion.
At that point, three things were clear.
First, lead levels in Benton Harbor’s public water system were on the rise.
Second, the results from the six-month monitoring period ending in June 2019, when the deployment of Carus 8600 was at its mid-point, was the same or worse. And the product was clearly failing.
So much so that by mid-February 2020, EGLE wanted Carus 8600, a product they approved Benton Harbor to use for corrosion control less than a year earlier, scrapped.
In a Feb. 13, 2020, letter to then Benton Harbor City Manager Ellis Mitchell, Brandon Onan, a former EGLE supervisor in the Lead and Copper Unit, stated: “the treatment of (Carus 8600) is not achieving desired results quickly enough.”
Onan directed Mitchell to scrap Carus 8600 in favor of a new product containing 90 percent orthophosphate no later than Feb. 28, 2020.
In addition, Onan instructed Benton Harbor to have a third-party consultant submit a corrosion control study proposal complying with Michigan’s lead and copper rule to EGLE within six months of the directed treatment change that identified an optimal corrosion control treatment method for the city.
The direction to change the solution set off a series of debacles that would continue until the end of 2020.
One EGLE surface water treatment specialist believed Onan was steering Benton Harbor to keep using phosphate products by not considering alternative methods.
For reasons unknown, Benton Harbor kept Elhorn Engineering Co., the outfit behind the failed Carus 8600 product, on as a consultant.
Benton Harbor did, in compliance with Onan’s letter, enter a 90 percent orthophosphate product into its public water system sometime before April 17, 2020, but there were already issues being raised with its distribution rate.
The tap water samples in the six-month monitoring period from Jan. 1 through June 30, 2020, showed detectable lead was at least at 23 parts per billion. The highest lead level found in one city tap was an eye-popping 440 parts per billion — a level nearly 30 times above EPA safe usage limits.
The results out of the next monitoring period were a mixed bag. Tap water samples in the six-month monitoring period from July 1 through Dec. 31, 2020, showed detectable lead was at least at 24 parts per billion. One city tap came in at 240 parts per billion.
By any objective measure, it was undeniable the state was completely stuck on a failed corrosion control effort in the third year of Benton Harbor’s water crisis.
It also was undeniable that Benton Harbor’s residents were going to be heading into the water crisis’ fourth year having never been issued a public health advisement. In addition, the state never delivered one case of bottled water to the city.
What made matters worse, according to Pinkney’s recollection, was EGLE had little to no appetite for seriously discussing a comprehensive lead service line replacement effort in the city, which Benton Harbor Mayor Marcus Muhammad often described as being a $30 million project in media reports, whenever the BHCWC attempted to engage the agency’s staff on the topic.
“Any conversation we had with EGLE wasn’t very productive, Pinkney says. “They were counting on us to back down. I (had) requested $60 million (for Benton Harbor lead service line replacement).”
Beyond frustrated with the state’s response, Pinkney and the rest of the BHCWC entered 2021 focused on changing tactics.

In early January, one of the group’s first orders of business was to do away with plans to start a letter-writing campaign to President Joe Biden. Shortly thereafter, its members agreed to take legal advice being provided by the Natural Resources Defense Council and go all in on petitioning the EPA for emergency action, citing the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
The petition was written by lawyers from the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center in Detroit.
Overall, the goal was to request the EPA issue an administrative order that would allow the agency to take expedited actions in Benton Harbor ranging from on-the-ground support to technical expertise, and fast-tracking the city’s access to federal grant dollars.
Over the course of the next five months, BHCWC, as the lead petitioner, assisted with fact-finding and assembling a series of co-petitioners.
Twenty organizations ranging from community groups to nonprofit corporations and environmental advocacy organizations agreed to sign on to the effort by the time the petition was in draft form in early June.
When completed in early September 2021, the Petition for Emergency Action under the Safe Water Drinking Act, 42 U.S.C., contained 27 pages of content that described the imminent and substantial endangerment Benton Harbor residents were facing due to lead contamination known to be present in public drinking water.
Sequenced by dates and events, the petition chronicled the three-year period when Benton Harbor first learned of high levels of lead in its drinking water.
The repeated failures by EGLE and Benton Harbor to arrive at an optimal corrosion control treatment method during any point of the fiasco were all documented.
It detailed in March 2019 how EGLE had allowed an unproven phosphate blend, the ill-fated Carus 8600 product Benton Harbor had proposed for use, to be deployed in the city’s public water system without adequate study or testing.
To bring attention to the filing of the petition, community leaders and the BHCWC planned a press conference for Sept. 9, 2021, a date selected months before. Nicholas Leonard, a lawyer who had drafted the petition’s content, also had copies ready to be sent electronically and by traditional mail to the EPA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and EPA Region 5 in Chicago.
During the press event, Pinkney planned to reveal some uncomfortable facts about Benton Harbor, a city where nearly half of its roughly 10,000 residents, 85 percent of whom are Black, live below the poverty line and often lack access to quality health care.
Benton Harbor is still very much a city that never fully recovered from the segregation that plagued its public schools and housing projects in the 1950s. Nor has it ever fully rebounded from the flight by affluent whites dating back to the 1960s.
At the height of its water crisis in 2021, Benton Harbor had the misfortune to become something else: A city in modern America being made to want for safe tap water.
Unfortunately for the BHCWC, which had hoped to pull off the element of surprise with their press event, the effort was thwarted 24 hours prior by a public communication released by the governor’s office.
Coincidently, in a press release dated a day earlier, on Sept. 8, 2021, Whitmer called on the state Legislature to approve $20 million in its fiscal year 2022 budget to fund a five-year lead service line replacement effort in Benton Harbor.
Saying that “every Michigander deserves access to safe drinking water, and every community deserves lead-free pipes,” Michigan’s 49th governor also pledged to use federal, state, and local resource to ensure funding.
After more than three years of moving at seemingly a snail’s pace, Benton Harbor began receiving attention from the state in ways it had never experienced before.
On Sept. 22, 2021, EGLE announced it was going to distribute bottled water to Benton Harbor residents — a feat the BHCWC had already been doing for three years.
Two weeks later, on Oct. 6, 2021, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services provided the city something just shy of a state public health advisory when it, “out of an abundance of caution,” encouraged Benton Harbor residents to use bottled water for drinking, oral hygiene, food preparation, cooking, and preparing baby formula.
More than a week later, on Oct. 14, 2021, Whitmer signed ED 2021-06, a directive that offered a “whole-of-government” approach to deal with lead contamination in Benton Harbor’s public water system.
For added measure, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II appeared in Benton Harbor that day to announce lead service line replacement efforts in the city were being put into overdrive.
Perhaps in a bid to spare scrutiny heading into the re-election cycle, the original five-year lead service line replacement effort announced just weeks before was being scrapped in favor of an 18-month timeline.
“While there are already a range of efforts underway, this directive ensures that state government is taking a truly all-hands-on deck approach, that we are all rowing in the same direction, and that we are all laser-focused on the same end goals,” Gilchrist said in comments made inside the city.
Whitmer would make another public pitch to the state’s Legislature on Oct. 19, 2021. While in Benton Harbor for a “listening session” with community leaders, she requested additional funding to cover lead service line replacement efforts in the city.
The $11.4 million requested was going to be used on top of $10 million the Legislature had appropriated for Benton Harbor lead service line replacement on Sept. 23, 2021. The remaining cost of the $30 million project was going to be funded with $3 million from state revolving funds and a $5.6 million EPA grant awarded in 2020.
As for the EPA, its Region 5 office in Chicago issued Benton Harbor a Unilateral Administrative Order on Nov. 5, 2021, which provided it statutory authority to assess and oversee remedies to violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act that were alleged in the Petition for Emergency Action under Act, 42 U.S.C.
When reflecting upon the state’s quick actions that began on Sept. 8, 2021, one day prior to the release of the petition submitted to the EPA requesting emergency action in Benton Harbor, Pinkney believes it’s highly likely someone was providing Whitmer’s office with information.
“I do believe we had a spy among us giving the governor’s office information in reference to what we were doing,” Pinkney says. I (also) think we put enough pressure on the EPA that they had a conversation with the governor.”
Pinkney also believes another factor may have been motivating the state to take decisive action in September 2021.
It was something those at the highest levels of Michigan’s government likely knew was coming, following the release of the BHCWC’s emergency petition to the EPA earlier that month.
“The prospect of a class-action lawsuit is what got the state’s attention more than anything else,” Pinkney says.
There also was Flint. At the height of the state’s activity in Benton Harbor, Michigan was in the latter stages of finalizing a settlement to resolve a series of cases pending in state, federal, and appellate courts related to Flint’s man-made water crisis disaster.
When finalized on Nov. 10, 2021, the state agreed to pay the lion’s share — $600 million — of a historic $626.3 million settlement with homeowners.
In a strange twist of fate, on that same day, the first class-action lawsuit related to Benton Harbor’s water crisis naming Whitmer as a defendant was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan in Grand Rapids.

That suit, a joint filing between Detroit law firm Edward & Jennings and Florida’s Morgan and Morgan, on behalf of eight adult Benton Harbor residents, their children, and various grandchildren, was seeking $76 million in damages.
The 63-page complaint accused Whitmer, officials in EGLE, DHHS, and Benton Harbor of civil rights violations by demonstrating “deliberate indifference” related to their failures to warn Benton Harbor residents of elevated lead levels in the city’s water supply.
Ten days later, another class-action lawsuit was submitted to the same court. That suit, filed on Nov. 20, 2021, by John R. Beason II, an attorney based out of Benton Harbor, on behalf of 17 city residents, was seeking $500 million in damages.
As was the issue with the class action filed 10 days prior, the 78-page complaint accused officials in EPA, EGLE, DHHS, and Whitmer of “knowingly, willfully, and consciously” failing to warn residents of elevated lead levels in Benton Harbor tap water.
The court assigned Magistrate Judge Phillip J. Green to consider both cases. An additional class-action lawsuit against the City of Benton Harbor and EGLE officials appeared for Green to take up on May 27, 2022.
All three class actions were subject to more than a year in court. Along the way, various proceedings and amended filings were submitted.
In a report issued to Chief Judge Hala Y. Jarbou dated June 1, 2023, Green recommended the complete dismissals of all three class actions in their entirety. “The claims largely consist of an incoherent jumble of accusations and conclusionary assertions,” Green wrote in the report.
Jarbou eventually made most of Green’s recommendations official in a ruling for the court on Sept. 28, 2023.
The action dismissed two of the cases and all Benton Harbor water crisis-related claims against any State of Michigan official or agency in their entirety. In the end, the only claims Jarbou allowed to move forward were those related to Benton Harbor officials in the Nov. 10, 2021, class action filing.
Whether any Benton Harbor-related claims against Whitmer, state departments, or public officials will be further adjudicated remains to be seen; the plaintiffs appealed Jarbou’s ruling with the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Despite what happens, Benton Harbor residents know that for more than three years, state and city officials undertook lead pipe corrective measures that ultimately failed to work.
In hindsight, there are more questions than answers on what transpired.
“What happened in Benton Harbor should never, ever happen to another community, city, or town anywhere in America,” Pinkney says. “It took nearly five years for the State to replace our lead water pipes, and when they did, they all of a sudden hurried things up to avoid a political fallout.
“I don’t call that good government. I call it political expediency. Our residents’ safety was severely impacted, and to this day no one has paid a dime to us in damages.”