FLINT, MI — Attorneys for seven children want a federal judge to block testimony about a study of city sewage during the Flint water crisis, research that claims the most damaging releases of lead into the city’s water system occurred before the consultant they are suing ever started its work here.
Attorneys for the children filed a motion in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on Monday, April 22, to exclude the biosolids research carried out by Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards and others.
Edwards worked extensively in Flint during the water crisis. He was among the first to identify Flint drinking water as “very corrosive” and “causing lead contamination in homes” in early September 2015, a time when city and state regulators insisted the water met all regulatory standards and was safe to drink.
Published in the peer-reviewed journal Water Research, the study relied on years of data from routine measurements of metals …