FLINT, MI -- Two Michigan Department of Environmental Quality employees have been suspended as a result of pending questions regarding actions related to water testing in Flint.
Both employees have been suspended pending an investigation, in accordance with Civil Services rules, according to a news release from Gov. Rick Snyder's office.
"Michiganders need to be able to depend on state government to do what's best for them and in the case of the DEQ that means ensuring their drinking water is safe," Snyder said in a statement. "Some DEQ actions lacked common sense and that resulted in this terrible tragedy in Flint. I look forward to the results of the investigation to ensure these mistakes don't happen again."
Dan Wyant, former DEQ director, resigned his position in December after a task force laid responsibility for the Flint water crisis at the feet of the department.
The chief of the agency's drinking water division was also reassigned, and Gov. Rick Snyder has apologized and acknowledged mistakes in the state's handling of Flint's water problems.
Michigan DEQ spokesperson Brad Wurfel also resigned in December after a task force cited department failures in addressing the Flint water crisis.
In a letter to Snyder, the Flint Water Advisory Task Force pegged the "substance and tone" of the department's communications as one of three failures, along with failing to correctly interpret lead and copper rule and a regulatory failure.
Miguel A. Del Toral, regulations manager in the EPA's ground water and drinking water branch, sounded a dire warning about toxic lead in Flint's drinking water seven months ago. Del Toral said he couldn't believe the water wasn't being treated to make it less corrosive to lead service lines and indoor plumbing.
Del Toral wrote an interim report on high levels of lead in Flint water on June 24, 2015, months after other EPA officials had warned the state Department of Environmental Quality that the chemistry of Flint River water was appeared to be causing transmission pipes to leach contaminants such as lead into the water supply.