What I remember about Flint water crisis was how state government lied

I'd written about the Genesee County drain commissioner's flawed plan to create a new regional water authority, a plan developed mostly because, for reasons that still bear interrogation, the commissioner intended to cut out the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. While most of Michigan wasn't paying attention, Flint's state-appointed emergency manager had signed on to the new water authority, and OK'ed a switch to Flint River water while the new system was under construction - that happened 10 years ago this week. General Motors had stopped using Flint River water in its plant there, saying it was too corrosive, residents had to begun to report that the city's tap water was yellow, smelled and tasted bad, and the state was insisting that water tests showed everything was fine. Frustrating, because the the failures that led to the Flint water crisis were all too clear, and none of it needed to happen. As the water crisis unfolded, state officials repeatedly tried to discredit the Flint residents who wouldn't stop sounding the alarm, suggesting they were angling for new fixtures or plumbing repairs on the city or state's dime. State officials took great pains to suggest that the decision to switch to Flint River water was made by the local elected officials who had been displaced by the appointment of an emergency manager, adopting the bizarre pretense that state-appointed emergency managers, granted sweeping, unilateral authority by state law, were ineffectual rubber-stampers of local decision-making. That's what covering the Flint water crisis was like - scrambling around to establish the facts of things that were plainly true the whole time: The water was contaminated with lead, Flint residents were harmed, the state and its emergency managers were at fault.