Water Agency Fired Manager Who Warned of D.C. Lead

Seema S. Bhat was WASA's water quality manager from 1999 until she was fired in March after her bosses decided that she had too often reported lead problems directly to the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Bhat said she was keeping the EPA informed because she wanted WASA to launch an aggressive campaign to replace lead service lines and inform the public of the problems. Instead, she said, her superiors told her to be more patient and enrolled her in a training course designed to teach her to respect the chain of command.

In. Fucking. Credible.

I'd really like to hear them explain this one. We're talking about high levels of lead in the fucking water supply! That's kind of important! And now it looks like people at WASA and the EPA knew there might be a potential problem as far back as 2001, and did nothing, except to go all Silkwood on the whistle-blower. The relevant testing information didn't even make it up the chain of command at WASA.

I really don't understand this one. Why would lowish-ranking officials at a civil water agency want to cover up lead in the water? Is there something else going on here?