Procedure in the courts, restoration at the homes
Published 13 October 2026
Flint's own progress page records a set of water-system projects alongside service-line work. It describes six monitoring stations completed in 2021, sending information to the plant and chemical-feed building. Those stations offered ongoing information about the system, in addition to the periodic home sampling used for lead-rule compliance. The page does not say continuous station measurements replaced household lead tests. The city describes the stations as monitoring equipment installed in different areas of the city. The city's description is a record of its reported infrastructure programme, not independent evidence that every station was performing correctly on every later day. It nevertheless shows an effort to add system information after the crisis. F078, cityofflint.com, Progress Report on Flint Water - City of Flint, 2022-03-03
The city also reported completion of a secondary water connection in spring 2022. It described a link with the county system for emergency use if the Great Lakes Water Authority supply was disrupted, and said both systems sourced water from Lake Huron. This was a backup arrangement, not another return to normal river treatment. The progress page put the investment at roughly $14.9 million and described about seven miles of new pipe. Those are city-reported project figures. The city lists the project among its water system upgrades after the crisis. A city needs continuity of supply and a plan for disruption, particularly after an interim-source decision exposed the consequences of changing treatment without adequate protection. F078, cityofflint.com, Progress Report on Flint Water - City of Flint, 2022-03-03
Household meters were another reported change. The city said replacements were completed in 2022 to measure actual use rather than rely on estimates from older equipment. It described a programme intended to prevent large retrospective charges and an optional app for usage and leak information. These changes concerned billing and household knowledge, not a test proving water was free of contaminants. The city lists the meter upgrades among its water system projects, with the investment and completion year it reports. The page says the old meters often meant estimated bills; it does not address affordability or trust. The source documents the city's programme and its stated purpose, not a complete assessment of those wider outcomes. F078, cityofflint.com, Progress Report on Flint Water - City of Flint, 2022-03-03
On June 28, 2022, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled on the procedure used in three criminal cases connected with the water crisis. Its opinion named Nancy Peeler, Richard Baird and Nicolas Lyon as the appellants. The questions concerned a right to a preliminary examination and whether a judge acting under the one-person grand-jury statutes could issue an indictment. The court answered that the preliminary examination was required in the cases before it and that the statutes did not give the judge indictment power. It reversed the challenged lower-court orders and remanded the cases. That is the primary opinion's actual action. Broader reporting said the decision also applied to Snyder and others indicted by the same judge. F043, michbar.org, Michigan Supreme Court opinion in People v Peeler and consolidated Flint cases, June 28, 2022 F048, pbs.org, Michigan Supreme Court orders charges dismissed against ex-governor, 8 others over..., 2022-06-28
The opinion traced the procedural steps. The attorney general's office sought appointment of a one-person grand jury in December 2019, and a circuit judge served in that role. Indictments followed in January 2021. Peeler and Baird sought preliminary examinations; Lyon challenged the charging authority as well as the absence of an examination. The lower court denied their requests before the cases reached the Supreme Court. This chronology records the long procedural history of the prosecutions before the court reached the statutory question. It was not a new laboratory finding about the water or a judgment of whether families had been harmed. It concerned the route by which the state sought to charge defendants, and the procedures those defendants were entitled to receive before a prosecution could proceed. F043, michbar.org, Michigan Supreme Court opinion in People v Peeler and consolidated Flint cases, June 28, 2022
The statutory language, as the court read it, allowed a judge to conduct an inquiry into suspected crimes and take certain steps when probable cause existed. It also barred that same judge from later acting as the examining magistrate or presiding over a resulting trial. The court used those provisions in explaining the right to a separate preliminary examination. A concurring justice wrote that procedure mattered even in a case involving grave public harm. The concurrence said a prosecution of great public significance must still follow the required procedure. The opinion's focus was on statutory power and safeguards, not a finding that contamination or institutional failure had been imaginary. Those are separate propositions, and the narrative should not use a procedural ruling to erase the evidence established in other settings. F043, michbar.org, Michigan Supreme Court opinion in People v Peeler and consolidated Flint cases, June 28, 2022
Contemporary reporting showed the consequences and disagreement surrounding the ruling. The New York Times described a six-to-zero decision that disrupted the prosecutions, while prosecutors said they would seek a different legal route. Snyder's lawyers planned to ask for dismissal based on the opinion. The article also reported residents' frustration after eight years, including an activist who continued to use bottled water. These reactions describe how the decision was received, not a different legal holding. The supplied primary opinion controls the account of what the court actually decided. The reporting gives a wider view of what that ruling meant to people who had hoped for a criminal reckoning and to defendants who had rejected the charges from the beginning. F045, nytimes.com, Indictments in Flint Water Crisis Are Invalid, Michigan Supreme Court Finds - The New..., 2022-06-28 F043, michbar.org, Michigan Supreme Court opinion in People v Peeler and consolidated Flint cases, June 28, 2022
In December 2022, the Associated Press reported the dismissal of Snyder's two misdemeanor charges for willful neglect of duty. It said he was the eighth defendant whose case had been thrown out after the June ruling. The judge said the charges had not been properly brought. Prosecutors maintained that the decisions concerned process rather than the merits and said they would pursue further legal options. Snyder's lawyer called the result a victory against a politically motivated prosecution. Those positions must remain attributed. The December order was a dismissal, not a jury acquittal after evidence on guilt. The supplied report also warned that fresh charges could encounter a limitations argument. It recorded a legal outcome at that date without establishing the eventual status of every possible later prosecutorial effort. F051, apnews.com, Flint water crisis charges dismissed against ex-Gov. Snyder, 2022-12-10
The same report said one case remained pending at that point and described frustration among activists who wanted criminal punishment. It said Snyder agreed that state government had botched the water switch, while his defence team denied that his conduct rose to the level of any crime. An admission of institutional failure, a civil settlement and a criminal charge each answer different questions. The civil settlement resolved thousands of claims through negotiated compromises, while the criminal case was dismissed because the charges had not been properly brought. Treating the three as the same thing would blur what each record shows. F051, apnews.com, Flint water crisis charges dismissed against ex-Gov. Snyder, 2022-12-10 F092, mied.uscourts.gov, In re Flint Water Cases, order granting final approval of settlement, November 10, 2021
The next court order in this chronology concerned the physical work outside residents' homes. On February 24, 2023, Judge David Lawson granted a fifth motion to enforce the service-line settlement made in March 2017. The order said the city had continued missing replacement deadlines, had incomplete restoration records and had failed to supply required reports. The defendants did not dispute the listed violations. Most requested relief was agreed, but the city challenged a proposed notice procedure for property restoration. This was separate litigation from the $626.25 million compensation settlement. Its purpose was to enforce promised water-system work and the repair of damage caused by that work. The August 2020 modification said completing an excavation or line replacement included completing restoration work at the address, and the city had provided a cumulative list of restored homes only twice. F080, aclumich.org, Concerned Pastors v. City of Flint, order on motion to enforce, February 24, 2023 F092, mied.uscourts.gov, In re Flint Water Cases, order granting final approval of settlement, November 10, 2021
The order traced extensions of the original deadline. The 2017 agreement required excavations at at least 18,000 eligible homes and replacement of lead or galvanised lines by January 1, 2020. A later modification set November 20, 2020 and specified that completion included property restoration. Another modification set September 30, 2022 for excavation and replacement, while the parties still needed to agree on a restoration deadline. The repeated changes are part of the enforcement record, not merely dates omitted from a progress announcement. They show the gap between a promise, a revised schedule and actual completion. The court was not deciding whether service-line work had value; it was requiring that the value promised in the agreement be delivered with documentation and restoration rather than counted at the moment of excavation alone. F080, aclumich.org, Concerned Pastors v. City of Flint, order on motion to enforce, February 24, 2023
The city acknowledged that past decisions left its restoration records incomplete. It did not know the exact condition of some previously excavated properties. The remedy allowed contemporaneous documentation or an in-person visual check, with criteria for the lawn, curb, sidewalk and driveway. The city agreed to take photographs, give them to the plaintiffs on request and report restored homes monthly. This is a concrete problem of proof at each address. Without records, neither a general project percentage nor a contractor's claim could establish that one resident's property had been repaired. The order connected completion to visible conditions such as missing pavement, trenches, debris and a projecting valve. It also required a record that plaintiffs could examine, so the programme's reported progress could be tested against what remained on the ground. F080, aclumich.org, Concerned Pastors v. City of Flint, order on motion to enforce, February 24, 2023
Plaintiffs wanted door notices when the city inspected a property and decided no further restoration was needed. The notices would give residents a contact route if they disagreed. The order recorded plaintiffs' estimate of roughly 6,000 addresses lacking contemporaneous restoration records and the declaration of Sidney Hemphill, whose yard and sidewalk had been excavated in 2019 without later restoration or communication. Those are attributed facts from the court record. Hemphill wanted to know if the city considered the work finished so she could challenge that decision or decide what to do herself. Her account shows why notice was more than an administrative addition. Without it, a programme could silently mark an address complete while the person living there still waited for work that no crew planned to return and do. F080, aclumich.org, Concerned Pastors v. City of Flint, order on motion to enforce, February 24, 2023
The city called the proposed notice requirement burdensome. A public-works official's affidavit said printing, delivery and responses could impose a substantial time and financial cost. The court allowed a deposition of that official and found that he had not been careful with the underlying facts when he drafted the affidavit. The order also noted that door notices had already been used under earlier versions of the agreement to communicate about filters and scheduling. The judge rejected the city's burden argument and described the proposed measure as within the court's enforcement authority. The dispute concerned whether the city could be required to leave a door hanger telling a resident that, after inspection, it had decided no further restoration was needed. The court treated that communication as part of making a supervised agreement effective. F080, aclumich.org, Concerned Pastors v. City of Flint, order on motion to enforce, February 24, 2023
The order's restoration provisions had a defined scope. They covered damage connected with the city's service-line excavation and replacement, not every defect at every property. When records were absent, a visual inspection had to check for debris, gaps, alignment, ground depressions, plant cover and a valve flush with the lawn. Photos were required to document conditions. The order limited the city's restoration duty to damage from its own service-line excavations and replacements, and the city still had to demonstrate completion at each address. The conditions made completion observable and address-specific. They also gave the parties a way to distinguish a finished restoration from an excavation whose paperwork had simply stopped. F080, aclumich.org, Concerned Pastors v. City of Flint, order on motion to enforce, February 24, 2023
Monthly spreadsheets were to separate several classes of address: those with contemporary restoration records, those still needing work and those whose status had to be established by inspection. The order also required reporting related to resident communications. These categories are the administrative counterpart of the physical criteria. They prevent a single total from hiding differences between documented completion, visible unfinished work and unknown status. The city said the only way to assess the remaining restoration work was to inspect thousands of previously excavated homes one by one. The 2023 order therefore returns the narrative to a recurring theme from the first warnings: knowing where the risk or unfinished work is, keeping usable records and letting residents challenge a conclusion before officials treat it as final. F080, aclumich.org, Concerned Pastors v. City of Flint, order on motion to enforce, February 24, 2023
The progress page dates water-tower renovation to August 2023. It reports interior cleaning and repainting, work on hatches, roof supports, drainage and overflow pipes, and new mixers. The exterior message, Flint Strong, was visible reassurance, but the listed work extended beyond paint. The city reports this tower work as a water system project with its cost and completion date. The city's reported tower work therefore adds another kind of repair to the chronology. The same page still described other projects as unfinished, including a Dort pumping station set for completion in Spring 2024. Infrastructure recovery was a portfolio of work with different deadlines and functions, not one task that could be closed by a photograph of a repainted tower. F078, cityofflint.com, Progress Report on Flint Water - City of Flint, 2022-03-03