>> narrator: tonight... ht >> multiple people got sick and multiple people died. >> the doctor asked, he said, "have you heard of legionnaire?" >> narrator: a frontline exclusive investigatio those deaths, just to see ifh anything stood out. and in fact it did. >> narrator: what dimichigan ficials know? >> a lot of people didn't want us to expose what was happening and why it was happening. >>arrator:nd was there a cover-up? >> test the water. th should have tested the water. >> narrator: tonight on frontline - in "s deadly water". >> frontline imade possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank u. and the corporation for public broadcasting. major support is provided by thn

john dcatherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more informationt oncfound.org. the ford foundation: woing with visionaries on the frontlines of socialhange worldwide. additional support is provided by the abrams foundation, committed to excellence journalism. the park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the john and helen glessner family trust. supporting trustworthy journalism that infod inspires. and by the frtline journalism fund, wi major support from jon and jo ann hagler. and additional support from ko and patricia yuen, through the yuen foundation. ♪ >> there is nothing more valuable than water.r.

and michigan is blessed to be suounded by more fresh wat than anywhere else on the planet. >> they're calling it the dawn transporting fresh water toline but officials say...wo cities, >> narrator: the idea was to turn all that water into money. >> a new pipeline could bring economic opportunity, could create regional cooperation, ank it could be, yw, an affordable, healthy source of, of water for our city, long-term. arrator: the proposed piline was supposed to car low-cost, high-quality water from lake huron to businesses and homes throhout eastern michigan, including the city of flint. >> the $27million project should be completed in early y 16. >> and it was a r this community to take advantage of the natural resources that it's surrounded by, and that could give, you know, our region a competitive advantage.

>> narrator: instead, the pipeline set in motion a series of events that led to an unprecedented public-health crisis in flint. >> it's not safe to drink the water in flintmichigan. >> narrator: the exposure of thousands of children to lead-tainted water would become a nationalutrage. >> ...water has been poisoned with lead for months. >> i think about this every single day, and i still try to figure out what i could have seen or done or asked, you know, differently. have dangerous levels of lead in the water... >> but i just didn't er imagine that there would be a failure at ery level of government with something as nkbasic as the safety of dg water. >> narrator: and overshadowed by the lead psoning was another problem with the water. >> most people outside of flint lo at the lead issue as th main issue. ll but the kier has beengi

naires', a people don't know that. >> t more deaths have been linked to the legionnaires' disease outbreak. >> that was the one that i think they tried to hide the most. that's the one i still don't think that they want peoplets ouide of flint to know. ♪ >> narrator: ir:flint, they still line up for bottled water. >> oh, my gosh. are you serious? >> narrator: jacqui mcbride started coming here her daughter got sick with legionnaires' diseas a severe s and potentially deadly form of pneumonia. >>ng don't want the same thi to happen to me. i refuse to drink inom the faucet.sh

oo jay, yold have been here a long time ago. >> come on up, come on up. >> hey there. >>arrator: the legionnaires' oureak hasn't received much attention outside of flint, despite being one of the largest in u.s. history. but "frontline" has been investigating the outbreak andst hoe and local officials failed to stop it.fo r the past two years, t producers ab ellis and kayla ruble ha been reporting in flint., >>o, three cases of legionnaires'. >> and they're a couple of ocks froeach other.th >> narrator: with their colleague, reporter jacob carah, t team reviewed thousands of pages of healthre cords and government documents; spent months folling the legal effort to hold people accountable; and interviewed local officials, residents, infectious-disease specialists, and others to trace the story of the deadly outbreak, which began more than knew there was a w crisis in

flint. ♪ the outbreak started in june 2014, when the first known patienshowed up at a local hospit. w 54 years old, suffering pneumonia.appeared to be >> so, for that particular patient, going to the hospital as soon as they had, you know, high fever, cough, diarrhea, k you know, thw that something's really wrong. they order a special diagnostic test, which isn't routinelyan donethen they know it's gagionnaires' disease, and it's now sort of a racest time to save that patient. >> narrator: janet stout is one the nation's foremost legionnaires' specialists and advised officials in flint on how to respo r to the disease, which is caused by inhaling water droplets contaminated with >> what's distctoutiv legionnaires' disease is its severity. almost all ces are admitted to the intensive-care unit.

the other thing that's unique about leonella, legionella so, if you can con then war. organism in water, you can dmpletely prevent the disease.. >> narrator: thrs later, another man was diagnosed with legionnaires' at a hospital in flint. in the week that followed, three more cases at three different hospitals wes reported to the state and county health departments. >> because it's a reportable dise e going to one centralized locationtiwhich is state and county reporting, the ople receiving... at the health department receiving this are going, "i've not seen g five cases in four weeks, ever." so now you sta to see a pattern. this is not normal. >> narrator:y midsummer, more than a dozen legionnres' cases had been confirmed, rm many as genesee county would typically see in a yinr. but most people ine lint knew

nothing about the growing outbreak, including jaui mcbride, whose daughter jassmine was its youngest known victim. >> i walked into that room, all i see is this machine, these tubes, my daughter laying there stiff, you know, just stiff. the doctor asked, he said, "have you heard of legionnaire?" and i'm, like, "no. at the hell is that?" >> narrator: jassmine was 26 and had diabetes, wh, h made her vulnerable. she was admitted to the intensive-care unit. f >> tst doctor kept saying, "well, we don't know if she's o going to make not." i didn't want to hear that. ♪ i think the same day she was

there, sebody had passed, maybe next to her, and had the same thing she had, legionnaires'. >> narrator: scientists we've spoken to who have examined the legionnaires' outbreakoint to a fateful decision, months before jassmine got sick, tobe switch flint's water to a nesource. >> the first dirt turn for the pipeline, ladies and gentlemen! >> crews break grod on the karekaondi water pipeline. >> ...74 miles of large-diametet pipeline will stretch... >> narrator: for decades, flint-- one of the poorest cities in america-- had bought its water from detroit. >> ...is expected to ct about $230 million. n >>rator: water from the proposed pipeline was supposed to be cheaper. >> thank you mr. councilman and the rest of the council... >> narrator: a point the county's t water officialia stressed when heame to flint. ll once it's completed, there will be several-n-dollar cost reduction to all of the communities inlved...

saw a great opportunity for this poor community to save money. they would have a savings of two million their first year from what they were spending just to purchase water. >> keep it on file so that we can begin the committe.. council eventually backed the plan, but officially, they had littli say, because, at the time, the nearly bankrupt city'sinances were controlled by the state, which head and approved the pipeline. >> and so we didn't have controf he water, the decisions-- nothing. ♪ >> narrator:o help finance it all, flint's state-appointed managersad another plan. >> it has been five decades nce flint used the river for drinking water. today, they opened up the gates to start that process again. >> narrator: instead of staying on the droit water supply ulile the pipeline was being built, the city temporarily get its water from the flint river. >> ...until a new water pipeline is finished from lake huron. >> narrator: that decision-- without a vote from the city

counl-- would force the city to activate an old watetreatment plant that had barely been used in half aur ce >> i certainly still expected that the samsafeguards would be in place no matter at the drinking-water source was. >> narrator: but inside the plant, we've learned t lt a foreman named matt mcfarland was having concerns. >> he said, "we're not ready." he said the plant wasn't ready. the funding just wasn't there.fi the st wasn't there. there was a lot that would need to be done, and it would take time. >> narrator: mcfarland died in, 20t while working at the water plt, he regularly confided in s sister ton petrla. this is the first time she's spoken publicly about her brother'concerns. >> he would call me, and he would just be so upsetand he would leave me messathat wereweust frantic, like, "to "a, you have to call me right away. please call me right away." mean, he knew that they weren't ready for this. a >> narratothe deadline approached, mcfarland expressed

his concerns to his supervisors. one of them, mike glasgow, had coerns, too. he wouldn't speak to us, but in an email, he told state regulators that if the tlant o were to opschedule, "it will be against my direction." later told investigators heve received a response. >> the city right w is just testing and treating this water. they're not using it in the drinking water yet. they hope to start doing that in the next few days. >> narrar: with the openingto of the plant just hours awayho petrella began texting friends-- at her brother's behest-- at the water wasn't safe. >> i remember specifically the day before theactually flipped the switch, he called me, and he said, "ton, contact everyone that you kw in flint, anybody you care about, and tell them,k 'do not dre water.'" >> this is our moment: three, two, one. >> he said, "it's not safe. we're t ready," he said, "and people are going to die."

here's tolint! >> here's to flint! >> hear, hear.to >> nar within weeks, nhe problems mcfarland had been worried about began to appear. >> flint is now gettg its water from the flint river. it's not sitting well with some residents and businesses... >> and this is what is coming out of the tap. >> water's brown, had odor... >> i was covering flint city hall athe time. it was a regular sight, like, every week, someonwas bringing in a bottle of water that was discolored. >> people were telling me as a councilperson that they was breaking out with rash.ith >> we cannot drink the water, we etn't cook with the water, let alone brush our >> that was real quick after the switch, f those signs. >> the city says residents won't notice a change in quality. >> the message we keep gettingba ck over and over and over again is, "it's really not anything to worry about." c >> fliy officials say drinking water from the flint river is now safe to drink foren thre city...

>> it was, "not a problem, not a problem, not a problem." >> narrator: but what most of flint didn't know at the time was that the state hadn't required the plant to protect corrosion. water pipes fm they soon became a breeding ground for legionella, and peop were getting sick. throughout the summer 2014, cases of legionnaires'ease kept appearing, reaching over 30 by fall. >> boctober of 2014, there would have been enough information to really understand that there was a significant problem in flint.co that would bided a large outbreak, and that would be an investigatn at we'd wa to do right away. >> narrator: the county health department had started looking into the problem. and in emails, state officials were already speculating that flint's new water supply may be to blame and worrying that

word might get out. >> everybody that knows anything out legionnaires' diseas knows it's in the water. soou gand test the water. and then you disinfect the water. that's what's been done virtually everywhere else, except in flint. >> narrator: no one from theal state department would be interviewed we camera. but a spokeswoman told us theld outbreak cot be definitively connected to the water because, she acknowledged, 14e water was never tested. by the end of 20, there wererm 40 confi cases of legionnaires', and three people had died. jassne mcbride had been lucky. after three months in thes hospital, she le to go home. >> when i got out, i h to learn how to walk, talk, eat. w

i mean, itas just like being rebornll over again. >> the oxygen, you're on that all the time, or do yo geto take it...? >> sometimes i take it off just to see myself, but i'm on it all the time. >> yeah. >> narrator: her battle with legionnaires' left her heart and lungs weened. her kidneys were severel damage when we met her in 2018, she n'eded a transplant, but w healthy though to be eligible for one.us >> you j jhad dialysis just now, right? your lungs are clear. they'vcleared out the fluid. >> narrator: her doctor, marcus zervos, had en treating aec chronic skin ion that her weakened immune system couldn't control. >> my goal with you is to try to get those wounds healed up so that you can get your transplant. >> mm-hmm. what we're doing with this is tissuetirafting. i'm really happy with them. they are doing a lot better. >> i'm ecstatic. >> you know, if i can get them healed over a little be,

i'm going to get you an appointment with those transplantoctors. ♪ >> narrar: while jassmine was recovering back in early 2015, the head of michigan's health department, nick lyon, met withi one of his epiogists and washown this graph of the legionnaires' outbreak.th epidemiologist noted that it coincided with the switch of the water supply. lyon asked to be kept informed. >> neighbors in flint joined together today to rally ainst the city treatment... >> narrator: residents were still unaware of the outbreak. >> city officials say the water is safe and there's noto worry. >> narrator: but at theto suggestion of the state healthal lsdepartment, county offic drafted an alert to medical providers. it was never sent, accordingo internal emails,ecse the person in charge wasn't there. that day instead, just 15 people were notified by email. atno one in the county or

health departments would explain why the alert never went out. >> it's totally unacceptable. there was no notification sent to the medical society. so that... (chuckles) i'm trying not to be profane, but that's utt rubbish. >> narrator: aund the same time, county health officials trying to confirm if the waterth wasource of the outbreak reached out to dr. stout. >> and i said, "call the center for disease control and prevention. they will come, they will do the testing that needs to be done." and i thought...e. "d >> narrator: emails show the county health department wrote to the cdc right away,y, saying they were now up to 47 cases of legionnaires' disease and needed help. but state health officials had a very different response. they told the cdc they didn't need its help. if they did, they'd get in

touch. the cdc persisted, saying they felt a sense of urgency. it was one of the largest outbreaks in years, they said, s and they recommended a full inve igation. >> looking through the emails and starting to see how things were evolving, that kind o resource on the ground-- boots on the ground, particularly helping the genesee county health department, which wasen understaed at the time-- would have been a game changer for the legionella outbreak. >> narrator: but the call to the cdc never came, even as more top officials became aware of the problem. though governor rick snyderst would insistdn't know about the outbreak until 2016, emails show that by march 2015, at least three of his aides-- and twof his cabinet members-- had en told about it. and into the summer, it continued. three cases in may, seven more in june, 13 in july, 13 in

august. >> tick, tick, tick, case after case afterase. there's another one, there'sr anote, there's ather one. >> narrator: there'd been 90d confirses in the year and a half followinghe water switch. 12 people had died. >> it i a ver abig epidemic, one of tof largest epidemics ofa legies' disease that we know of. erewe hed rumors that that we could not m, andella we weren't getting any communication from our countyth heepartment, definitely no information from the state department.nt. they were strangely silent. >> developing now, a public-health emergency...li >> people in being told not to drink... narrator: but once high lead lels in the water system came public in late 2015,15 state officials had to confront the ct that the water switch was having grave consequences. blood has risen...ad in kids'

>> i think that really was a pivoidl point,here people paio atteto a community that just used common sense and knew water shouldn't be bt wn and rusty-looking. >> state officials say their testing shows lead in the water. narrator: with the crisis erbuilding, the governor o the city to stop using the flint river and return to detroit water. within mths, snyder and his top officials wod address the legionnaires' outbreak. an aide to the governor lled an environmentalngineering professor at wayne state university. >> he said that the governor was about to go onstage to announce a legionnaires' disease ouak, and wanted to know whether orot i could determine if the chae in the water supply was the cause of the legionnaires' disease. and i basically told him that i

thought i could pull together a thteam to look at this, bu i would have to make some calls.he anaid, "no, no, no. the governor is going on in, like, 15 minutes. i need an answer in 15 minutes.♪ ♪ >> well, thank you for coming today. i'm going to share information that has been sharshith the health-care community the past, but hasn't really be put out to the public. over the course of 2014 and 2015, 20 saw a spike in legionnaires' disease. i believe the numbers for the preceding years, before 2014, we had six cases, 11 cases, 13 cases,nd eight cases in 2014, we had 45 cases. and then in 2015, there were 42 cases. >> i'd been writing about flint water for more than a year, and i never heard anything abouti legionnaires' disease until th governor went on tv that day. >> thank you >> nartor: the republican governor was joined by the state's top heal officials:

nick lyon and the chief medical executive, dr. eden wells. >> most of the time, what it's going to manifest is as a pneumonia. .this pneumonia wou not >> they say, "we can't concludth the water was the source of legionnaires' disease in this outbreak." >> mdhhs cannot conclude thatis this increaselated to the water switch, due to the lack of clinical isolates duri the time period and because not all of the cases had exposure to the cityflint water. >> well, let's ask the question, "what would be necessary in order to make that link?" eeyhould have tested water. >> this is part of our efforts to be transparent and share information as quick as possible as we can with the public... narrator: at the press conference, no one mentioned that the cdc had urged a fullin stigation eight months earlier. bombshell, a game anger... >> there was an outbreak of

legionnaires' diseasthat quite frankly none of w about... >> ...just shocking, because we found out about a totay different disease and aths.at >> narrator: within weeks, michigan's republican attorn general announced he wasin apng a special counsel to lead a criminal investigation into the water crisis. >> i'm announcing today that todd flood, a tough former wayne county procutor, will be joining me ajo working with me in an investigation to determine what michigan laws, if any, may ha been broken in the flin water crisis.go >> peoplsick, terribly so,r and the was contaminated. and the publicanas in an outcrut i have never seen a case liketh in the history of the united states before.un there needs to be an answer where people understand and canb hold accou those, if any, who are fault. we didn't know if there was criminality or n.

it's always about who knew what and when, and what did they do abouit? you take your evidence, and you follow that evidence down the path >> narrator: as the criminal investigation s getting underway, the scientific investigation into the legionnaires' outbreak was also getting organized. >> we started meeting wi the state regularly. and when we first started meeting with them, they were very collegial, and it was pretty uch,we will open the i keys to anythiit can help understand this." >> narrator: shawn mcelmurry had pulled togetr a team of 23 scientists and experts from >> we were all focused on making sure that we didn't have anothee outbreak, another season outbreak. and so there was a lot of essure to get this done by the time summer started. >> narrator: but as the months went by, the team says the state wouldn't authorize them to start the search for the source of the outbreak. dr. zervos was the infectious-disease expert, and

he was worried aboutelay. >> it was critical to start rit away, because by june, we expeed to see more cases of legionnaires' disease, and there would be more deaths, which iswh we expressed in a meeting that included top leadership at mdhhs. >> narrator: the scientists say they metith nick lyon to urge him to step up surveillance for legionnaires' cases. >> i remember my colleague telling him that if he didn't do that, you kn, pele coulde. unfortunately, nick lyon's response was that, "well, they have to die of something." >> i, i was, you know, i was flabbergasted, and i didn't say anything right then. althought was a situion where you're just, i mean, you're just in shocks a result of him saying that, of the director of the health departpant. >> narrator: nick lyon declined to be interviewed. in a letter, his attorney said, "director lyon did not make that he said the team's work was one

of lyon's top priorities and blamed any delays onhe scientists. ♪ ec l precutor todd flood was also clashing with state officials, as s investigation began turning up evidence of misconduct and negligence and an effort within the government to cover up the water crisis. >> every single witns had a paid-for attorney by the government. whether or not you were a suspect or a defendant or ain witness, everye one had a government-pd-for attoey. so we were going up against goliat a lot of people didn't want us to expose what was happening and why it was happening. >> breaking news right now from int, michigan, we've been following this all day long. the state's torney general... >> narrator: by the end of julya 2016, flood d charged nined state cal officials with crimes rated to the lead and legionnaires' crisesincluding

conspiracy, misconduct, neglect of duty, and tampering with eviden. >> today three menace the very first criminal charges i connection with the flint water crisis. >> we were starting very low and ithworked out plea deals most of them to cooperate and move up the chain. >> narrator: as the criminal investigatn continued, behind the scenes, the team of scientists who whoe supposed to be investitinghe outbreakbr was running upgainst resistance. >> as we kept meeting with state officials, there was increasingk pushbout the extent of data we would have access to, and more constraints being, int our view, the scientific investigation. >> we're not allowed, for example, to talk to patients that had legionnaires' disease. the homes of patients that hader legionnaires' disease, which was really, a very big, very serious limitation.

>> nartor: they clashed with dr. eden wells over testing residents'ntater filor evidence of bacteria. >> this turned out to be a really contentious issue with the state. they didn't wantt e to collect those filters because they thought it might just cause more... um.... might scare people more than it would provide valuable information. >> at one point, i felt personally tlyt it might even be impossible to be able to t objectively do the project. narrator: they also felt it was critical to examine pneumonia deaths during the c water crisis, e any had been misdiagnosed. f so there are some cases legionnaires' disease that arece no arily diagnosed as legionnaires' disease, but just diagnosed as pneumonia. >> okay, so did you guys look into pneumonia deaths? >> uimately, that was one thing that we weren't allowed access to. it was deemed as beyond the scope of what they wanted us to look into. o

buas time we i, i came to realize that maybe their interest in understanding ings wasn't the same as my interest in understanstng thing and that the were potential liabilities to the state and to the people i was talking with. >> narrator: dr. wells declined to comment. health department ockedniethe the scientists' requests and told us lyon was simply trying to ensure the ate was "funding necessary and appropriate rearch." with the scientists and state at g odds, "frontline" was doe pneumoniresearch that mcelmurry and his colleagues were seeking. >> i kind of tasked myself to kind of just start looking through the eleconic death records system at the clerk's office, cause the only place to start, the only evidence you can find, is pneumonia deaths. so i sed looking in the timeframe of the switch to the flint river. >> i recognize you. you've been here before, right?

>> yeah. >> cool, thank you, you're all set. >> narrator: over several months, "frontne" reporters analyzed every death record in the county during a seven-year period, looking for people whose cause ofeath had been listed as pneumonia. >> you have to go through every single death certificate one by one. because there was really no other way to do it.ca yot go digging up bodies, and, you know, doing antigen tests on bones. i started jud going throughoi just the timeframe of the switch, and i started counting the pnmonia deaths that i found. i thought i s crazy when i was looking at it, because i kept findg more, not less. >> narrator:he state had put the death toll from the legionnaires' outbreak that ran from 2014 to 2015 at 12 people. but "frontline" found dozens whv were said todieddif pneumonia in the same period >> the was thispike during the switch. it was almost three times more than prior years. narrator: as mcelmurry and

his team feared, there were signs the outbreak's toll could be higher igan anyone knew. >> why wasn't a thorough investigatiolaunched from the state? i mean, this raises some verme critical questions, if you knew at t time that people were ♪ ing. >> narrar: we would spend many months in flint tryingo find the true extent of the legionnaires' outbreak. but by late 2016, mcelmurry andt the other scientists had begun testing the water and gettingsu s back. >> it didn't take us too long tn start finding legionella in some of the water entering people's homes. >> narrator: believing they should share their findings with the scientists held a meeting at a local librl y and said they'd fou legionella and other bacteria in people's water filters. the next day, shawn mcelmurry heard from rich bair a top

aide to governornyder. >> i was under no illusion that evertime i talked to rich baird, it was as if i was talking to the governor, and he said, well, heasn't upset at my guy"but he wasn't on message." you know, he needed de be on message. he needed to "lead with public health," whatever that meant, and basically said that, you know, he didn't want to take away funding from the university if i wasn't ableo get on message. i viewed that as just a threat to me and my team about the work we were doing, that needed to better align our results with whatheir position was. >> and what did you understand that positioto be? >> that there were no more problems with the water in flint at that time >> narrator: in an email, baird told us that he never tried to influence or pressure the team thterms and conditions ofide by their contract." and that they fail to stay

within the scope and parameter of the project. >> just up today on the criminal investigation into the flint water crisis. narrator: by 2017, the allegations of misconduct had reacheinside the governor's cabinet. >> ...in a srtlita revelation, in-court documents from the state attorney general... >> narrator: nick lyon and eden wells were now facing involuntary manslaughter charges for failing to alert the public and covering up the legionnaires' outbreak. >> the departmt's chief medical execive, dr. eden wells, accused of threatening to stop funding... >> the allegations are, health rector nick lyon knew more than a year before this announcement. >> nick lyon is presumed innocent, but it was plain as day that the department of alth and human services' state epidemiologist, along with others, had talked to the director about the legionella outbreak. o're saying he hd a duty tell the people. he failed to do that duty. he then kept things under wrap. the spike was continng to go up, and sure enough, in the summer of 2015, multiple people

got sick and multiple people died. >> these charges all center aroundhe deadly legionnaires' disease outbreak. >> narrator: prosecutors also accused lyon andells of interfering with shawn mcelmurry's investigation. mcelmuy and other scientists were subpoenaed to ttify about it dg pre-trial hearings. >> the crux of their testimony came down to, "we were stopped or prevented because they didn't want to know the truth, the govement, they didn't want us to find legionella. they didn't want us to find bacteria. they didn't want us test samples. they didn't want us to collect from filrsn homes." why? why? because they didn't want them to show that thwater was thesh actual source of the legionella. >> narrar: thrghou tou state health department insisted that the biggestource of the legionnaires' outbreakas not the city's water, but flint's mclaren hospital, which it said was linked to nearly 60% of the cases.

>> first of all, not every case of legionnaires' disease came out of mclaren. and second of all, if the ste e believed that there was a legionnaires' outbreak in every du to do something about it and inform people about it.ha that's notthe state did. >> narrator: mcldeclin to be in, citing ongoing lawsuits by legionnaires' victims, but pointed out that the hospital gets its water from the city.ir they dr. stout to provide for and prevent lela.p them test >> somewhere around 30% or so of cases had absolutely n healthcare association. that meanshewere never, not only at mclaren, but never at any of the other hospitals, either.ei t argument that the problem is the hospital doesn't hold weight. >> narrator: shawn mcelmurry anc his tee to the same conclusion, and in early 2018,

publhed their findings in a peer-reviewed journal. >> the outbreak is associate with the change in the water supply. when they switched to the flint ver, they didn't properly treat the water. and as it went through the distribution system, they also had reacons and things that... th corroding pipes. and so there are pockets of e city where you had high amounts of iron, low chlorine, high h organimatter. and in those places, it is very growth.that they had biological so there's all sorts of indicators that there was massive water-quality problems t througho time in which they were on thelint river. >> narrator: the state health department publicly rejected the paper, saying in a statement the scientists had "only added to the public confusion," and that an outside consulting firm the state hired was critical of eir work. nick lyon's attorney went even further in a letter to "frontline," questioning t

credibility and expertise of the team. the state eventually released its own report insisting there was nly one common source" f most of the cases-mclaren hospital. ♪ as for jassmine mcbride, by e summer of 2018, just shy of her 30th birthday, she was still suffering from the effects of the legionnaires' disease.>> 8th. >> 28th of...? >> july. celebrating my 30th birthday, seeing thai was supposed to be gone in 2014 due to thele onnaire, so... >> mm-hmm,kay. >> and i jt want to be around family and friends. >> that's good. mm-hmm. 're just here for some paperwork? >> well, yeah, but when i leave here, i'm going to the hospital. >> okay. (weakly): i'maving, um...

some trouble breathing. ♪ w >> narrar: s on 24- hour-a-day oxygen, suffering frequent respiratory failure. >> i'm about to just pass out. >> do you need something? >> (breathing shalwly) th is what i go throh when i'm having trouble breathing. it's like i can't-- i can barely talk, i can barely function. i can barely walk. (knock at door) (door opens) 's a scary feeling. ♪ ayarrator: on this day, she was taken to the hospital for emergency dialysis. she was no closer to getting on the kidney transplant list. >> this feels so...

(shs) s this inot where i wanted to be. ♪ >> nick lyon faces involuntary manslaughter charges in connection with the death of two men in the flint legionnaires' outbreak. >> narrator: that summer, 11 months of pre-trial testimony was coming to an end in the case against nick lyon... >> d lyon fail to rnbout the outbreak? >> narrator: ...with a long-awaited ruling on whether oue evidence was strong enough to send his case to trial. >> all rise. >> you have a member of the ilvernor's cabinet who is on the job as the top health official in the state of op.higan on trial for poisoning >> the prosecutise has charged mr. lyon with involuntary

manslaughter. >> i think maybe that is unprecedented. l >> based upon the evidence in its totality, i finu that the proon has established that the following crimes have been committed and c elievese exists to that nicholas lyon has committed these offenses. >> narrator: the judge order lyon to stand trial. another judge would order the e me for eden wes. both appealed thdecisions, delaying the start of an tria. and while the appeals were dragging on... >> changin political landscape for our state... >> the biggest midterm electioct in a generation... >> narrator: the politic landscape in michiicwas changing with a new vernor. >> it was a dominating night foi democrats, winning a number key races, inc iding gr, attorn general... >> narrator: and a new attorney genera a democrat who'd criticized the investigation for not producing results. >> i think we have to take a very close look at those investigations, we havto re-evaluate, and i think we

should have career prosecutorsas handling those. >> narrator: by the beginning of 2019, thfate of the investigation was uncertain. with the criminal cases in limbo, we were still trying toe determe toll of the legionnaires' outbreak. >> it's kind of like detective wo: you look at the evidence, u evaluate the circumstaes, and then you start pting these pieces together. >> narrator: after months reporting and analysis, "frontline" had documented 115nt pneumonia deaths that happenedli in durg the outbreak. in response to our findings, a spokeswoman for the state health departnt told us they'd noticed an increase, too, and concluded it was due to influenza. but independent scientists were telling us that in all likelihood, some of them were actually due to legionnaires'.

>> i took the information from the death certifices, and ie plotted out each one of those deaths on a map, just to kind k see if anything stood t. and in fact it did. in partilar, the older parts of the city. we found these clusters of t peopt, around the same timeframe as the switch, were dying of pneumonia and dying of legionnaires' disease. ♪ we're in mott park. >> narrator: mott park is a neighborhood on the west side of flint where we found six deathsr atibuted to pneumonia in the beginning of theutbreak-- triple what it had been during that time the previous year. >> did you guys ever tnk there was something wrong with the water? >> no, i didn't know anything was wrong with the water. >> narrator: loree mre lived here with her nephew marcus wilson during the summer of from cancer treatments.ecovering >> he was weak, but he wasn't

weak-weak. w walking, he was doing everything on his own. >> did marcus use the water here a lot, did he...? >> yes, he did. he drunk a lot of water. he would take showers and he would sit in there for a long time and just let the water run in his face. and i was, like, "marcus, you okay?" and he was, like, "man, that water feel good." and he would always just ser in and just, you know, let the water hit him inis face, you know, in the chair. >> so he's sitting in there, h war, breathing it in right in his face? y , yes. he would just sit there in the chair and hold his face like this. >> narrator: back when the outbreak was erupting in august 2014, rcus went to the hosphoal. doctors diagnosed him pneumonia, never testing for legionnaires'. a few weeka later, he was dead. without testing, there was no way to know for certain if marcus wilson or anye 115 people we'd found had died of leginaires'. but what were the chances that some of them had? >> i'm a beat reporter, i'm not

anpidemiologist. you can talk to families, you can put dots on a map and ke assumptions about clusters, but at the end of e day, you really do need an objective, independent review of that data. >> narrator: so we took ourin repoto atlanta, to emory university, where a team of independent epidemiologists we'd commissioneduilt their own atistical model to analyze the data we'd been collecting. >> what a statistical model allows us to do is tisreally se rest for the trees, to look at whether or not the t difference that we saw in genesecounty was actually statistically meaningful. >> narrator: the team compared the pneumonia deaths to a control group. >> t control group that we chose for this analysis was genesee county in many respects in terms of their size, and income, and education lelel, and soo-economic profile, but were both in michigan and in surrounding states.an

so what we see here is that this mortality rate, they'rello1 pretty similar between genesee county and the controls. and they'rthpretty similar, they're quite similar, and thi continues until we get to about the middle of 2014. end this is sort of where inflection point happens here. >> narrator: the increase was most pronounced in the first six months of 2014, and less so in 2015. it's not clear why, since int was still on river waterhen. >> right when the legionnaires' epidemic starts, theneumonia death rate in genesee goes up, while in thether counties, it's going down. so, we got this very clearve en when you plot that over time. >> narrator: after running the numbers, the team concluded there'd been about 70 more pneumonia deaths than normal. >> that means that there could have been a little b more than 70 and there could have been fewer. hover, the most plausible number that we came up with from our models is 70.

>> this is definitely consistent with the idea that there were some legionnaires' cases that did not get diagnosed and erefore did not get included in the officffl count for the outbreak. it's likely that the leginaires' outbreak was bigger than that reported by official authorities.ut >> if physians had a higher level of awareness about the lenaires' disease outbre earlier than they did, it's possib that that could have and fewer deaths due to cases legionnaires'. >> narrator: we presend our rmerings and emory's to governor rick snyder, who declined to comment. the state health department also declined, citing pending litigation. the official death toll from the outbreak remains 12 people. ♪ >> the lord is your keeper. the sun shall not smite you by da nor the moon by night. >> amen.

>> narrator: looking further into our data, we made another discovery: of the people who were diagnosed with legionnaires' during the outbreak and initially survived, at least 20 had since died. >> jassmine d. md.ride departed this life on february the 12th,h 2019, at st. mary mercy hospal. >> narrator: in the end, jassmine mcbride couldn't adovercome the dheage that been done by the legionnaires' disease. >> what was the cause of her death were complications as a result olegionnairesdi' ase. she had heart problems, she had lung problems, she had kidney problems, and that resulted in her having a cardiac arrest.d >> if she cot up right now, she would say, "i'm not asffering anymore from legionnaires' di i'm not suffering waiting to get a transplant. thank god i'm free." jassy, you're free.

rest in peace. (congregation applauding) >> she fght a good fight.. she finished her course. and the victory is hers. >> (singing) >> she was angry and she forgave them. she just wanted justicto be. serv (hymn continues) >> a big story we are following tonight, outrage in the city of flint, michigan.nt >> people of fmichigan, say they are horrified again. >> a shockinhodecision from th newly democratic aorney general's office. >> narrator: four months late.. >> a lot of us are really angry. and we want to see some justice. we want justice.

>> narrator: michigan's new attorney general had ousted todd flood and most ohis team, and appointed new prosecutor who dropped all the charths against nick lyon, dr. eden wells, and the other officials. >> when we fst came into the investigation, we had some very real concerns. >> some major, majoroncerns. and when i looked at it,atike i told fadwa-- and i think i may have told the attorney general-- "we're going to have to start from t beginning. we're gonna have to start from scratch." >> narrator: despite two judges ruling the cases should go to trial, the new prosecutors say the previous investigation was "fundamentally flawed" failed to collect all available evidence. >> if we know the investigation was not complete, you just simply cannot proceed. 's ery important when we say we dropped the charges is that these charges ardismissedth t prejudice, which means these charges could be brought up again today. we're supposed to have everything, look at it, and make a decision.

that's not the way things happened in this case.nd millionsillions of dollars have been spent on the flint water investigation. they've wasted three years for zero. for nothing. >> here's the thing. i know we worked tirelessly to put a great case together and continue the investigation. i know that, right? and i can say that without equivocation.ly and candlook, th, facts speak fothemselves. we won. we got the cases bound or. t we dngs the old-fashioned way of moving from the bottom and going up in the investigation. and the investigation for us wae far from ♪ >> narrator: more an five years after the start of the outbreak, it remns to be seen whether any of the officialst the center of oe flint water crisis will be held responsible >> flint happened. people have to live with this for year and years, and years,

and years, and years to come. we are interted in justice, no matter how hard that is. we did not choose the easy route, but we chose the thutehe thateople of flint deserve. >> i'm more than skeptical. it makeso sense toe rop the charges, disss thehe investigation, to start fr scratch with the clock ticking. i ess time will tell, but i suspect that justice delayed is going to be juice forgotten. ♪ >> believe me, it's been a long five years. it's been five years too long. this is something that hasot really hapned before. it was man-made. this was not a coincidence. this was thought-out. it was calculated.ns it was decisade. and those people must be held accountable. ♪

>> rrator: he was embraced as a reformer... >> he sold himself, he sold his visi. >> people were mesmerized.>> nrator: but there was another side..as >> there were dissidents who were tortured. >>rinces and bigsi bunesspeople put under constant observation. >> he seemed to get committed to going after his enemies the moro werful he became.be >> narrator: and the a brutal murder... >> did the regime killid jamal khashoggi? >> narrator: frontline investates - >> even the president said, "this is the worst cover-up i've ever seen." >> go to pbs.org/frontline for more on the analysis of pneumonia deaths in flint. >> right when the leginaires' epidemic starts, the pneumonia death rate in genesee goes up while in the other counties it's going down. >> this is sort of where the

inflection point happens heret >> and w know about the connect to the frontnow.e community on facebook andr, twitnd watch frontline anytime on the pbs video app or pbs.org/frontline. >> frontline imade possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major support is provided by the john d. and therine t. macarthur foundation, committede to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org. the ford foundation: working with visionaries on the frontlines of socialhange worldwide. ditional support is provided by the abrams foundation, committed to excellencin journalism. the park foundation, dedicated to heightening publicf awarenesritical issu. the john and helen glessner family trust. supporting trustworthy journalism that infod inspires. and by the

frtlinjournalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. and additional support from ko and patricia yuen, through the yuen foundation. captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org or >>ore on this and other "frontline" programs, visit our website at pbs.org/frontline. ♪ to order "frontline's" "flint's deadly water" on dvd visit shpbs, or call 1-800-play-pbs. this program is also available on amazon prime vio. ♪

♪ you're watchinpbs. ♪ ♪ -you've said y'd favor middle-class tax cuts. -the front line just up here. that's where t river... -she took me out to those wetlands. -i think we're off to a great start. ♪

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