Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed charges earlier this week against a 60-year-old Rochester man with unauthorized oil discharge into the Flint River in 2022.
The charges were filed more than one year after Nessel’s office failed to land any criminal convictions in the Flint water crisis. That case has gained national notoriety for the ineptitude of Nessel and her prosecutorial team.
In November 2023, the Michigan Supreme Court dismissed charges the AG’s office brought against former Gov. Rick Snyder, the last of nine defendants Nessel’s office named responsible for the Flint water crisis in which the city’s water supply was contaminated by lead leaching from pipes.
Go Ad-Free, Get Content, Go Premium Today - $1 Trial
In this year’s case, authorities say Rajinder Singh Minhas mismanaged and neglected “critical maintenance and upgrades” during his tenure as president, treasurer, and director of the Flint-based Lockhart Chemical Company. The company manufactured rust-preventative additives used in the metalworking industry.
The AG’s office slapped Minhas with a slew of felony and misdemeanor charges, including falsely altering a public record and uttering and publishing a false or altered public record, both of which are felonies that carry a punishment of up to 14 years.
Among the misdemeanor charges state officials levied are 11 for violating hazardous waste regulations. Minhas would be required to pay for corrective actions stemming from the violations and face a potential one-year incarceration and up to a $25,000 fine if convicted.
Minhas also faces nine misdemeanor charges of violating the state’s Liquid Industrial Waste law. Among the allegations, prosecutors claim he allegedly discharged “industrial by-products,” violated reporting requirements in the wake of a discharge, and ran afoul of requirements around the marking of chemical containers, keeping satisfactory records and mandates governing the storing and prevention of liquid industrial waste discharge.
Go Ad-Free, Get Content, Go Premium Today - $1 Trial
Each count carries a potential six-month term of incarceration and a $1,000-$2,500 fine for each day of the violation.
According to WWMT-TV, authorities arrested Minhas on Dec. 18 at his home in Rochester. The station reported that he was released from jail after posting a $39,000 bond. He is scheduled to appear in the 67th Judicial District Court on Jan. 2, 2025.
“Those who run a business have a responsibility to ensure their operations do not jeopardize public health or the environment, especially our precious water resources,” Nessel said in a release. “Blatant neglect and disregard of this responsibility cannot be tolerated, and I will continue to make sure those who fail in this duty are met with the full force of the law.”
In 2018, Nessel campaigned for her first time as attorney general on the Flint water crisis. When she assumed office, she fired the Special Prosecutor and Lead Investigator previously appointed to the case, opting to start from scratch, as she had promised in her campaign.
“And Attorney General Nessel kept that promise,” wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie LeDuff in the Detroit News in Sept. 2022. “She dropped all charges against eight public officials, including two emergency managers, in 2019, and started over. That’s when cooperating witnesses stopped cooperating and Nessel’s inexperienced team, led by Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud, started taking short cuts.”
Less than 14 months later, Hammoud’s case on behalf of Nessel’s office collapsed completely.
“If nobody got prosecuted, it was no justice, so that’s the bottom line,” Flint resident Robert James told a WJRT-12 reporter in November 2023.
WJRT-12 also quoted another Flint resident, Jamia Turner. According to the article, Turner moved to Flint from Benton Harbor, “another area of the state battling lead in the water.”
“Too many people’s lives have been affected by it and nobody has to be held accountable,” Turner said. “That’s crazy.”