employee, Mike Glasgow, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor as part of a plea agreement reached in the case last month and is cooperating with the investigation. The two DEQ employees, Stephen Busch and Mike Prysby, are awaiting preliminary examinations.

In the civil lawsuit, the attorney general's office said in court papers that the companies had a legal responsibility to act with a level of care and competence befitting their industry's professional standard.

"The defendant corporations knew or should have known that high chloride levels in the Flint River would make the water corrosive without significant treatment, and that the corrosion would result in dangerous levels of lead for residents served by the City's many lead pipes," the attorney general's office wrote in its 24-page court filing.

The companies, according tothe lawsuit, ignored information that a professional engineer would see as a cause for concern. The addition of ferric chloride only compounded the city's problem and danger to its residents, according to the lawsuit. Furthermore, the attorney general's office accused Veolia of fraud in its interim 2015 report indicating that the city's water was safe, according to court papers.

In 2011, then Flint Mayor Dayne Walling commissioned LAN to conduct a feasibility study of whether the city could use the Flint River as a water source and treat the water locally through a city water treatment plant. The firm was again employed in 2013 at the cost of $171,000 for helping the city start up its use of the Flint River water, the lawsuit says.

But according to the attorney