The first of this week’s congressional hearings examining the water crisis in Flint, Michigan heard testimony on Tuesday from top local officials who continued to deny any responsibility for the crisis — and in doing so, shed further light on how they created and perpetuated one of the worst public health crises in recent memory.

The hearing exposed a particularly damning memo from a regional EPA official, Debbie Baltazar, who wrote in September 2015, “I’m not so sure Flint is the community we want to go out on a limb for.”

Baltazar argued in that memo that the EPA should not issue federal funds to help the community suffering from what was already clearly a catastrophic level of lead poisoning from the city’s water. The EPA should withhold those funds specifically earmarked to help with water contamination because, Baltazar stated, she felt the city had mismanaged its money in the past.

“Offering this kind of assistance to Flint may not send a good message to all the cities that properly manage their water and sewer fees,” Baltazar concluded.

“Records show that people at the EPA knew in early 2015 that Flint’s water had dangerously high lead levels,” the Hill reported. “But it did not take formal action, beyond pushing Michigan officials to do something, until January 2016.”

The committee quizzed Susan Hedman, the former regional EPA head, about remarks from three former interns in her office, who testified earlier that they had been intimidated and told not to talk publicly about the Flint water crisis. She denied that there was any evidence to support the allegations.

Marc Edwards, the environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech who first broke news of the public health disaster, is the newly appointed head of the Flint Water Interagency Coordination Committee and offered scathing condemnation at the hearing about the EPA’s reaction to the Flint crisis, characterizing the agency as “unremorseful for their role in causing this man-made disaster… and completely unrepentant and unable to learn from their mistakes.”

“Ms. Hedman said the EPA had nothing to do with creating Flint,” Edwards argued. “The EPA had everything to do with creating Flint.”

Hedman told the committee that she had resigned from her position because of “false allegations” about her role in the crisis, choking up as she claimed she never stopped thinking about the people of Flint, ABC reported.

Former emergency manager Darnell Earley also testified on Tuesday, offering comments that seemed to reveal a disastrous lack of concern when evidence was mounting about the public health fiasco.