Flint, MI: So much lead in children’s blood, state of emergency declared

I live on a farm where my water source is a well. I live next to a subdivision where all the residents are on a single shared well. That subdivision is next to a city which draws its water from a local lake. That city borders another city which has a system of wells to draw from the local aquifer. In our local region is another city which draws from a large river. About 2 hours away is the city of Chicago which draws from Lake Michigan.

Each of those water systems operates independently. Each local body is responsible for determining the quality of their source and ameliorates it as needed. You can imagine that as you progress up the chain from my house to Chicago, this same process gets more and more sophisticated, but the basic process is the same.

A city the size of Flint, even with their recent financial trouble, certainly has a water department which knows what the quality of the water it's putting out is. As for culpability, whatever else you may have heard about the US, we do hold people accountable when they knowingly put the public health at risk. In fact, the article even mentions that Flint's previous mayor was ousted over this very issue.

It is true that different water supplies will have different levels of contaminants (lead, arsenic, etc) but can all be within EPA limits. Switching to a water supply with a higher level of contamination will increase exposure. The medical study seems to look at the percentage of children below 5g/dL before and after the switch. It goes from 2% to 4%. So with the old water supply, a certain percentage of children were already being exposed to elevated levels of lead. Switching to a water source with higher lead levels will push more children who are being exposed to lead through other sources to above the 5g/dL mark. However, this would seem to indicate that the primary source of lead for these children above 5g/dL is something other than the water.

A counterpoint might be that the companies with a vested interest in privitising water supplies have lobbied to choke out the public systems of funding.

Perhaps instead of cutting deplorable tax breaks for big business, it would be more prudent to augment the public funds to prevent your citizens from getting lead poisoning?

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jan/30/wa...

But I always think Flint is prime for opportunity. The people need basic essentials, water, food, shelter. But the infrastructure to build factories is there. Power, train lines, the whole deal. It's really a shame. The sad part is, the people are still hell bent on supporting the companies that destroyed the town. Michigan in general is like this, its why they don't allow Tesla vehicle sales.

Growing up my family owned a junkyard and the Flint river ran behind it. It was disgusting. Some of the guys would wade through it on their way two and from work. It was a shortcut, but you had to be a true animal to go that route.