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

washingtonpost.com

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

#61

Post by untothebreach »

rickdale wrote: post #58
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flint is often a forgot about place in the world. Not since Michael Moore immortalized it. I wouldn't be surprised if many people upvoting this story were making an association with Roger & Me .

Michael Moore is great example of Michigans backwardness. Michael Moores high school won't put him in their hall of fame. As if they have had anyone else make any sort of impact as large as his. Recently the Bruins goalie skipped a visit to the white house to meet Obama. He went to the same high school as Moore. The goalie was praised and is in the hall of fame there. It's backwards. There is a lot of unreasonable ha…

Davison actually closed the city "hall of fame" when someone put his name in as a candidate for it.

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

#62

Post by paulmd »

usefulcat wrote: post #57

Was looking at a map of Flint and noticed that the City of Flint Water Plant is right next to three metal scrap yards. https://www.google.com/maps/place/43%C2%B003'25.2%22N+83%C2%...

It's more that Flint is an industrial town and Dow has been polluting the river for 120 years.

It's also not direct pollution per se, it's that the river is so polluted that it's crazy acidic and it's corroding lead out of the pipes. A compounding factor is that it's got all kinds of funky bacteria stuff going on, which can also accelerate the corrosion process.

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

#63

Post by DanBC »

russdill wrote: post #40
russdill wrote: post #33

The one thing I don't see is the lead levels of the water supply. Doesn't the EPA have limits on that and isn't it an easy thing to test? 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 c…

Hmm...reading further the problem doesn't seem to be one handled well by EPA standards. The new water supply is more corrosive than the old water supply, so in poorer neighborhoods with lead piping, more lead (sometimes significantly) is being leeched from the pipes than before.

But why aren't the EPA / Water companies testing what comes out of the pipes?

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

#64

Post by paulmd »

rayiner wrote: post #24

What led to this particular situation was apparently rate hikes in the Detroit water system, which caused Flint to switch to using the Flint river as their water source last year. Beyond that, water systems all over the country are in bad shape. Because water rates are subject to public control, they are far too low and there is a huge under-investment in water systems: http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/dr…

The funny thing is that because the Flint River water is so acidic, it's corroding the hell out of the water pipes (which is where the lead is coming from). They have done 11.5 years worth of damage in 16 months.

Assuming the article's figures of a 50 year lifespan and $1.5 billion replacement cost [1], that works out to an additional $306 million of damage from this whole fiasco.

The whole "emergency manager" thing is ridiculous and this only underscores the problem. It's absurd from both a health and a financial standpoint.

http://flintwaterstudy.org/2015/09/research-update-corrosivi...

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

#65

Post by Spooky23 »

rayiner wrote: post #24

What led to this particular situation was apparently rate hikes in the Detroit water system, which caused Flint to switch to using the Flint river as their water source last year. Beyond that, water systems all over the country are in bad shape. Because water rates are subject to public control, they are far too low and there is a huge under-investment in water systems: http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/dr…

That's really a ridiculous argument.

The lifespan of drinking water system infrastructure is anywhere from 50-100 years -- far to long to pay as you go or accumulate money to pay for repairs later. The way you fix infrastructure is with bonds, which the public owned entity has a major advantage in doing, as it has a tax base to secure the bond as well as tax exempt status.

The other infrastructure issue is that older water & sewer systems were designed for the primarily urban needs of 100 years ago. Because of the growth in suburban communities, you have a patchwork of infrastructure with varying levels of coordination between them.

Funding issues become more difficult as a service base shrinks. This particular situation is clearly a bad engineering decision exacerbated by the city being broke. If an engineer signed off on it, he should lose his PE. If some political hack signed off on it, they need to be fired or charged with negligence.

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

#66

Post by artlogic »

If you are interested in a detailed breakdown of everything that's been happening over the past year or so, I would suggest reading Michigan Radio's excellent coverage: http://michiganradio.org/term/flint-water

Full disclosure: my wife works as a reporter Michigan Radio, but generally doesn't cover Flint.

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

#67

Post by cmiles74 »

rayiner wrote: post #44
foolrush wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subtly attempts to frame the issue as public controlled 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/glo…

What big businesses are you talking about? Water in almost every U.S. city is provided by a municipal utility. E.g. in Flint, it's the Utilities Department: https://www.cityofflint.com/public-works/water-service-cente... . Water rates are set by the city, and are just too low to cover modernization of the systems. Both the ASCE and the EPA have reported that investment in water systems is a fraction of what is requir…

I think they are referring to the big businesses that are either consuming the water supply or polluting the water supply.

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

#68

Post by cmiles74 »

nooron wrote: post #13
elorant wrote: post #5

The article failed to explain how the river got so toxic in the first place.

Problem is the pipes, not the river per se. When they switched water, they didn't add an anti corrosive agent: http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/11/13/af...

And the water, it sounds like it's substantially more corrosive than their previous water supply.

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

#69

Post by vblord »

ionforce wrote: post #14

What institutional failure led to this? It seems like this has been a long time coming. Why has the leadership of the area allowed this to happen?

This isn't the first time they've had water problems. My grandmother's been boiling water there for years because of previous problems.

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

#70

Post by monkbroc »

DanBC wrote: post #63
russdill wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm...reading further the problem doesn't seem to be one handled well by EPA standards. The new water supply is more corrosive than the old water supply, so in poorer neighborhoods with lead piping, more lead (sometimes significantly) is being leeched from the pipes than before.

But why aren't the EPA / Water companies testing what comes out of the pipes?

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality instructed Flint residents to flush their tap for 2 minutes before sampling the water which under-represented the amount of lead in the water. The EPA doesn't explicitly forbid flushing but doesn't recommend it.

http://flintwaterstudy.org/

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