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EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

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Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

#121

Post by flogic »

Arizhel wrote: post #100
badsock wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...in America. There's lots of developed countries where municipal governments are generally well run as a rule, and while there's always grumbling things never get this out of hand. Lead is posion, for pete's sake. Where else in the developed world would poisoned drinking water be allowed for so long? In Canada we had what we consider a big disaster 17 years ago: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/inside-walkerton-canada…

Exactly. The question now is: why is American government so broken, and the corollary is: what can we do to fix it? Is American culture simply broken, so that only utterly sociopathic people go into government? Is America just completely filled with people who have been trained from birth to be sociopathic, as evidenced by the way they vote?

"Slavery". That sort of system requires a fair amount of legal and propaganda support. Our election system gives the old slave states a boost. And our more bigoted politicians are constantly rehashing and reusing the propaganda to justify their actions. So while slavery itself is gone, the weighted legal system and propaganda are still in place doing what they do. It's a safe bet that much of the Flint water crisis is due to the water system being for "those people".

Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

#122

Post by [deleted] »

ozi wrote: post #73
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They skimped (ie entirely did not use) on corrosion inhibitors when the water supply was switched. I believe those are the "savings" OP was referring to. "By not adding a corrosion inhibitor, Flint was going to save about $140 per day. " http://theconversation.com/the-science-behind-the-flint-wate... "Replacement of Flint’s lead service lines, which is the only permanent solution to address its lead vulnerability, is…

At what point does it become cheaper to relocate everyone in Flint to a new city?

[deleted]

Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

#123

Post by rosser »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #118
wavefunction wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that I know is we were able to afford the infrastructure originally under a higher tax regime. That suggests to me that we can afford to solve this problem, even if it means that the wealthy are contributing back to the country that provided the business and social environment to do so.

In this country we've lost the ability to build things at a reasonable cost (or at all). A single mile of track in NYC costs about half as much as the entire Delhi metro system, or a typical Spanish rail line (not just a small track extension), etc. The problem is costs, not revenue. Charging more money will merely divert funds from productive and valuable investments (e.g. self driving cars) into less valuables ones…

There was an article shared on HN a couple years ago arguing these that sorts of cost spikes and overruns are pretty much endemic to countries with common-law legal systems, and almost non-existent outside them.

I'm having a hard time digging it up, though. Sorry.

Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

#124

Post by edblarney »

rayiner wrote: post #66

This is a disaster happening all over the country. The EPA estimates we will need $385 billion by 2030 to modernize water infrastructure. Putting municipalities in charge of utilities is basically a failed model. Municipalities are too small a unit to be able to effectively take on the long term obligations that come along with infrastructure like this, or cross subsidize from richer residents to poorer ones. Even ma…

Not so sure about that. It's done at the municipal level in most places in the world and they seem to be doing just fine.

Well run municipalities can manage water pipes.

Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

#125

Post by rl3 »

CountSessine wrote: post #114
ubernostrum wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do short sellers punish the executives of the company? Even if they lose their jobs, they'll get millions of dollars in "performance" bonuses and millions more in severance in return for running the company into the ground.

I wonder how often this really happens though? Often boards will appoint CEOs to dismantle or sell off hopeless companies (disappearing market, obstreperous union, product is turning into a commodity) in a last ditch effort to recover some shareholder value. We can't call those CEOs failures if they manage to get shareholders something as opposed to the nearly nothing they would get if the company went bust. I think…

Another way to look at it is that she had an entire large tech company at her disposal and managed to do pretty much nothing with it, then pawned it off and jumped out with a golden parachute.

Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

#126

Post by Arizhel »

specialist wrote: post #110
Arizhel wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The question now is: why is American government so broken, and the corollary is: what can we do to fix it? Is American culture simply broken, so that only utterly sociopathic people go into government? Is America just completely filled with people who have been trained from birth to be sociopathic, as evidenced by the way they vote?

Empowering (electing) people who cannot govern, and are in fact utterly opposed to anyone governing, is having the expected outcome. Because Freedom Markets[tm], booyah!

Yes, but that doesn't explain why our voters consistently elect such people, while voters in other industrialized nations don't (nearly as much).

Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

#127

Post by cookiecaper »

badsock wrote: post #99
BurningFrog wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Controversial opinion: Governments are inherently bad at managing anything that stretches beyond the next election.

...in America. There's lots of developed countries where municipal governments are generally well run as a rule, and while there's always grumbling things never get this out of hand. Lead is posion, for pete's sake. Where else in the developed world would poisoned drinking water be allowed for so long? In Canada we had what we consider a big disaster 17 years ago: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/inside-walkerton-canada…

There are many well functioning local governments in the United States.

The US is a big country both in terms of habitable land and population, with almost 325 million people (Canada technically has more land, but since most of it is uninhabitable, they don't have to worry about plumbing it). You've read about ONE city where the mismanagement was so severe that the water became poisonous. I'm sure it's not the only one, but I'm also sure this happens in countries that aren't America sometimes too.

I'm not a civil engineer but from what I hear, Flint's water problem is nearly impossible to resolve and would practically require a complete extraction and replacement of the city's infrastructure, which isn't really possible without destroying the city anyway, since there are buildings and roads and stuff on top of it. Of course, it's politically incorrect to admit that, and politicians and bureaucrats will probably keep pretending like they are going to do something to resolve it to try to keep public anger at bay, and just hope the city empties out before anyone notices that it's been 30 years.

Maybe that evaluation of the engineering issue is incorrect, it's just what I've read; as above, I'm not a civil engineer so I don't actually know. But this is not just a simple matter of cleaning up a minor bacterial contamination. Minor contaminations of that type occur and get cleaned up all the time without anyone taking special notice (except the citizens affected by the boil order).

I understand it's fun to throw rocks at the big guy, but your comment is not representative of life in the US. If we had such a hard time providing basic services like water and our neighbor to the immediate north didn't, things would look a lot different.

Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

#128

Post by svsjc »

gloverkcn wrote: post #95
svsjc wrote: post #94

Looks like Trump administration is really doing something for the poor of flint.

Except it was Obama pressuring congress. The legislation was passed in December http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/17/politics/epa-100-million-flint...

If he had done this in last two years when the problem came out, the election result may have been different.

Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

#129

Post by billions »

Spooky23 wrote: post #76
rayiner wrote: post #66

This is a disaster happening all over the country. The EPA estimates we will need $385 billion by 2030 to modernize water infrastructure. Putting municipalities in charge of utilities is basically a failed model. Municipalities are too small a unit to be able to effectively take on the long term obligations that come along with infrastructure like this, or cross subsidize from richer residents to poorer ones. Even ma…

They overstate this stuff, all of the time. My wife was a finance director at a municipal water utility in an old city. Water supply infrastructure wasn't a ticking timebomb -- many pipes last literally centuries, and utilities can proactively use sensors and robots to find weak pipes to repair without digging up half the city. They had a capital program that worked, lines were replaced based on risk and there was a…

One could argue the Coca Cola company pushed bottled water on US residents in the 1990's. Alternatively, one could argue government standards did not keep up with filtration technology. Unfortunately, US government innovation since the 1960's has failed the test of time. Statistically speaking, the majority of quality of life improvements in the last half century, was seeded by American startups and small business.

Re: EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

#130

Post by grinich »

billions wrote: post #129
Spooky23 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They overstate this stuff, all of the time. My wife was a finance director at a municipal water utility in an old city. Water supply infrastructure wasn't a ticking timebomb -- many pipes last literally centuries, and utilities can proactively use sensors and robots to find weak pipes to repair without digging up half the city. They had a capital program that worked, lines were replaced based on risk and there was a…

One could argue the Coca Cola company pushed bottled water on US residents in the 1990's. Alternatively, one could argue government standards did not keep up with filtration technology. Unfortunately, US government innovation since the 1960's has failed the test of time. Statistically speaking, the majority of quality of life improvements in the last half century, was seeded by American startups and small business.

Do you have sources/data for any of those claims?
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