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EPA gives Flint $100M to help repair pipes

detroitnews.com

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

#141

Post by 8note »

cookiecaper wrote: post #127
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…

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 o…

isn't the problem in Flint that a set of politicians decided to switch the water source to a heavily polluted one in exchange for some financial compensation

now that the lead particulate has gotten into all the existing pipes, it's an insurmountable problem, but still entirely a result of American corruption, rather than an engineering issue.

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

#142

Post by x0x0 »

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…

You've misdiagnosed the cost problem. We have suburbs who have never, and continue not to be, amortizing -- they don't pay their costs in taxes. That can be papered over by fees from growth when they are growing, but when they stop expanding, wait 50 years for infrastructure to wear out, and you have a disaster.

Lots of suburbs and rural America are built far too sparsely to be affordable (to the denizens; Woodside will continue to be just fine).

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

#143

Post by 8note »

scythe wrote: post #47
malandrew wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is a financial decision at the end of the day. You can't just wish away the laws of economics. Let's say that regulations dictated that they had to spend this money and they didn't have it. Add enough of such regulations and a shrinking tax base and eventually you have an insolvent city. What do you propose we do then? Near as I can tell, it's reasonable to have such regulations so people don't get hurt by…

Saving $140/day at the risk of $100M damage to infrastructure is not good financial sense. It's the financial sense exercised by the kind of person who expects someone else to pay for the mess, i.e. a government official. A private corporation which was exposed to the liability would have likely chosen to raise the price of water to pay for the corrosion inhibitor, but someone whose job is to manipulate the balance s…

a corporation will never have such liability in the US though... they can bribe a politician(s) into putting the risk on the government

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

#144

Post by 8note »

ocschwar wrote: post #83
bpodgursky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city manager was only appointed after Flint became effectively a failed city, and the state took over management. In the US, cities manage their own municipal services including water supplies. The state only intervenes when the city runs out of money to provide basic services to their inhabitants -- and this happens very rarely. If Flint had had a functioning government, the state appointees would have had nothi…

> In the US, cities manage their own municipal services including water supplies. The state only intervenes when the city runs out of money to provide basic services to their inhabitants -- and this happens very rarely. In most of the country, if the city runs out of money, the city runs up a debt. And if the city can't pay the debt, the city goes bankrupt. No state intervention to protect creditors. They took on the…

Who funded snyder's campaign? probably municipal bond holders

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

#145

Post by 8note »

bmelton wrote: post #82
blurbleblurble wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appreciate this moderate take. It's the cold hard truth of American capitalism, especially in places like Michigan, but it doesn't mean we can't wish for humane policies!

What does capitalism have to do with it? It's almost universally agreed that government choices were the ones at fault, and whether capitalist, socialist, whatever, cost vs. quality is still a factor.

be ause it's near guaranteed that someone made a nice profit on making Flint's water leaded

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

#146

Post by sumedh »

svsjc wrote: post #128
gloverkcn wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How about first admitting that you were wrong in crediting Trump for this?

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

#147

Post by d--b »

dmode wrote: post #21

Good thing this was approved by the previous administration. The next Flint will most likely receive a tank to protect itself from rioters, given the EPA cuts and further bloated defense budget

Flint is the symbol of mid-West's de-industrialization. Since this administration has vowed to give these people's jobs back, you can be sure that they're going to make sure Flint is better off in 4 years than it is now. So giving them federal money to fix their water pipes is a great way to be the good guys. They're going to be able to hire a bunch of people to fix it, and solve a health problem at the same time.

I'd be more worried about my water quality if I lived in a region with a lot of shale oil drilling...

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

#148

Post by d--b »

joshmn wrote: post #16

Anyone feel like this is a political move to say "hey, we're good people, keep us around and make sure your congress(wo)man knows hears about it" Not a bad thing by any means, but heaven forbid it took them this long.

I definitely agree with that. Even though this was initiated by the Obama administration, they probably could have scrapped it as part of the drastic budget cuts they are making.

My guess is that they will remove everything that is to protect the environment (deregulation of anything oil-related), and spend what's left on creating federally-funded jobs in de-industrialized regions like this.

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

#149

Post by timthelion »

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.

But that's only a problem with the AMERICAN government. Lots of other governments around the world are doing amazing things, despite corruption being a constant stress on the system.

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

#150

Post by paulmd »

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…

It can't be overstated. All metro areas need their actual residencies checked, because the lead service lines are everywhere.

There's been a lot more checking (under the Obama administration - goodbye EPA) and there are many million+ resident municipalities with very bad lead levels because of lead service lines.

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