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[GodofWine]

They should just rename the entire state "Detroit" so it'll sink in for the rest of the country that the whole place is a disaster zone.

Switching to a poisoned water supply to cut costs seems like it's beyond the pale even for a cartoonishly evil state government.

The water wasn't poisoned, it is an gross oversight of water chemistry, the PH of the new water was different, and not treated properly to prevent the corrosion of pipes. I used to buy water treatment chemicals for ALOT of cities' water systems.

Now that they FD up the anti corrosion layer, it will take a LONG time to build it back up, if that's even possible.

Google corrosion inhibitor, or zinc orthophosphates for more info.

It was a cascading torrent of errors and lack of knowledge that caused this, in my opinion

 

[Ziltoidia 9]

And the worst thing is, by sending that picture out, they are basically confirming there are unsafe amounts of lead in the water.

 

[Breakbeat]

So.

The Michigan municipal govt FB page posted this today:

This is absolutely infuriating. It's practically a parody, almost Orwellian. Drag every official involved out of their ivory tower and force them to drink this "safe" water. Who knows, they might try to barricade themselves in with the help of a militarized police force.

 

[ElectricThunder]

You'd think Obama would've take Moore up on his invitation to visit the town and stir things up to the utmost in terms of driving the point home nationally that this can't stand(Granted, that point has already been seriously breached with Detroit and all but still..), even if just to diffuse just a portion of what must be some seriously mounting anger and righteous indignation.

Either the resources pour in...or these folks/their kin stand to either riot or engage in some kind of mass Exodus event. Future climate change catastrophes will look at least this bad in terms of logistics and fallout---so they'd damn well better get on the ball now and get serious else the future looks immensely bleak. This is pretty much a lost generation that will have tremendous suffering and disadvantage heaped upon them just for existing.

I just can't fathom the lack of a sense of urgency to the lot of this, let alone that it was "allowed" to go on for so long and degenerate to this point.

 

[Frozenprince]

Anyone who has ever given a kid a bath will testify that you can't guarantee they won't drink the wafer.

Straight facts. If anything, it being brown and discolored is more likely to encourage them to experiment with the water.

Yeah but it's taken a year and a half to get there. This has been going on for a year and a half.

An entire generation, almost SIX. THOUSAND. CHILDREN.

Will have lifelong health complications caused by this. Health complications that they will not be able to afford fixing and, lol good luck getting the govt to settle amicably, if they even have the money, to front these kids medical bills for the rest of their lives.

 

[cameron]

EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman resigns.

AP: "EPA official resigns amid Flint water crisis

A regional director with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is resigning in connection with the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

EPA chief Gina McCarthy says Thursday that Susan Hedman is stepping down effective Feb. 1. Hedman is administrator of EPA's Region 5, which is based in Chicago and includes Michigan.

McCarthy says she accepted Hedman's resignation to ensure the regional office remains solely focused on the restoration of Flint's drinking water.

McCarthy also says she has issued an emergency order to "ensure the state and city immediately take actions necessary to protect public health."

From yesterday, Reuters: "EPA says its response to Flint water crisis too slow"

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday it was reviewing its handling of a crisis over lead-contaminated drinking water in the Michigan city of Flint and acknowledged it did not respond fast enough.

"Our first priority is to make sure the water in Flint is safe, but we also must look at what the agency could have done differently," the agency said in a statement. An EPA spokeswoman confirmed the agency believed it did not act fast enough to address the problem.

 

[Aylinato]

The water wasn't poisoned, it is an gross oversight of water chemistry, the PH of the new water was different, and not treated properly to prevent the corrosion of pipes. I used to buy water treatment chemicals for ALOT of cities' water systems.

Now that they FD up the anti corrosion layer, it will take a LONG time to build it back up, if that's even possible.

Google corrosion inhibitor, or zinc orthophosphates for more info.

It was a cascading torrent of errors and lack of knowledge that caused this, in my opinion

You do understand they were pumping water from the flint river....and the lead came from the RIVER not the god damn pipes (as the main fucking source)

 

[jmood88]

You do understand they were pumping water from the flint river....and the lead came from the RIVER not the god damn pipes (as the main fucking source)

And even if it somehow had initially been just a case of a few errors being made, that wouldn't explain the governor ignoring the complaints and lying about the water being safe to use.

 

[Allard]

You do understand they were pumping water from the flint river....and the lead came from the RIVER not the god damn pipes (as the main fucking source)

Where did you hear that? Almost every report I had heard was about the pipes corrosion exposed lead soldering in the pipes. The reason this is STILL a crisis is because the pipes are what lead to well.. the lead, staying in the water supply even after they moved back to detroit water. The flint water was the catalyst because it wasn't treated properly leading to the lead exposure from the corrosion.

 

[Aylinato]

Where did you hear that? Almost every report I had heard was about the pipes corrosion exposed lead soldering in the pipes. The reason this is STILL a crisis is because the pipes are what lead to well.. the lead, staying in the water supply even after they moved back to detroit water. The flint water was the catalyst because it wasn't treated properly leading to the lead exposure from the corrosion.

The lead in the pipes is now exposed yes, but the water has had lead at an unsafe level since the began using the flint rivers water


And yes it was at an unhealthy level before, but Snyder was saying that the data the scientists were using were "political"
Now the leads to an ungodly amount

 

[rokkerkory]

EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman resigns.

AP: "EPA official resigns amid Flint water crisis


From yesterday, Reuters: "EPA says its response to Flint water crisis too slow"

Good fuckin grief, what a shitty ass government agency and the local / state government. Need a freaking whoopin everyone involved.

Lead will destroy the thousands of lives in Flint for decades especially the poor little kids.

 

[Quixzlizx]

The water wasn't poisoned, it is an gross oversight of water chemistry, the PH of the new water was different, and not treated properly to prevent the corrosion of pipes. I used to buy water treatment chemicals for ALOT of cities' water systems.

Now that they FD up the anti corrosion layer, it will take a LONG time to build it back up, if that's even possible.

Google corrosion inhibitor, or zinc orthophosphates for more info.

It was a cascading torrent of errors and lack of knowledge that caused this, in my opinion

Corroded pipes can cause water to come out looking like brown sludge no matter how long you run it?

 

[mmazurkiewicz]

The lead in the pipes is now exposed yes, but the water has had lead at an unsafe level since the began using the flint rivers water


And yes it was at an unhealthy level before, but Snyder was saying that the data the scientists were using were "political"
Now the leads to an ungodly amount

Nah its the pipes not the river.

Most water plants use orthophosphate for lead and copper control, so if their reporting of ortho levels was showing good numbers, the state agencies couldn't have know. Operators must have been fudging numbers since they moved from Detroit water.

Corroded pipes can cause water to come out looking like brown sludge no matter how long you run it?

possibly but the color is likely a byproduct of residual chemicals reacting with the surface of the water.

 

[Eos]

Meek Mill donates 60k bottles of water to flint residents

 

[KingV]

Straight facts. If anything, it being brown and discolored is more likely to encourage them to experiment with the water.

I was giving my kid a bath tonight

"Daddy can I drink the water?"
"No, I just shampooed your hair it has soap in it"
*drinks the water*
"I'm just going to drink a little bit"

This shit is fucking shameful. People should be going to jail for this.

 

[Seth Enosh]

You do understand they were pumping water from the flint river....and the lead came from the RIVER not the god damn pipes (as the main fucking source)

This statement is inaccurate, do some research before spreading misinformation? The city and state were testing the water from the river regularly and it was coming out clean, that's why the Flint River was an approved backup source for water for the city for years before this crisis ever happened.

Corrosion in the lead pipes was the issue, apparently for small systems under 50,000 people the usual practice under the law was to do measurements of lead content in the tap water for 6 or 12 months before putting the chemicals in, and the Michigan DEQ people (career civil servants, not politicians) recommended doing this for Flint's larger system because they had never worked on a changeover for such a large system before and incorrectly thought that was still appropriate.

Looks like some officials are getting fired and investigated here which is a good thing, this is a tragedy that didn't have to happen. Bureaucratic inertia can kill.

 

[Aylinato]

This statement is inaccurate, do some research before spreading misinformation? The city and state were testing the water from the river regularly and it was coming out clean, that's why the Flint River was an approved backup source for water for the city for years before this crisis ever happened.

Corrosion in the lead pipes was the issue, apparently for small systems under 50,000 people the usual practice under the law was to do measurements of lead content in the tap water for 6 or 12 months before putting the chemicals in, and the Michigan DEQ people (career civil servants, not politicians) recommended doing this for Flint's larger system because they had never worked on a changeover for such a large system before and incorrectly thought that was still appropriate.

Looks like some officials are getting fired and investigated here which is a good thing, this is a tragedy that didn't have to happen. Bureaucratic inertia can kill.

September 2015, independent tests show the public auhtorities were lying about their benchmarks in their tests.

http://www.aclumich.org/democracywa...lems-far-worse-than-what-the-city-is-claiming



Officials have been shown they doctored numbers to keep to federal mandated levels.
http://michiganradio.org/post/exper...hanged-flint-lead-report-avoid-federal-action



Looks like you didn't do your research good sir. I've been following this thing since the emergency manager went to flint.

 

[GK86]

Link.

However, the city’s government continues to charge people for the poison water and then threatening to foreclose their home or take their children if they refuse to pay. Michigan law states that parents are neglectful if they do not have running water in their home, and if they chose not to pay for water they can’t drink anyway, then they could be guilty of child endangerment. Activists in Flint say that some residents have already received similar threats from the government if they refuse to pay their bills.

 

[Machine]

Looks like you didn't do your research good sir. I've been following this thing since the emergency manager went to flint.

Both those reports have similar statements in them:

"According to Edwards, Flint’s water is at least four times more corrosive than Detroit’s, causing infrastructure to break down and lead to be released into the city’s drinking water."

"The city would have had to alert people that there was a lead problem, and they would have had to implement a corrosion control plan to keep the water from corroding the insides of pipes – a plan that was surprisingly absent in Flint."

In other words, the lead is not coming from the water of the Flint River but is in fact leaching out of the pipes/infrastructure due to the corrosiveness of the water. I was born and raised in Flint. Many of my high school friends still live in the area. I know people that have eaten fish out of the river with no ill effects. The problem is the ancient infrastructure and incredible levels of incompetence on all levels, not the water in the river.

 

[AlphaDump]

Link.

This keeps getting worse and worse. Unreal. This needs way more attention in the media. People need to go to jail. Set some damn examples already.

 

[Odoul]

Potentially explosive revelations.

http://motorcitymuckraker.com/2016/01/23/gov-snyder-lied-flint-water-switch-was-not-about-money-records-show/

Looks like switching Flint off DWSD was never about saving money.

It's about what Michigan has been about since Engler, kicking Detroit in the nuts.

I've thought Snyder is going to come out of this unscathed, no charges, no resignation. He's weasel, he survives, but if this is true, and the feds do their job...Snyder WILL be seeing the inside of a cell.

 

[WedgeX]

Both those reports have similar statements in them:

"According to Edwards, Flint’s water is at least four times more corrosive than Detroit’s, causing infrastructure to break down and lead to be released into the city’s drinking water."

"The city would have had to alert people that there was a lead problem, and they would have had to implement a corrosion control plan to keep the water from corroding the insides of pipes – a plan that was surprisingly absent in Flint."

In other words, the lead is not coming from the water of the Flint River but is in fact leaching out of the pipes/infrastructure due to the corrosiveness of the water. I was born and raised in Flint. Many of my high school friends still live in the area. I know people that have eaten fish out of the river with no ill effects. The problem is the ancient infrastructure and incredible levels of incompetence on all levels, not the water in the river.

Come on. All of lower Michigan has water problems due to the heavy industry that used to be so common. The Flint River is hardly alone in having tight restrictions about the type and amount of fish that can be consumed in a year, much less a month. The Flint River has historically suffered from pollution problems. Flint River Green has been testing for a while and out of eleven test sites none fall into a "excellent" or "good" category while the seven fall into an "fair" category and four fall into the "marginal" category. The United States as a whole typically falls into the "excellent" range.

The State found out back in August that it might be impossible to treat Flint River water in order to bring it to federal standards in order not to corrode lead pipes. And yet the Emergency Manager decided to move the city onto Flint water instead of sticking with Detroit Water until the KWA system was in place. And it took researchers very little time to figure out that Flint River water has a profoundly different effect on lead pipes than Detroit water.

Potentially explosive revelations.

http://motorcitymuckraker.com/2016/01/23/gov-snyder-lied-flint-water-switch-was-not-about-money-records-show/

Looks like switching Flint off DWSD was never about saving money.

It's about what Michigan has been about since Engler, kicking Detroit in the nuts.

I've thought Snyder is going to come out of this unscathed, no charges, no resignation. He's weasel, he survives, but if this is true, and the feds do their job...Snyder WILL be seeing the inside of a cell.

I saw this earlier. The only thing I found problematic is that there was no evidence that the email, seemingly an internal DWSD proposal for the state and Flint, was ever sent beyond DWSD. Of course, Snyder has refused to release emails from 2013 so its entirely possible that the proposal made its way there.

 

[PHOENIXZERO]

Wow, this topic got bigger...

That such a large group of kids has lead poisoning is.....it's fucking INSANE. What a failure of all levels of government.

Nah, this almost entirely falls on the State level because state employees under Snyder's command are the ones who made the decisions that created this disaster.

I suspect Flint being 53% black has something to do with it. If this were a white majority city then it'd be in the news 24/7. Or maybe not, because it probably wouldn't have escalated to this point for a white community to begin with.

What do you base your "suspicions" on? Sounds an awful like race baiting to me.

This would have absolutely NOT happened if it were in a wealthier area of the state, at the very least people would've been flat out warned immediately. Granted those areas wouldn't be under the control of a emergency manager either.

I was going to use Ann Arbor as an example...

http://www.a2politico.com/2013/09/p...ng-water-and-the-massive-14-dioxane-clean-up/
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/08/citys_response_to_toledo_water.html



It's doing my head in how so many continue to want to blame the mayor and city council when they've had effectively zero decision making power when it comes to anything financially related for a good while now. The Republican/Snyder defense force is coming in strong and I have to stop looking at stories about it on Facebook.

 

[Africanus]

I fear the effects of this on the Michigan crime rate in about 10-15 years and, more personally, on the thousands of families.

Such incompetence! It's unfitting of this nation.

 

[WedgeX]

I fear the effects of this on the Michigan crime rate in about 10-15 years and, more personally, on the thousands of families.

Such incompetence! It's unfitting of this nation.

A lot of things that have happened to Michigan have been really complex and have been a century in the making.

This....got dang. This was so damn preventable. It's heartbreaking for those kids.

Edit:

And if how poor black kids with lead poisoning in Baltimore have been treated is any indication....these kids will be exploited for the rest of their lives.

 

[Malyse]

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/20...ll-take-up-arms-to-defend-flint-if-necessary/

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

Come on. All of lower Michigan has water problems due to the heavy industry that used to be so common. The Flint River is hardly alone in having tight restrictions about the type and amount of fish that can be consumed in a year, much less a month. The Flint River has historically suffered from pollution problems. Flint River Green has been testing for a while and out of eleven test sites none fall into a "excellent" or "good" category while the seven fall into an "fair" category and four fall into the "marginal" category. The United States as a whole typically falls into the "excellent" range.

The State found out back in August that it might be impossible to treat Flint River water in order to bring it to federal standards in order not to corrode lead pipes. And yet the Emergency Manager decided to move the city onto Flint water instead of sticking with Detroit Water until the KWA system was in place. And it took researchers very little time to figure out that Flint River water has a profoundly different effect on lead pipes than Detroit water.

Machine's statement was about the lead coming from pipes. Where as Aylinato's was about the water being already bad.

I'm sure the water wasn't great, but the issues seems to be the corrosion, not water having lead already.

 

[studyguy]

The fact that they're being billed for the water is atrocious.
I wonder how far they'd go to punish citizens for not paying for the poisonous water, I mean sure they make threats, but to take action when they already have national spotlight on them sounds like PR suicide.

 

[WedgeX]

Machine's statement was about the lead coming from pipes. Where as Aylinato's was about the water being already bad.

I'm sure the water wasn't great, but the issues seems to be the corrosion, not water having lead already.

If you read through the State's report that I linked to you'd find lead as a regular pollutant in the Flint River at the time of the report. Not to mention that any levels of chemicals that might have been added to Flint River water to try and make it drinkable would inevitably fail because the problem lies with the corrosiveness of the river itself.

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

If you read through the State's report that I linked to you'd find lead as a regular pollutant in the Flint River at the time of the report. Not to mention that any levels of chemicals that might have been added to Flint River water to try and make it drinkable would inevitably fail because the problem lies with the corrosiveness of the river itself.

I don't see anywhere in your state's links that says the flint river has high lead in it. Just that it is corrosive and the water coming out of the pipes has high lead amounts.

Maybe I'm clicking the wrong links.

 

[WedgeX]

I don't see anywhere in your state's links that says the flint river has high lead in it. Just that it is corrosive and the water coming out of the pipes has high lead amounts.

Maybe I'm clicking the wrong links.

The Michigan DNR's report, albeit from 2001, is the link I'm referencing.

 

[Eos]

Mark Wahlberg, Eminem, Diddy, and Wiz Khalfia are donating 1m bottles of water
It reads like an advertisement but it's great they're sending that much water so I can't complain

 

[aygomyownroad]

Currently going through the timeline and wow. I can't believe in this day and age in a developed country would we see such incompetence and mismanagement surrounding water.

The fact that General Motors stopped using the water that wasn't going to be drunk shows how dangerous it was getting.

This is grim reading.

Lessons better be learned from this.=

 

[Cybit]

Great article from 538 about this

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-went-wrong-in-flint-water-crisis-michigan/

 

[Dreams-Visions]

the fact that the governor doesn't have the honor and class to resign says more than enough to me.

shameful.

 

[WedgeX]

Great article from 538 about this

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-went-wrong-in-flint-water-crisis-michigan/

For nearly 50 years, the city bought its water from Detroit, which pumped it out of Lake Huron. But in 2013, the city voted to join a new pipeline being built to the lake, prompting Detroit to cancel its agreement. Rather than agree to a new short-term contract with Detroit, Earley decided2 to use the river that runs through the heart of the cash-strapped city. The state treasurer signed off on the move.

The switch has been described as an effort to save money, but Flint’s water system hadn’t been a drain on the budget. In fact, the water paid for itself and then some, paying out about $1.5 million annually to the city’s general fund in the years leading up to the switch, according to Dayne Walling, who was mayor in 2009-15.3

I do hope that this gets explored more and I can only assume that Odoul's article is the beginning.

Potentially explosive revelations.

http://motorcitymuckraker.com/2016/01/23/gov-snyder-lied-flint-water-switch-was-not-about-money-records-show/

Looks like switching Flint off DWSD was never about saving money.

It's about what Michigan has been about since Engler, kicking Detroit in the nuts.

I've thought Snyder is going to come out of this unscathed, no charges, no resignation. He's weasel, he survives, but if this is true, and the feds do their job...Snyder WILL be seeing the inside of a cell.

 

[LQX]

Wow, I'm sort of just really learning about this. Pretty damn crazy people have to donate water rather than them rushing to fix this but the fact it has been going on so long makes it clear that there is no easy fix. I read that the switch from Detroit's water to the Flint river water damaged the pipes so I wonder if that is the pipe network of the whole city and they would have to tear up all the pipes to truly fix it. That seems like monumental effort.

 

[SliceSabre]

Wow, I'm sort of just really learning about this. Pretty damn crazy people have to donate water rather than them rushing to fix this but the fact it has been going on so long makes it clear that there is no easy fix. I read that the switch from Detroit's water to the Flint river water damaged the pipes so I wonder if that is the pipe network of the whole city and they would have to tear up all the pipes to truly fix it. That seems like monumental effort.

Upward of $1 billion and you know nobody wants to step up to pay for that despite the fact water is a vital thing for any city to have.

 

[Culex]

If the governor had his finger in this pie, how has he not resigned yet?

Seems like the ENTIRE network of pipes needs to be replaced at this point?

 

[FStubbs]

Straight facts. If anything, it being brown and discolored is more likely to encourage them to experiment with the water.



An entire generation, almost SIX. THOUSAND. CHILDREN.

Will have lifelong health complications caused by this. Health complications that they will not be able to afford fixing and, lol good luck getting the govt to settle amicably, if they even have the money, to front these kids medical bills for the rest of their lives.

No way. Don't want those freeloading thugs stealing money from hard working Americans.

 

[PHOENIXZERO]

So, I watched Roger and Me for the first time in a very long time and it got to the "Pets or Meat" woman, that scene near the end where we see her bashing a rabbit over the head with a pipe could be a metaphor for what the Snyder administration has done to the kids of Flint.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

What do you base your "suspicions" on? Sounds an awful like race baiting to me.

The fact I live an hour away from this and it's barely news here, as well as this being America, a country with terrible history in its treatment of minorities which continues to manifest to this day. And what exactly do you mean by race baiting?

 

[PHOENIXZERO]

People living under the poverty line and minorities (or let's just say black people) and they intersect strongly and people who live under the poverty line make up a huge portion of Flint's population, 41.5% to be exact going by data between 2009-2013, it's probably worse.

Using the Flint River would be like Midland (which also gets its drinking water from Lake Huron) switching to the Tittabawassee River for their drinking water with all the shit Dow dumped into it over the years. Just like Flint anyone who lives or lived in Midland knows how nasty that river is from all the crap Dow dumped into it for decades and that's before getting into the the standard river water issues. But of course Midland is city with a much, much lower level of poverty (around 14%) and 92% white and that would never happen. Midland relies on Dow for employment in a similar way Flint and many other cities in Michigan relied on the auto industry for jobs and if Dow for whatever reasoned moved out of their HQ and home city Midland would eventually befall a similar fate.

 

[Malyse]

People living under the poverty line and minorities (or let's just say black people) and they intersect strongly and people who live under the poverty line make up a huge portion of Flint's population, 41.5% to be exact going by data between 2009-2013, it's probably worse.

Small correction. Flint is 56.6% black, 62.6% all nonwhite minorities as of the 2010 census.

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/26/2629000.html

Spoiler

And that explains a lot of what happened and why.

 

[PHOENIXZERO]

Small correction. Flint is 56.6% black, 62.6% all nonwhite minorities as of the 2010 census.

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/26/2629000.html

Spoiler

And that explains a lot of what happened and why.

My percentage was of people who live in Flint and are under the poverty line, not the minority percentage. That's the source of the 41.5%. Being a poor and black is the absolute worst position to be in, in this country.

 

[Malyse]

My percentage was of people who live in Flint and are under the poverty line, not the minority percentage. That's the source of the 41.5%. Being a poor and black is the absolute worst position to be in, in this country.

I see. Carry on.

And, yes it really does suck.

 

[Odoul]

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/01/27/bathing-flint-water-rash-uptick/79422326/

State health officials Wednesday repeated a recommendation that Flint parents can bathe children in the city’s water, despite an increase in rashes reported in the past couple of weeks.

An advisory from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said there is “no scientific link” between Flint water and skin rashes that began appearing after the city switched from the Detroit system’s Lake Huron water to Flint River water in April 2014.

This government seems to actively HATE it's constituents.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/01/27/exclusive-snyders-approval-plummets-amid-flint-crisis/79396494/

Although I guess votes have consequences and incredibly most seem to like what they cuz they want Snyder to stick around.

 

[Lakedaimon]

I think a lot of people are jumping to the conclusion that the decision to switch water systems was motivated by greedy politicians looking to cash in by privatizing the system or something like that.

As someone who lives in a community served by the Detroit Water Department, I would argue that the residents of Flint had been complaining to their city council and mayor for years about their escalating water bills, and wanted an alternative. This was essentially a bottom up decision, not a top down one. Democracy at work. City officials then failed to do any due diligence, and the water department was clearly incapable of treating their own water despite calling in consultants. The state and the feds failed to properly oversee what the city was doing.

For a little backstory, the Detroit Water Department is severely dysfunctional. Sure the water is safe to drink, but the organization is a bloated and poorly run monopoly. The DWD was under federal supervision for 36 years ending in 2013. An audit by an outside agency found that 81% of their employees were unnecessary, many in do-nothing jobs after being appointed as favors from the former mayor and city council. The union was so deeply embedded and so reactionary that management could not even change job titles - they still had a "horseshoer" on payroll, but no horses. Seniority was more important than education/qualifications/experience and you could bump someone out of their job if you had been there longer.

The DWD estimates at least 10% of the water they treat is lost through leaks, broken hydrants, and scrapped plumbing. They collect maybe half of the money due from city residents. They are so far behind replacing century-old obsolete water mains that it would take them 250 years to catch up at the rate they are fixing them. Add to this their grossly swollen payroll, and the department simply jacks up rates by 7-10% a year to cover the tab. And cities pay it because they have to.

I think every city or municipality that is a customer of DWD has explored the idea of building and operating their own system to get away from the runaway costs. The massive startup investment required usually quashes those dreams.

 

[Malyse]

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/01/27/bathing-flint-water-rash-uptick/79422326/



This government seems to actively HATE it's constituents.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/01/27/exclusive-snyders-approval-plummets-amid-flint-crisis/79396494/

Although I guess votes have consequences and incredibly most seem to like what they cuz they want Snyder to stick around.

OT, but dude's name is Bernie Porn? That had to be rough growing up.

 

[AlphaDump]

Rick Snyder excluded from congressional hearing on Flint water

"I am deeply disappointed at the Majority's lack of commitment to a thorough and meaningful hearing," said Lawrence, ranking member of the Subcommittee on the Interior, in a statement.

"A sincere search for truth and justice requires a full review by the entire Committee of the decisions and policies of all those involved. The nearly 100,000 people of Flint who have been permanently impacted by this crisis, either directly or indirectly, demands that Congress set aside party politics if we are to ensure that this never again occurs in Flint or any city in America."

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2016/01/rick_snyder_excluded_from_cong.html


ugh...