Slashdot Mirror
Flint, Michigan Declares State of Emergency Over Lead In Children's Blood (washingtonpost.com)
schwit1 writes: The Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Michigan released a study in September that confirmed what many Flint parents had feared for over a year: The proportion of infants and children with above-average levels of lead in their blood has nearly doubled since the city switched from the Detroit water system to using the Flint River as its water source, in 2014. "City officials have also said the use of corrosive Flint River water also damaged Flint's water infrastructure after state regulators never required the river water be treated to make it less corrosive." FEMA is now supplying bottled water to the city.
Because "nearly doubled" isn't a super useful stat for evaluating the relevance of something:
In the affected area, 2.1% of children less than 5 years old had "elevated" blood levels of lead (more than 5ug/dL). After switching to the new water source, 4.0% of children less than 5 had elevated lead levels. Sample size was about 900 both before & after the water switch; so this roughly translates to 18 unexpected cases in the study. The population of Flint is about 100K, with 8% under 5 years old, so we can estimate that somewhere around 160 children in Flint received a high dose of lead as a result of the water switch.
You won't find the phrase "Emergency Manager" in this article, which indirectly positions the parasitic state government as our saviors in this crisis. And yes, I can say that without apologizing for city misconduct. When a newspaper of record like the Washington Post or The New York Times fails to report a detail as enormous as the persistent erosion and suspension of home rule in a time of public austerity, they essentially mislead their readers and distort the historical record.
Here are a few details that the Detroit Free Press and the Flint Journal managed to include but which the Washington Post and the New York Times did not:
- In 2011, newly elected Governor Rick Snyder passed Public Act 4 which allowed him to appoint an Emergency Manager over financially distressed cities with the power to liquidate assets, suspend and renegotiate contracts, and even disincorporate cities.
- In 2012, Michigan voters repealed Public Act 4 by public referendum, but within weeks the Republican majorities in the state legislature passed an almost identical bill, Public Act 436, that, as an appropriation, is referendum proof. Snyder signed this bill.
- From most of 2011 to 2015, Flint has been under a sequence of four Emergency Managers who, during their tenure suspended local officials, liquidated assets and, oh yes, DECIDED TO DRAW OUR DRINKING WATER SUPPLY FROM THE FLINT RIVER! Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz made the commitment, Emergency Manager Darnell Earley oversaw the transition, and Emergency Manager Jerry Ambrose nullified a City Council resolution to switch back to Detroit water in early 2015.
The Post should be ashamed for the way it has reported this story, and I do not say this lightly. These two so-called "bastions of liberal thought" have helped let an overwhelmingly gerrymandered and Republican-dominated state government off the hook for their role in poisoning 100,000 mostly poor, mostly black people in this city.
According to this article, when the water leaves the treatment plant, it is lead-free (within an acceptable margin of error). The problem comes from old (ie, still being built in the 1980s) pipes that used lead solder to connect the copper. The older pipes are around the city and inside homes, and will take 15 years to replace.
The water from the river has higher levels of chloride, and chloride is corrosive to iron, which caused the lead to leach off into the water.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
After reading the friendly summary & article one might be left confused about where this lead is coming from, but according to the Wikipedia entry on the Flint River, it's due to the river's water being corrosive (presumably low pH) and degrading the lead pipes which form part of the water distribution network of the city.
The water itself is lead-free as it leaves the treatment plant, but still unsuitable for drinking due to containing high levels of carcinogenic trihalomethanes, which was the original reason that the river water was deemed unsuitable for producing potable water from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_River_(Michigan)
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
So the locals elect a government
They probably didn't. A lot of cities in MI are ruled by Emergency Managers, and the locally elected officials have no power at all.
True, but emergency managers are only put in after the locals make a mess of things and show they aren't even trying to fix anything.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
My guess is that you are supposed boil your water that came out of the tap cold, rather than using hot water from the tap. As per the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/tips/water.htm), hot water contains more lead, and boiling THAT water does not remove the lead. But if you do need hot water, you will need to boil cold tap water instead.
Not really abandoned as much as Flint made it a very easy choice for GM to leave when other options became available. The extremely corrupt union locals and local politicians in Flint made it impossible for GM to continue doing business there. While many other rust belt cities faced similar challenges in keeping the manufacturing companies from leaving, Flint was a cut above in terms of being actively hostile to the auto business. It was no surprise at all to those of us in the region when GM left Flint.
Many of the surrounding cities in a ~50 mile radius of Flint still have large manufacturing businesses, including auto industry, so it was not something that effected the entire region to anywhere near the degree of Flint. The attitude and culture in Flint was really different and GM responded by washing their hands of that mess and leaving.
So it's a local problem with idiots to cheap to use silver solder on their pipes?
Because in a city with a 27% poverty rate most residents recently built their houses to spec, and had plenty of money to spend on silver solder too? Probably they spent all their silver solder money on hookers n' blow too.
Look at the stats on Flint, MI. The median age of housing there is 1953 ! These are poor people living in ancient run-down housing!
Sure the wise Emergency Manager running the town (not elected by the residents) was totally in the right sending corrosive water to the residents to save a little money. If it poisons the kids living in the houses by dumping lead into their water, it is just too damn bad!
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Well if you read the article, and the explanation of where the lead is coming from, you would know that the lead is not found in the water coming out of the treatment plants. The lead is being leached by pH imbalanced water in lead infrastructure feeder pipes and solder joints that go to homes and business.
In other words the dumbasses STILL have piss poor infrastructure, that they almost had to have known about, and didn't take into account pH treatments at their own self installed treatment plant.
So, please do tell me again about your other ravings on capitalism... when the fuck up is 100% the Flint cities fault.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
"explain how poor people are prevented from voting "
A few ways. First, make sure the polling hours are during the work day when poor people have to make a decision between feeding their kids that night or voting. Also, make sure early voting has a short window. Then, require IDs to vote. But not just any ids, limit it to IDs that take some effort to get, like drivers licenses or state issued ID cards that can only be issued at the DMV. Close some DMVs and keep the other ones open only during those pesky business hours. Ensure the lines are long enough that it will require a three hour time commitment to get an ID. Once they reach the counter, turn them away because they're lacking some random piece of paperwork, even though they have more than enough with them to establish identity (true story: this is what happened to me last time I renewed my license in Texas - two afternoons off work and six hours in line).
That'll keep poor people from voting.
"[explain how] rich people who are non-residents can vote in local elections"
They can't, but they can flood the media with their message a strongly influence elections. They can also ensure that only topics that matter to them make it on the ballot. And after the election, they can just get their buddies who just got elected to do their bidding.
"That goes counter to every election system I've ever heard of."
My guess is that you've only read about elections systems in textbooks and never bothered to learn how they're actually implemented and commonly manipulated. As long as we've had electoral processes, people have found ways to game them.
-Chris
Seriously. From what I can tell what we haven't eliminated outright we've defunded to the point where it doesn't exist anymore. It's not really a law if nobody enforces it. It's like complaining to the labor board in Arizona. There isn't one. It wasn't staffed.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Fuck, are you stupid? I know shouting big nasty chemical terms makes you feel justified in hating on corporations and republicans, but, even the most cursory reading of an easily-found news article explains (emphasis mine):
Source: http://www.mlive.com/news/flin...
Seriously, you fucking tard. Get your facts straight before you start shouting about how big businesses are evil poisoners of the poor folks in Flint. The treatment of the water with disinfectants is what's causing the fucking spike in trihalomethanes. It's NOT industrial pollution.
In fact, if you read this, you'll find that ALL of the shit you're shouting about here is caused by infrastructure & treatment problems - the water coming in from the river is not at the pH it needs to be - the acidity of the water is causing it to leach lead from pipes and other plumbing infrastructure at an accelerated rate, and the treatment that they're doing for microbial contamination is causing the increase in trihalomethanes - probably also because they're not buffering the water pH properly.
Clearly you aren't familiar with Michigan politics. The fuck up is not 100% the city of Flint's fault, there are a lot of factors here. There's a decent summary of the goings-on here: http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/2015/10/29/flint-water-crisis-government/74736590/
In short, the state of Michigan appointed an emergency manager who had broad powers over the city of Flint, and under his watch the plan was implemented to pump the river water. At some point after water safety problems were observed, the council voted to switch back to safe Detroit water, but was not allowed by the emergency manager. The state and emergency manager have been heavily involved in the switch to the new water supply, and played a role in completely fucking it up.
Also, your criticism of the infrastructure is kinda off. Soldered copper and lead are common in pipes and because of that the treatment plant should have considered methods to prevent lead from seeping in. If they had switched back to Detroit water, their drinking water would have been fine.
If the water was acidic enough to leach the lead from 30' of pipe to reach these lead-levels then the people would be complaining of acid burns
More making stuff up. You can go read primary sources here, with pictures and everything.
In our tests, this condition was 8.6X worse than Detroit water. Assuming this rate applies to the actual city pipe system, the last 16 months on Flint River water would have aged the pipes about 138 months (138 = 8.6 X 16 months) or 11.5 years more than using Detroit water.
Leeching doesn't require concentrated acid. It's a function of time. Leave slightly high PH water in contact with lead solder for many hours and you get a pulse of dissolved lead the next time you open the tap.
GM dropped it's water contract with Flint earlier this year because of the high PH.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Flint didn't go bankrupt. It was forced into receivership by the the State of Michigan in 2011, after Governor Snyder (R-Douchebag) declared a "state of emergency".
The emergency was lifted in April of this year, and now the city's trying to dig out of the willful neglect of the hand-picked lawyer that the Good Governor Snyder put in place of the democratically elected government. But not before many of the assets that the city owned have been sold off to private entities. It's what's known as "Disaster Economics" (aka Vulture Capitalism). As another well-known corporatist once said, "Never let a disaster go to waste".
You are welcome on my lawn.
if the lead is coming from the local pipes in people's houses, then how come the lead poisoning started when they switched water sources? That sounds like bee ess.
pH changed when they switched the source of water, the now acidic water dissolved lead in solder joints and thus ends up in the water in people's houses...
http://www.mlive.com/news/flin...
Or so they say... Or it all could be bee ess of course...
Often not. A recent example I can corroborate is Detroit. Over 50% of households in Detroit are delinquent on property taxes; they're tax squatters and have been for many years. They famously don't pay their water bills either. Some large fraction of your "bazillion other taxes" are contingent on employment, which is another rare condition in these areas. Otherwise you're just deducting income taxes from benefit checks or paying sales tax with EBT credits.
Flint is just a smaller analog of Detroit.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
You got it backwards. Low pH is acidic, attacks the lead and forms water soluble lead compounds.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
"Starve the Beast" is a political strategy where you cut taxes, borrow money to make up for your short falls and then demand cuts in government to solve the debt problem.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Just like I love when morons like you that can't even see past your own since of indignation post stupid shit that does not make any sense whatsoever.
How do vote for someone in a municipality where you do not live?
You elect a dumbfuck prick governor, who appoints a executive to run the city who can overrule anything the locally-elected government does. That's how. If you weren't a cocksucking prick yourself you'd understand that.