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.

Comments

state regulators "never required"

[Qzukk]

state regulators never required the river water be treated to make it less corrosive

Man, I bet those city officials must have a serious headache what with the state regulators not telling them not to hit their head with hammers.

Re:state regulators "never required"

[Matheus]

Hey at least the lake hasn't caught on fire in a while...

Re:state regulators "never required"

[quetwo]

Except, the state, and it's republican government took over the city because they passed a law saying their finances weren't in order. The governor (Snyder) appointed a "EFM" to manage the city. One of his decisions was to no longer purchase water from the metro Detroit system (rumor has it, that they wanted to punish Detroit and make it less financially solvent by removing one of the larger water purchasers), and use the very old connections to the Flint River. The EPA sent up red flags immediately, but it got tied up in court until a few months ago. In the mean time, FEMA, the Salvation Army and many others have been delivering bottled water to schools and other community centers so people wouldn't be poisoned by the water they were buying (and being provided by in the schools, etc).

The amount they saved switching to the Flint River was less than 1%.... but with this entire debacle, the city will owe so much more money because the acidic river (which, by the way was found to be heavily polluted due to run-off from neighboring cities), managed to eat many of their already crumbling infrastructure.

But go ahead, play politics you don't know about and blame the democrats on this one. Hope it makes you feel better.

As a former resident of Crestwood, IL...

[Electrawn]

Lots of feels for Flint.

Re:As a former resident of Crestwood, IL...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah! So that's why people split their first sentence between the subject and the body - it's the lead in the water!!

So?

[Ultra64]

What's wrong with having the most blood?

Question is what the source is...

[ErichTheRed]

Wasn't Flint the city that basically got abandoned by GM when they closed their plants years ago? They're held up as a poster child for Rust Belt decline, much the same way my hometown was back in the 80s. So the question is where the lead is coming from -- is it a natural source? I thought most large-scale industrial activity that could cause that much lead emission outside of auto production was done in Michigan long ago.

Whatever the cause, talk about a crappy set of circumstances. A city now has an environmental mess to deal with after losing all of its industry and chance of a recovery.

Re:Question is what the source is...

[ibpooks]

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.

Re:Question is what the source is...

[careysub]

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!

Re:Question is what the source is...

[AthanasiusKircher]

Lead solder was not legal for plumbing in 1960.

You may want to know what you're talking about before writing derogatory messages against another post. Lead solder wasn't effectively banned in new construction until the Clean Water Act of 1986. Some local laws may have been in effect earlier, but it's certainly possible to find lead solder in old houses.

Silver solder is not that expensive, it's not pure silver.

Yes, obviously, but lead solder was cheaper, more standard, and more durable than many alternatives for decades. It was still widely used until it was effectively banned -- particularly by low-cost contractors who built cheaper houses or installed cheaper systems.

Further most plumbing has an expected life of 40-50 years. After that it's limed up and has to be replaced. Depends on the local water.

Guess you haven't heard about all the situations with actual lead PIPES still in old houses from a century ago. Small house pipes often need to periodically redone, but the large supply pipes and connectors to city systems often were made with lead pipes years ago, and many cities still have a lot of them in use. They're often very expensive to replace for a whole city, and poorer cities likely can't afford it. Read the water safety standards sometime -- lead concentration safety is usually measured after water has been flowing for a couple minutes, because in many older houses and older cities it takes that long to clear out the water that's been sitting there and leaching lead, copper, and other things... from lead solder, and perhaps even large old lead pipes.

Nearly doubled

[Fwipp]

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.

Re:Nearly doubled

[careysub]

Of course this is "so far". This is after only 15 months or of exposure. If detection and intervention had not occurred this number would have kept rising as lead accumulated in children's bodies.

Interesting comment in TFA

[nawcom]

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.

Re:Interesting comment in TFA

[MobyDisk]

Public Act 436, that, as an appropriation, is referendum proof.

Whoops! Looks like they need to amend their state constitution. Or take this to the Michigan Supreme Court. Their constitution says:

The people reserve to themselves the power to propose laws and to enact and reject laws, called the initiative, and the power to approve or reject laws enacted by the legislature, called the referendum. The power of initiative extends only to laws which the legislature may enact under this constitution. The power of referendum does not extend to acts making appropriations for state institutions or to meet deficiencies in state funds

I doubt that the writers of the Michigan state constitution meant that legislators could add "...and the state will buy a candy cane" to their laws and have them be referendum-proof. It seems more likely that an appropriations bill was meant to have nothing but appropriations in them. Combining appropriations with other laws blurs the definition of an appropriations bill. I bet there is a good chance the Michigan Supreme Court would either strike down the law, or allow a referendum to proceed against the portions of the bill that are not appropriations.

Re:Interesting comment in TFA

[compro01]

I bet there is a good chance the Michigan Supreme Court would either strike down the law, or allow a referendum to proceed against the portions of the bill that are not appropriations.

A court that is 7/9 Republican and 3/9 Snyder-appointed? Good luck with that.

Re:Interesting comment in TFA

[pi_rules]

- 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.

That's a bit of a half-truth. Michigan's Emergency Financial Manager laws were put in place back in 1990 under Democratic governor Blanchard. It wasn't used too much, but Democratic governor Granholm (2003-2011) appointed 7 of them. With the slight expansion of powers in the 2011-2012 changes one concession was that the local government could boot an EFM after 18 months. Granted, if the "triggers" to require an EFM were still there they'd get a new one, but that's probably why Flint has bounced through so many since 2011.

WikiPedia has a handy chart of when/where they were used in Michigan.

The blind partisan vitriol on the issue of EFMs is rather staggering to me. I've seen Snyder called a racist for appointing an EFM (like in Benton Harbor) when all he did was reappoint the EFM previous governor Granholm had already put in place.

And it's not like the new water treatment system was a new idea. Flint spent $50 million upgrading their unused water treatment system between 1998 and 2006, well before anything related to EFMs came into play, though they were under one from 2002-2004. I don't think it's all that illogical to ask/force a city government that just spent $50 million on a water treatment plant to actually use it instead of buying it from Detroit and letting the plant sit idle while they go broke.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[MightyMartian]

Shouldn't the people who polluted the river bear some of the blame?

But of course, someone made fucking boatloads of money back in the day. That is untouchable. But boy, the victims of that activity, why they're stupid and deserve what they get!

I think in the future we should just declare large corporations and wealthy people to be gods, and gratefully drink the urine as a demonstration of how they deserve absolute, permanent and infinite immunity from their wrongdoing. Indeed, we should make it an executable offence to even suggest that a large corporate interest ever did anything wrong. People should have their organs cut out for daring to attack commercial interests, and, of course, all environmentalists should be burned alive. America is for the super rich, and everyone else can go get fucked.

Water comes from lead solder in pipes

[phantomfive]

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.

Re:Water comes from lead solder in pipes

[bws111]

Lead solder was used on copper pipes in most homes until 1980. Many cities (including the one I live in) have solid lead pipes as water mains.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[HornWumpus]

Tell us more of Flints election process. How do outsiders get to vote?

None of what you say changes basic facts on the ground. They made a mess and now the feds are picking up the tab.

Are 'rich mother fuckers' also responsible for the broken governments in DC, Detroit, Philadelphia, East St. Louis?

Sloppy summary

[Elledan]

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)

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[ShanghaiBill]

Now you and I have have to pay to provide them all with bottled water?

That is a lot cheaper than paying for all the police and prisons that will be required if we let kids get poisoned with lead. Lead causes a significant drop in IQ and a rise in violent anti-social behavior. Getting lead out of our kids' blood is one the most cost effective public health measures imaginable.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[vistic]

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.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[HornWumpus]

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.

Re:Boiling the Lead Out

[halivar]

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.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[Tailhook]

Shouldn't the people who polluted the river bear some of the blame?

The lead isn't coming from waste. The river water is acidic and leeching lead from the plumbing. The largest contributor of acid to the river is decaying plant matter; leaves and whatnot. There is a lot of that in Michigan and inland water frequently has high PH levels.

But nice corporate hate rant. You've been trained well. The city of Flint — 100% anti-business Democrat since Johnson — ruins its own water supply and it's somehow the fault of "corporations."

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[chmod a x mojo]

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.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[rockmuelle]

"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

They have state regulators?

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:They have state regulators?

[Noah Haders]

starve the beast! that's what they say.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[geoskd]

Shouldn't the people who polluted the river bear some of the blame?

It's not the river water that’s polluted per se. The river water is fairly corrosive, a condition which does happen naturally, or could be the result of pollution of some kind. The river water by itself is safe to drink. The problem is that the city water infrastructure is built with a large amount of lead piping. The city’s homes also have a huge number of lead fixtures, lead fittings, and lead solder. The root cause is simply a refusal to dig up and replace all that dangerous piping in the ground and replace it. The Detroit water had hidden the problem by virtue of that fact that lake Huron water is not very corrosive, so it didn't dissolve nearly as much lead...

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[geoskd]

It doesn't sound like the lead problem as-described is simply a case of service-entrance lead pipe from the street to the residence. 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 of the mouth and esophagus, and the pipes would have rotted away.

It doesn't take dangerous levels of acidity to leach 25 PPB from lead piping. a PH of about 6 would do it. That's the same PH as a peeled potato...

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[Tailhook]

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.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[PopeRatzo]

Since the city went bankrupt in 2011,

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".

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[slew]

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...

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[Tailhook]

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.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[ChrisMaple]

You got it backwards. Low pH is acidic, attacks the lead and forms water soluble lead compounds.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[ShanghaiBill]

If low IQ and poverty were related ...

Low IQ and poverty are strongly correlated. Just because the correlation isn't 1.0, doesn't mean there is no relationship. Sure, a few dumb people get rich, but most don't.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[HiThere]

The problem is the pipes were designed for water with a certain pH. The river water had a different pH, in which lead was soluble. Nothing to do with river water lead pollution. The old source of water, Detroit, was safe to use with the pipes. The river water wasn't. But the river water was cheaper.

Also Flint is full of poor people, and was forced into bankruptcy (don't know the details) by the governor, who then appointed a representative to run the city. The water change was his policy, as was selling off many needed city assets. For some reason this didn't solve the problem, but did create new ones, like lead poisoning.

I'm not sure, but this appears to be "crony capitalism" in action. It looks as if several laws were broken, but none that bothered anyone powerful enough to get any enforcement.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[squiggleslash]

So... just to be clear...

You are in favor of intentionally poisoning children with a metal that will almost certainly cause permanent brain damage, because a majority of the adults in the same city they live in might have, many decades ago (in the vast majority of cases cases being grandparents of the children concerned, or else unrelated), mistrusted the wrong people the least to manage their city's finances?

You're in favor of that?

This is why I often lose faith in humanity.

Re:Its always someone else's problem

[rsborg]

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.

How many emergency managers were in place before Gov. Snyder (GOP)?