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.

So?

[Ultra64]

What's wrong with having the most blood?

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: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.

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

[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

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

[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.