The Nation's Poisonous Water Problem Is Far Worse Than You Think

[Bod]

This really surprised me about America's water purity:

Marc Edwards, the scientist who first uncovered the crisis in Flint, described water testing in some of America's largest cities as an "outrage". "They make lead in water low when collecting samples for EPA compliance, even as it poisons kids who drink the water," Edwards, a Virginia Tech scientist, said. "Clearly, the cheating and lax enforcement are needlessly harming children all over the United States. "If they cannot be trusted to protect little kids from lead in drinking water, what on Earth can they be trusted with? Who amongst us is safe?"

[gfretwell]

We have been talking about lead in the water for 50 years and they have been selling testing kits for just about that long. Some of it comes from 100 year old pipes in municipal systems in old cities and some comes from lead in the home plumbing. We have always been told that if the pH was high enough and there was enough calcium in the water the lead would be sequestered. In Flint the local water authority simply did not add the same sequestering the chemical that the Detroit operators did (after giving up the contract with them for water) and the water itself was corrosive without it. Once they actually started looking they found this problem existed in lots of places. They had blamed lead in kids on everything but the water up until then (lead paint, lead in gasoline, lead solder in electronics and even lead from bullets). Now they are grudgingly admitting that it may just be from those 100 year old pipes that should have been replaced 60-70 years ago when the cities had the money to do it.

[Mayor's Worthless Kid]

Municipal governments are overrun with nepotism...and they're never STEM graduates.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

So it's ok for adults to drink leaded water? WTF is this with people saying "think of the children"? They're no more important than we are, stop thinking of them as some kind of seperate species.

[redzap78]

The Clean Water Act changed the requirements and the republicans warned this type of stories would pop up. We had no mass die offs or little children getting sick before this Act became law.

[gfretwell]

This is really not a federal problem. These old pipes belong to the cities, mostly the cities who did not vote for Trump anyway. One has to ask, where were the democrats for the last 60-70 years that we have known about this problem. Obama was president when Flint discovered it (2014). He did not do anything but wring his hands. The original plan to use the Flint River was made in 67 when LBJ was president. Nobody saw the flaw in that plan then either. If you are just saying the country as a whole ignore lead in water, that is somewhat true but I remember when I was a kid they told us to let the water run a minute to flush out the line before you drink it so somebody must have known something. We were also told not to drink or cook with the hot water. (1950s) That was seen as being more likely to leach the lead out of the soldered joints. In the late 70s people started worrying about saving the planet and we were told not to let the water run.

I am really not worried about it at my house because we have plastic pipe, no solder and a well. I suppose we will find out the vinyl chlorides are killing us now ;-(

[gfretwell]

It is more true than it would seem. None of these old cities are being run by republicans although they might be in a state with a GOP governor. Usually the cities will not talk to the state unless they want money. They certainly don't want advice. It is also true that people with money will buy an R/O that takes out just about all of the contaminants and they also like bottled water, usually imported. (typically Pelligrinio or Evian)

[gfretwell]

Most cities are run by democrats, particularly the old ones with lead pipe. A lot of this lead actually comes from the residential plumbing tho. Certainly per capita, it is a democrat problem just because of the size of the big blue cities ... and they are all broke, verging on bankruptcy. They can't afford to do much about it and the affected residents are broke too. That is why the government was giving away lead filters in Flint. Most of the residents could not afford to buy them. The interesting thing is Washington DC may be the second worst city in the US for lead, after Flint. Maybe lead in the water explains why long term congress people act as dumb as they do ;-) It is true that the oldest pipes are in the parts of DC where the politicians tend to work and live. That is also where the oldest sewer systems are. Those are the ones that mix storm drains with sewers and frequently overload on rainy days, dumping raw sewage in the river.

[gfretwell]

The problem is the cities where these things are happening, for the most part, are broke. They made bad contracts with the union government workers back when they were fat and now their industry moved away, the income stream slowed down and they have tens of thousands of retired employees making 5 and 6 figure pensions that were not properly funded. The money to replace these pipes is simply not there. We also have a federal government that is $20 TRILLION in the red with more unfunded pension liabilities than the cities have (including federal pensions, social security and medicare) and an electorate who does not want to pay taxes. I am not sure we are really as rich as people think.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

The downfall of America will be interesting for all of us not in it.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

Hang on, isn't the USA more capitalist and privately owned than the UK? In the UK, the water supply is run by private companies, and they have to provide their paying customers with clean water. The government has nothing to do with it, apart from getting those private companies into shit when if we get ill.

[gfretwell]

Capitalism never really caught on up in those northern cities. The public service unions drive policy. Even if there is a company providing utilities they are still essentially regulated so tightly that they might as well be the government.

[gfretwell]

It was the city water authority who decided to not add the anti corrosive that the Detroit system uses and it was also Detroit that terminated the contract. The water was pretty much the same, it was the missing chemical that caused the problem. You really have to step back several years and see that it was the city of Flint who decided to pipe in the water from Lake Huron to save that money but their pipeline project was running at least 3 years behind schedule. They still would have needed the anti corrosive tho.

[gfretwell]

That is pretty much what I said. You just skipped over the part where the Flint water people decided not to add the anti corrosive that Detroit uses for water that tests just about the same. The state did not tell they to do that. I have looked at the water test results and I do understand how to look at water analysis. I have been a state water quality monitor for

16 years.