Flint Water Crisis

[Barothmuk]

This is a thing so it might as well have a thread.

 

Here's what Michael Moore (I know) has to say:

 

 

While the Children in Flint Were Given Poisoned Water to Drink, General Motors Was Given a Special Hookup to the Clean Water. A few months after Governor Snyder removed Flint from the clean fresh water we had been drinking for decades, the brass from General Motors went to him and complained that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. The Governor was appalled to hear that GM property was being damaged, so he jumped through a number of hoops and quietly spent $440,000 to hook GM back up to the Lake Huron water, while keeping the rest of Flint on the Flint River water. Which means that while the children in Flint were drinking lead-filled water, there was one — and only one — address in Flint that got clean water: the GM factory.

 

There’s More Than the Lead in Flint’s Water. In addition to exposing every child in the city of Flint to lead poisoning on a daily basis, there appears to be a number of other diseases we may be hearing about in the months ahead. The number of cases in Flint of Legionnaires Disease has increased tenfold since the switch to the river water. Eighty-seven people have come down with it, and at least ten have died. In the five years before the river water, not a single person in Flint had died of Legionnaires Disease. Doctors are now discovering that another half-dozen toxins are being found in the blood of Flint’s citizens, causing concern that there are other health catastrophes which may soon come to light.

 

People’s Homes in Flint Are Now Worth Nothing Because They Cant Be Sold. Would you buy a house in Flint right now? Who would? So every homeowner in Flint is stuck with a house that’s now worth nothing. That’s a total home value of $2.4 billion down the economic drain. People in Flint, one of the poorest cities in the U.S., don’t have much to their name, and for many their only asset is their home. So, in addition to being poisoned, they have now a net worth of zero. (And as for employment, who is going to move jobs or start a company in Flint under these conditions? No one.) Has Flint’s future just been flushed down that river?

 

While They Were Being Poisoned, They Were Also Being Bombed. Here’s a story which has received little or no coverage outside of Flint. During these two years of water contamination, residents in Flint have had to contend with a decision made by the Pentagon to use Flint for target practice. Literally. Actual unannounced military exercises – complete with live ammo and explosives – were conducted last year inside the city of Flint. The army decided to practice urban warfare on Flint, making use of the thousands of abandoned homes which they could drop bombs on. Streets with dilapidated homes had rocket-propelled grenades fired upon them. For weeks, an undisclosed number of army troops pretended Flint was Baghdad or Damascus and basically had at it. It sounded as if the city was under attack from an invading army or from terrorists. People were shocked this could be going on in their neighborhoods. Wait – did I say “people?” I meant,Flint people. As with the Governor, it was OK to abuse a community that held no political power or money to fight back. BOOM!

 

The Wife of the Governor’s Chief of Staff Is a Spokeswoman for Nestle, Michigan’s Largest Owner of Private Water Reserves. As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein: “Follow the money.” Snyder’s chief of staff throughout the two years of Flint’s poisoning, Dennis Muchmore, was intimately involved in all the decisions regarding Flint. His wife is Deb Muchmore, who just happens to be the spokesperson in Michigan for the Nestle Company – the largest owner of private water sources in the State of Michigan. Nestle has been repeatedly sued in northern Michigan for the 200 gallons of fresh water per minute it sucks from out of the ground and bottles for sale as their Ice Mountain brand of bottled spring water. The Muchmores have a personal interest in seeing to it that Nestles grabs as much of Michigan’s clean water was possible – especially when cities like Flint in the future are going to need that Ice Mountain.

 

In Michigan, from Flint water, to Crime and Murder, to GM Ignition Switches, It’s a Culture of Death. It’s not just the water that was recklessly used to put people’s lives in jeopardy. There are many things that happen in Flint that would give one the impression that there is a low value placed on human life. Flint has one of the worst murder and crime rates in the country. Just for context, if New York City had the same murder rate as Flint, Michigan, the number of people murdered last year in New York would have been almost 4,000 people – instead of the actual 340 who were killed in NYC in 2015. But it’s not just street crime that makes one wonder about what is going on in Michigan. Last year, it was revealed that, once again, one of Detroit’s automakers had put profit ahead of people’s lives. General Motors learned that it had installed faulty ignition switches in many of its cars. Instead of simply fixing the problem, mid-management staff covered it up from the public. The auto industry has a history of weighing the costs of whether it’s cheaper to spend the money to fix the defect in millions of cars or to simply pay off a bunch of lawsuits filed by the victims surviving family members. Does a cynical, arrogant culture like this make it easy for a former corporate CEO, now Governor, turn a blind eye to the lead that is discovered in a municipality’s drinking water?

 

Don’t Call It “Detroit Water” — It’s the Largest Source of Fresh Drinking Water in the World. The media keeps saying Flint was using “Detroit’s water.” It is only filtered and treated at the Detroit Water Plant. The water itself comes from Lake Huron, the third largest body of fresh water in the world. It is a glacial lake formed over 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age and it is still fed by pure underground springs. Flint is geographically the last place on Earth where one should be drinking poisoned water.

 

ALL the Children Have Been Exposed, As Have All the Adults. That’s just a fact. If you have been in Flint anytime from April 2014 to today, and you’ve drank the water, eaten food cooked with it, washed your clothes in it, taken a shower, brushed your teeth or eaten vegetables from someone’s garden, you’ve been exposed to and ingested its toxins. When the media says “9,000 children under 6 have been exposed,” that means ALL the children have been exposed because the total number of people under the age of 6 in Flint is… 9,000! The media should just say, “all.” When they say “47 children have tested positive”, that’s just those who’ve drank the water in the last week or so. Lead enters the body and does it’s damage to the brain immediately. It doesn’t stay in the blood stream for longer than a few days and you can’t detect it after a month. So when you hear “47 children”, that’s just those with an exposure in the last 48 hours. It’s really everyone.

 

This Was Done, Like So Many Things These Days, So the Rich Could Get a Big Tax Break. When Governor Snyder took office in 2011, one of the first things he did was to get a multi-billion dollar tax break passed by the Republican legislature for the wealthy and for corporations. But with less tax revenues, that meant he had to start cutting costs. So, many things – schools, pensions, welfare, safe drinking water – were slashed. Then he invoked an executive privilege to take over cities (all of them majority black) by firing the mayors and city councils whom the local people had elected, and installing his cronies to act as “dictators” over these cities. Their mission? Cut services to save money so he could give the rich even more breaks. That’s where the idea of switching Flint to river water came from. To save $15 million! It was easy. Suspend democracy. Cut taxes for the rich. Make the poor drink toxic river water. And everybody’s happy.

 

Except those who were poisoned in the process. All 102,000 of them. In the richest country in the world.

 

 

Source

[Meshugger]

What have the governor and his "own man" said to justify their actions?

[Barothmuk]

What have the governor and his "own man" said to justify their actions?

 

Or something to that effect I imagine.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

And they still have to pay extremely high water bills for poison

[Hurlshort]

I don't really blame GM for looking out for their best interests, that's what corporations do.  I blame the people in the government for sure.

[Barothmuk]

I don't really blame GM for looking out for their best interests, that's what corporations do.  I blame the people in the government for sure.

You're going to give Kain an aneurysm.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

I don't really blame GM for looking out for their best interests, that's what corporations do.  I blame the people in the government for sure.

You're going to give Kain an aneurysm.

I agree with him actually, but I wager my conclusion from the information my best interests are not served by private businesses is much different than his.

[HoonDing]

Yabba-dabba-doo!

[Hurlshort]

 

I agree with him actually, but I wager my conclusion from the information my best interests are not served by private businesses is much different than his.

 

 

Care to explain?

[Gromnir]

so, evil government, uncaring of a depressed and poor population, put people at risk to save a few bucks?

 

*eye roll*

 

things is rare so easy and simple.

 

who is to blame?  decades o' fiscal mismanagement led governor to appoint people to fix flint's monetary crisis.  so, governor or local? 'course, the mass exodus o' folks leaving flint after the loss o' thousands o' local auto industry jobs kinda made it impossible for any local elected official to act responsible and get reelected.  is any number o' local, state and even fed political creatures who have resigned amidst the flint crisis, so am doubting "they"  (each o' you conspiracy theorists gots a different notion o' "they," so am gonna leave up to your imagination) is tipping back champagne flutes over this mess.  nobody denies that the river water were less appealing than lake water, which is why flint were gonna be getting lake water in in 2016 via a new $18 million dollar pipeline-- the river solution were a temporary fix.  'course, clearly folks at state, local and fed thought that the river water could be made safe for consumption or nobody in their right minds woulda' ok'd the plan... save in the nightmare scenarios conjured up by michael moore and a few o' our resident wingnuts.  

 

so, how did flint get lead filled water that were brown?  the linchpin mistake were that state and local folks took insufficient measures to deal with the corrosive nature o' the river water.  the river water, once treated, were not unhealthy for human consuption.  the problem is that the water, run through antiquated lead pipes after it had been treated, became unhealthy and destroyed pipes.  in point o' fact, those pipes were so old that it sounds as if folks weren't certain how extensive were the lead problem.  is not as if all o' flint were using the lead pipes, so initial testing o' random sources in flint were not revealing measurable lead.  prolonged failure to realize that the corrosive nature o' otherwise healthy water were destroying lead pipes were the fault o' many, but the initial failures were hardly sinister or self-serving.  

 

is any number o' folks at the state, local and fed level that screwed the p00ch, and a few such individuals has resigned because o' their failures, unfortunately, the wrong folks is typical being identified as the cause(s) o' flint's original water problems.  as is so predictable in these kinda situations, the initial mistakes were, in retrospect, trivial.  

 

that being said, if folks at state, local and fed hadn't been more concerned with covering up the problem, it coulda' been fixed.  the initial decision to switch to "toxic" river water were not evil.  the attempt to cover-up mistakes?  yeah, as is all too common, the cover-up were far worse than the initial (non)mistake.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Elerond]

I don't really blame GM for looking out for their best interests, that's what corporations do.  I blame the people in the government for sure.

 

I would say that they didn't actually look for their best interest, they just looked solution to specific problem they had.

 

As I don't really think it is GM's best interest to let city/government poison their workers and it is not their best interest take massive PR hit for news that they got special treatment when their workers suffered. In short while that special treatment may have helped them bit, but on long run their ability not to recognize what the larger issues behind their problems probably will cost them lot (It is quite difficult to estimate how much damage this will cause their reputation, but it will because people have already gotten image in their heads that GM didn't know about children getting poisoned and GM didn't care enough to inform public [trueness of these mental images don't really matter as PR image is based on people feels not on facts]). 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

I agree with him actually, but I wager my conclusion from the information my best interests are not served by private businesses is much different than his.

 

 

Care to explain?

We have very different economic views.

[Hurlshort]

 

 

I agree with him actually, but I wager my conclusion from the information my best interests are not served by private businesses is much different than his.

 

Care to explain?

We have very different economic views.

 

 

My economic views are stubbornly moderate, so we might have a bit more in common than you'd think.  

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

 

 

I agree with him actually, but I wager my conclusion from the information my best interests are not served by private businesses is much different than his.

 

 

Care to explain?

We have very different economic views.

 

My economic views are stubbornly moderate, so we might have a bit more in common than you'd think.

I know, my Obsidianstalking.txt shows you saying something along those lines.

[HoonDing]

Better lead than iodine.

[Gromnir]

Better lead than iodine.

or slurm.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Hiro Protagonist]

This is a thing so it might as well have a thread.

 

Here's what Michael Moore (I know) has to say:

 

So what's your opinion on this?

[Namutree]

Typical government incompetence. To save money the government should have been cutting superfluous programs (of which there are many); not cutting corners on vital services. 

 

Then again we've always gotten the worst of the Democrats and the worst of the Republicans here in Michigan.

[Guard Dog]

We were talking about this very thing at work (since water management is what I do now) and we all agree there were probably engineers from the Michigan Dept of Natural Resources explaining to city & state bureaucrats the hazards of high alkalinity water sources to the processing equipment and they also certainly got into subjects like aeration softeners and chemical balancing. And I'm pretty sure the bureaucrats zoned out once the subject of cost came up. I've seen that look before.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Woman leading Flint lead poisoning lawsuit shot in her home

[Meshugger]

Woman leading Flint lead poisoning lawsuit shot in her home

 

"Pure Coincidence"

[Malcador]

Flint is a fairly violent city, so could be so.

[Rosbjerg]

It's stuff like this that wakens my inner socialist...

[Zoraptor]

Flint is a fairly violent city, so could be so.

 

About ten times the average US murder rate. Having said that, she's not the first person connected to the water crisis to have died in mysterious circumstances.

[Namutree]

It's stuff like this that wakens my inner socialist...

The government poisons people due to it's incompetence and negligence; so you now kinda want the government to have a complete monopoly over all resources? That seems like backward logic to me.