BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - We are from the government and here to help

Keyser Söze

On 1/24/16 4:56 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 24 Jan 2016 12:47:55 -0500, Keyser Söze
wrote:

On 1/24/16 12:13 PM, wrote:

The Flint leaders have been somewhat sheltered from the blame by their
incompetence. When the city was on the verge of bankruptcy, the state
took over so they shoulder a lot of the blame. It is really just the
bureaucracy tho. They jumped on the easy answer without actually
understanding the unintended consequences and denying the dangers,
even when the evidence was presented. That blame goes all the way from
city hall in Flint to the EPA in Washington. The GOVERNMENT failed
these people, top to bottom.
The real crime here was ignoring the dangers of lead pipe. I remember
in high school (62 or 63) hearing that the Romans may have been a
little stupider than they should have been because they were using
lead in their water system. The acid rain issue came up in the early
70s. The dangers of low pH water and lead pipe were well known by
then.

The state took over Flint sort of like it took over Detroit, and it
wanted to save $$$; thus the switch from safe water to the dirty river
water, and the state pooh-poohed the dangers.

So did the EPA, in fact the local EPA director is resigning over it.
The problem is they did not ask the right questions and when they
heard the answer they wanted, they went. The water in the river was
safe to drink but nobody asked what the effect on their 19th century
water system the low pH would have. The river water is not where the
problem came from, it was the lead pipe in the system.
You can try to point the finger anywhere you want but the government
failed these people from top to bottom.

The problem is the governor took over the local government and made some
interesting decisions in order to save money.