from the water-everywhere-but-not-a-drop-to-drink dept.
From MLive, Months after dire warnings, Flint spills 2 million gallons of raw sewage into river:
The city dumped an estimated 2 million gallons of untreated sewage into the Flint River Sunday, Aug. 18, just months after officials warned wastewater infrastructure was fast approaching a "critical point."
A partial report filed by the city with the state Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy on Tuesday, Aug. 20, says a "flash flood event" overflowed primary settling tanks at the city's wastewater treatment plant on Beecher Road, sending raw waste onto the ground and into a storm sewer drain that discharges directly to the river....
Earlier this year, the city sought a waiver from the Genesee County Health Department, requesting that it be allowed to skip testing river water for bacteria after sewage spills in cases in which the discharge comes from its retention basin.
From the WSWS (ICFI/SEP), Michigan: Two million gallons of untreated sewage spill into Flint River:
Genesee County issued a public advisory that people should avoid all contact with the Flint River. As of this writing six days later, there are no reports in the press or on government websites that the advisory has been lifted....
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that in the United States 7 million people on average per year, i.e., a population that would rank as the second largest city in the US, become ill from exposure to raw sewage, and 7 percent of these severely or fatally ill. While some of the illnesses are due to ingestion through drinking water, a majority are the result of external contact, often resulting from municipal spills.
Late Saturday night, over 2.2 inches of rain fell in the Flint area in just a three-hour period....
The Flint River has long been known to be highly polluted due to the unrestrained dumping of toxic waste into it by General Motors for the better part of a century.
On MLive (comments adwalled), user Chukobuk suggested:
Just raise industrial user sewer rates by a factor of ten. What else is GM going to use its vast federal income tax break for from the Tax and Jobs Cut Act? Laying off another 12,000 employees? Oh, sorry, that's the Tax Cut and Jobs Act.
A different failure mode from 2014: Power failure leads to raw sewage in Flint River
See also: 'Damage has been done': Newark water crisis echoes Flint
Previously:
Poisoned Democracy: How an Unelected Official Contaminated Flint's Water to Save Money
Here's How Hard It Will be to Unpoison Flint's Water
3 Officials Charged in Flint Water Crisis; More Arrests Seen
Prosecutor Charges Six Employees in Flint, Michigan Water Investigation
How ZIP Codes Nearly Masked the Lead Problem in Flint
Shigella Outbreak in Flint, Michigan Complicated by Untrusted Water
Lead in US School Water "Disturbing"—Detroit Just Shut Off All Fountains
Related Stories
Democracy Now! reports
In Flint, Michigan, a growing number of residents are demanding the arrest of Governor Rick Snyder over the ongoing water contamination crisis. Snyder declared a state of emergency for Flint [January 6], after learning federal prosecutors had opened an investigation into lead contamination in the drinking water. The poisoning began after an unelected emergency manager appointed by Governor Snyder switched the city's water source to the long-polluted Flint River in a bid to save money.
Lead can cause permanent health impacts including memory loss and developmental impairment. Researchers at Virginia Tech who have been testing Flint water say the city could have corrected the problem by better treating the water at a cost of as little as $100 a day. On [January 7], the mayor of Flint revealed it could now cost as much as $1.5 billion to fix the city's water infrastructure.
[...] Flint residents are now scrambling to find sources of safe water as fears of lead poisoning grow. Forty percent of Flint lives in poverty. Students at the nearby Davison Community Schools just posted a documentary online called Undrinkable, looking at how the Flint water crisis grew.[...]
Less than three weeks after Flint's water was declared safe and in compliance with the Safe Water Act, [...] the water found in some homes was three times the federal limit of lead within water. Aged lead pipes and lead soldering found in pipes are common throughout the city, not only in city lines, but also in people's homes, and has been for years. But why is the lead a problem now? It's the corrosive Flint River that released the lead into the water.
[...] People knew from the beginning, as soon as the switch was made in April of '14, that the water was bad. It looked bad. It tasted bad. It smelled bad. And there was all sorts of problems throughout 2014. In 2015, one of the residents, LeeAnne Walters, had her water tested by the city, and the lead levels came back at over 100 parts per billion. Of course, there's no safe levels of lead whatsoever. The federal action level is 15 parts per billion. So it was about seven times what the federal action level was. She had it tested a second time, and it came back almost 400 parts per billion.
[...] Anybody with even a rudimentary understanding of chemistry could have looked at the situation and predicted what would happen. [...] Did they take a serious look at what was going on with that river before they decided to make the switch? And it's either they didn't do that, which I would think is gross negligence, or they did do it and ignored whatever they found.
In the past few weeks, the nation's attention has increasingly focused its attention on Flint's public health disaster. At least 15 percent of the city's homes have water with lead levels exceeding the safe limit established by the federal government. Several of those homes had water with lead levels 900 times above the safe limit. Poor political decisions caused the crisis, but it wouldn't have happened at all if the lead pipes weren't there to begin with. The current solution is a stopgap—spiking the water supply with an anticorrosive chemical. But if the powers that be want to eliminate the risk completely, they will ultimately have to replace all the lead plumbing. A September estimate, only recently released by Michigan governor Rick Snyder, puts the cost of replacing all the lead pipes in Flint at $60 million. And the project will take 15 years.
Oh, for Pete's sake. People can only take bottled water baths for so long. "I don't understand, are they only going to fix four pipes a day?" says Harold Harrington, business manager of Flint's plumber's union, the United Association Local 370. He says with the right kind of investment, the city—or state, or whoever ends up taking responsibility—could move a lot faster.
Most of the corroded pipes in Flint—20,000 to 25,000 in total—are what is known as service lines. These are one inch in diameter, and connect homes to the larger, main pipes running under the middles of streets. (The mains are cast iron.) Because Flint is in Michigan, and Michigan is a very cold place, the service lines have to be buried about three and a half feet deep, below the frost line. "But most of the main pipes are between five to seven feet deep, so the service lines are at a similar depth," says Martin Kaufman, a geographer at the University of Michigan-Flint. So that's the basic challenge: dig up several thousand miles of poisonous pipe buried as deep as dead bodies.
The Flint water crisis has become a criminal case, with two state regulators and a city employee charged with official misconduct, evidence-tampering and other offenses over the lead contamination that alarmed the country and brought cries of racism.
For nearly 18 months, the poor, majority-black city of 100,000 used the Flint River for tap water as a way to save money — a decision made by a state-appointed emergency manager — while a new pipeline was under construction. But the water wasn't treated to control corrosion. The result: Lead was released from aging pipes and fixtures as water flowed into homes and businesses.
"This is a road back to restoring faith and confidence in all Michigan families in their government," state Attorney General Bill Schuette said Wednesday in announcing the first charges to come out of the disaster, blamed on a series of bad decisions by bureaucrats and political leaders.
He warned there will be more charges — "That I can guarantee" — and added: "No one is off the table."
Gov. Rick Snyder didn't acknowledge the problem until last fall, when tests revealed high levels of lead in children, in whom the heavy metal can cause low IQs and behavioral problems.
Source: bigstory.ap.org
-- submitted from IRC
Six Michigan state employees are being charged with crimes related to the coverup of unsafe drinking water conditions in Flint:
Six Michigan state workers have been charged with hiding data that showed that drinking water was unsafe in the city of Flint. Flint's drinking water became contaminated with lead in 2014 after the city changed its water supply. The lead investigator said that they "effectively buried" data showing that elevated levels of lead in children's' blood was tied to the water supply. The six people are all health and environmental workers. Investigators said they put "children in the cross-hairs of drinking poison".
Also at NPR, Reuters, and Detroit Free Press .
My job was to examine blood lead data from our local Hurley Children's Hospital in Flint for spatial patterns, or neighborhood-level clusters of elevated levels, so we could quash the doubts of state officials and confirm our concerns. Unbeknownst to me, this research project would ultimately help blow the lid off the water crisis, vindicating months of activism and outcry by dedicated Flint residents.
As I ran the addresses through a precise parcel-level geocoding process and visually inspected individual blood lead levels, I was immediately struck by the disparity in the spatial pattern. It was obvious Flint children had become far more likely than out-county children to experience elevated blood lead when compared to two years prior.
How had the state so blatantly and callously disregarded such information? To me – a geographer trained extensively in geographic information science, or computer mapping – the answer was obvious upon hearing their unit of analysis: the ZIP code.
ZIP codes – the bane of my existence as a geographer. They confused my childhood friends into believing they lived in an entirely different city. They add cachet to parts of our communities (think 90210) while generating skepticism toward others relegated to less sexy ZIP codes.
A tale to remind the scientists and technologists among us why it's important to do our jobs well.
Residents of Flint, Mich., affected by the contaminated-water crisis have added a new complication to their lives: an outbreak of shigellosis, a bacterial illness that is easily transmitted when people do not wash their hands.
Health department officials in Genesee County, where Flint is the largest city, said there has been an increase in the gastrointestinal illness, which can lead to severe diarrhea, fever, nausea, vomiting, cramps and stools containing blood and mucus
[...] Residents have been relying on bottled water to drink at home but still recoil from using tap water for other purposes, such as washing and cooking. They have adapted their personal hygiene habits, including where and how they take showers. Residents are also using baby wipes, which they get free at bottled-water-distribution centers, to clean their hands. But that may be contributing to the current transmission of the shigella bacteria, because they are not chlorinated and do not kill the bacteria.
[...] It's not the first time that a disease outbreak has been linked to the Flint water system. It was also associated with an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease from June 2014 to October 2015. At least 87 people developed the disease, and 10 died, health officials said in January.
See the Wikipedia article on Shigellosis for more details on transmission and symptoms.
exec and Arthur T Knackerbracket have found the following story:
Students returning to school in Detroit next week will find their water fountains entirely shut off over concerns of elevated lead and copper levels—something that federal lawmakers say is part of a "disturbing and unacceptable" nationwide issue.
The decision to shut off the drinking water in Detroit was based on a first round of results from testing that the school district carried out in its 106 schools earlier this year. The results from just 24 schools so far surfaced 16 that had water sources tainted with excessive levels of lead, copper, or both. For instance, tests at the district's Academy of the Americas Elementary school found a kitchen and drinking faucet in a basement cafeteria that had lead levels of 182 micrograms per liter (ug/L) and 154 ug/L, respectively. Those are more than ten times the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended limit of 15 ug/L. The full testing results can be found here.
[...] In a joint statement, the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) and the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) were quick to point out that the contamination is not due to a problem with the region's water system. Rather, the pair blamed aging plumbing within the schools for the contamination.
"The water at GLWA's treatment plants is tested hourly and DWSD has no lead service lines connected to any DPSCD building. The drinking water is of unquestionable quality," the statement read.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @03:42PM (3 children)
On the bright side, maybe it will dilute the lead somewhat.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @04:05PM (1 child)
Bright? More like the brown side... *farts*
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:14AM
Bright brown, then?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by rigrig on Monday August 26 2019, @10:05PM
Mod parent funny because it's true.
FTFA:
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Monday August 26 2019, @03:46PM (14 children)
Flint is still under the thumb of the unelected rule of an "Emergency Manager" appointed by Snyder and the attached "Advisory council" who refuse to let them spend money on necessities like... you know keeping infrastructure functioning. The block grant from the federal government for fixing the lead problem can't help the whole rest of the city's infrastructure being nickle and dimed to death.
This is another case where thousands of dollars a year in prevention could have prevented millions per decade clean up costs, and it's a lesson that we're apparently not gonna learn.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by EEMac on Monday August 26 2019, @05:09PM
Look at it from a politician's point of view:
Thousands per year comes out of my budget. making my district poorer.
Millions per decades comes out of big emergency grants from the federal government, enriching my district.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 26 2019, @05:23PM (5 children)
Nope, the lesson our leaders know is: fear. Gotta show everyone how painful it is to fail, the defeat of the Native American was too long ago, too far removed from today's life, we've gotta show 'em that when they don't pay their bills, it's gonna hurt, and hurt, and hurt for a long long time.
Serves those Flint residents right for not controlling their elected officials better, not making them stay solvent, hell not ponying up their own cash to prevent the crisis! Now they're gonna serve as an example to everyone else who thinks the Feds will just walk in and save everybody. Nope, nosiree, not on MY watch. Make 'em pay, make 'em pull themselves up by their own busted bootstraps, no matter how long it takes. Fear of becoming the next Flint will prevent that from EVER happening again. /s
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @07:37PM (4 children)
This was not an Act of God. It was an act of willful ignorance by elected and appointed officials and their employees. Exactly what is your reasoning that the rest of us should pay for the fuckups of their administration? I'd say loan them the money but make them pay it back. I didn't get to vote for the Detroit or Flint officials, why should I get stuck holding the bag?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @08:41PM
Brown bagging it?
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Tuesday August 27 2019, @12:42AM (1 child)
Most disasters can be foreseen at some level. Hurricanes in Puerto Rico and Florida lead to federal disaster aid. So do earthquakes and wildfires in California. They all should have bought insurance and built more robust infrastructure. Economic disasters are not so different.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @02:24PM
Not even remotely the same thing. This was 100% caused by the decisions and choices of the people involved. Natural disaster events are by definition natural disasters. While their impact could and should be mitigated by planning and insuring losses, they cannot be foreseen except at some statistical level. This is no different than your homeowners policy that insures against fires and wind damage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @02:13PM
You missed the "/s" at the end of the comment, didn't you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @07:00PM (6 children)
Michigan has a Democratic Governor and the City of Flint is pretty much all Democrats. Let's see if they do any better before passing judgement.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday August 26 2019, @07:42PM (3 children)
GP's point is that despite the election, said elected officials aren't actually in control of Flint's government. So trying to place the blame on the people who lack the power to fix the problem is wrong at best, disingenuous at worst.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dwilson on Tuesday August 27 2019, @12:41AM
That is something that needs to be taught in American public school system, as early as possible and refreshed every year until graduation. Maybe it would re-direct some of the constant bitching and moaning about whichever clown is currently holding the Presidency.
- D
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday August 27 2019, @03:27AM (1 child)
So who the hell appointed these unaccountable officials, hmm??
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:11PM
Rick Snyder, the former governor, who lost his seat in the 2018 election, probably in part for what he did to Flint.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Monday August 26 2019, @07:54PM
Yeah, but here's the thing, the horrible destruction wrought by far right budget hawkery takes decades to fully fix. It's not like putting democrats(who are far from perfect, and often pretty right wing) into office just magically fixes problems overnight.
--Back in June, politically unaffiliated financial manager, when these warnings were issued
Well guess what. They didn't incur debt or raise rates to fix the problem. Yay fiscal responsibility.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @08:56PM
The previous governor for 8 years (2011-2019) was Rick Snyder, a Republican, and he's the one to blame.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday August 26 2019, @05:14PM (2 children)
And only in areas where politicians and their children live.
Their families should get equal treatment.
Maybe all decisions that politicians make should affect their own families just as negatively or positively as others.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday August 26 2019, @07:44PM (1 child)
I don't see how getting flooded with crap will change politicians' behavior when they're already full of crap.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:51AM
The difference is, sewage is mostly "little people's" crap, while politicians are accustomed to being paid handsomely to serve up gilded corporate crap.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 26 2019, @05:46PM (11 children)
How was it discovered? Did the water in the river get any dirtier, or did someone making their rounds just realize that a couple million gallons of shit was missing? Coulda been thieves, you know.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @05:57PM (5 children)
You know, people actually watch this shit. No pun intended. It's not like it's running autonomously with no one at the controls.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 26 2019, @06:17PM (4 children)
Mmmm-hmmm. And, some people perform their jobs diligently, while others . . .
I see it at my own job. Nice, impressive huge machines, rather complex, whether they are older tech or new tech. The technicians think they can "set it and forget it", then walk around talking to the women, or just fuck off somewhere. The machine runs for hours, and then it screws up somehow. And, no one is there to see it, so the screw up just keeps growing, and growing, and growing.
A recent burst hydraulic line wasn't discovered until the oil tank was pumped dry, and the pump began howling - 180 gallons of oil pumped out onto the floor because no one was close by to hit the E-stop. Luckily, an operator made enough of a scene to get the lazy-assed technician to the machine before the pump came unwrapped.
It isn't unreasonable to ask how it was discovered. Maybe the day shift came in, made rounds, and had to ask the night shift people where the hell 2 million gallons of sewerage went. It's reasonable to ask how long it took to lose two million gallons of waste. Did it all happen within one shift, or did they lose it over the course of several days? The latter would implicate everyone who works at the plant, except maybe the cleaning lady, and the secretary.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 26 2019, @07:14PM
I've heard of firefighters on the chemical processing plants around Houston - the places are so damn big that even though they are watching it, there are 100 places that might, and frequently do, catch fire. All kinds of fires, invisible flames, poisonous flames, etc. and these guys are on call to go put them out when they're detected. Problem is, the company wouldn't want to spend more than they have to on fire crews, so sometimes while they're busy with one fire another one crops up on the other side of the plant, and they've got to decide whether to finish the one they're on and lock it down, or abandon it for the bigger problem on the other side... some days it's too much and the process engineer has to shut down the process - very expensive. Other days it's too much and the process engineer lets it run (like Deepwater Horizon) and it's more than very expensive.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:44AM (2 children)
Would a pressure sensing safety system help maybe? If hydraulic pressure drops, especially suddenly, maybe something blew out and maybe stop the pump? And maybe a level monitor for the oil tank, and stop the pump when it gets too low?
I was recently reading in depth about the Three Mile Island accident (Pennsylvania nuclear reactor) that happened in the late '70s, and I still can't believe that they did not have actual coolant level, and coolant and steam relief flow monitoring systems in place. Not even a valve position monitor to be sure the valves really did open or close.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:43PM (1 child)
Good idea. Such sensors are available, of course, but they are optional, and no one was willing to pay for them. We could retrofit something ourselves, but again, no one is willing to pay for them.
Tell you what I need even more: Blown hoses are rather infrequent, and I don't worry about them overly much. Oil temperature is what bothers me more than anything. Each machine is unique. Plumbing to each machine is unique. One machine in particular, is known for overheating, if left sitting idle with the motor running. There's no "good" reason for it, but it is so. I want the machines to turn themselves OFF when oil temperature reaches 130 F. Again - the option costs, and retrofitting something would also cost.
I should quit bitching though. If I wanted to run the company, I should have stolen billions of dollars in my youth, right? ;^)
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday August 27 2019, @02:29PM
Like many places I've worked, the exact wrong people are running things. You should run things (general manager) if for no other reason than that you have passion for things being done right (like I do).
Well, it's the classic problem of short-term cost vs. long-term. That temp. sensing system may save big $ in pump replacement... unless insurance pays for it, even then, hopefully insurance co. won't cover future pump replacements without temp sensing, etc.
So it's pretty easy to do temp. sensing, of course, including infrared. Another is timers- if the thing is idling too long, shut it off. I've done some PLC programming and I could see a few of them- small, cheap- running things for you, keeping track of pressures, temps, flow, motion, limit switches, position sensors, human interface, timers, indicators, motor currents, speeds, etc. then all networked to a SCADA / mimic system, if warranted. Of course major automation integrators will charge huge $, but it's not really difficult. They'll drag it out and make a huge project of it. You're reminding me how much I liked that field, but not the people so much- some great ones, but also some very politically-driven bully monster idiots.
Hmmm- I have a cousin in the Houston area who's something technical, and I need to get back in touch with him. It'd be ironic if he does automation / SCADA stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @06:17PM (1 child)
> How was it discovered?
Place started to smell like Californian cities.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 26 2019, @06:33PM
You're allowed to say "San Francisco".
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @08:44PM
Blame it on shithole countries.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday August 26 2019, @09:25PM (1 child)
Y'all probably don't think shit-thieves are a real thing, but how else do you explain the places that lock their bathrooms and make you ask for a key?
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:27AM
The locks were a knee-jerk reaction to 'The Illinois Enema Bandit'. It was a pubic scare of bowl-busting proportions, that got flung about all across the land. Phew! ;-)
rts008
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @06:42PM (1 child)
My mom used to give all of us untreated sewage and it never did any harm, but surly caused us to all poop out a lot of worms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @09:27PM
Which then you used to fish, caught more fish from the river. Ate them. Got more worms.
Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
It's the cirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrcle of Life!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @06:49PM (6 children)
i'm no fan of big gov but with the system we have now someone needs to be held accountable. anytime something like this is allowed to happen it should trigger an automatic investigation and the fat cats on top who have been stealing for decades need to be thrown in prison for years and years.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday August 26 2019, @08:52PM (4 children)
This would amount to interfering with commerce. Picking the whiners and losers. Government should be hands off. There should be no regulation of anything. Etc.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @09:15PM (3 children)
I don't know how stupid you need to be to blame "free markets" for government corruption. But that is you.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday August 26 2019, @10:11PM (2 children)
Pretty sure that poster was being sarcastic...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 27 2019, @03:44PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:43AM
And yet, you go on constantly...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:10AM
That lack of accountability is a large part of the reason one shouldn't be a fan of big gov.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @09:03PM
Disgusting yanks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @09:29PM (2 children)
The Flint River already played home to industrial waste for decades. Dams were apparently made to stem the industrial wastes from reaching the water supply. I wonder how this actually ranks on a disaster scale. Surely the downstream stations can purify. Surely!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 27 2019, @02:12AM
They can at a cost. And the cost is the enemy of the profit.
Why do you hate capitalism?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @02:14AM
At least it hasn't caught fire ... yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:44AM
Newark water crisis: The latest chapter in the capitalist poisoning of America [wsws.org]: