8 ms·

And how much did the city originally "save"? This affair should be poster child for being pennywise and pound foolish with our infrastructure.

by pstuart 10y ago

maxerickson 10y ago
Framing it that way misses an important part of the story. It was the institutional and regulatory failure during the switch away from Detroit city water that made the lead an emergency. Part of the reason that happened is that Flint had depopulated and was basically a failed city. It's not acceptable that it happened, but it didn't happen just because Flint was trying to skimp on infrastructure 40,50,60 years ago.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  They skimped (ie entirely did not use) on corrosion inhibitors when the water supply was switched. I believe those are the "savings" OP was referring to. "By not adding a corrosion inhibitor, Flint was going to save about $140 per day. " http://theconversation.com/the-science-behind-the-flint-water-crisis-corrosion-of-pipes-erosion-of-trust-53776 http://theconversation.com/the-science-behind-the-flint-wate... "Replacement of Flint’s lead service lines, which is the only permanent solution to address its lead vulnerability, is estimated to cost up to $1.5 billion, according to Flint’s mayor, Karen Weaver."
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Yeah, that it was a financial decision is an institutional and regulatory failure. It shouldn't have even been on the table to switch without properly treating the different source water.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Well, when your state is broke, you try to cut corners. You cut the wrong corners, people are maimed or are killed. So, I suppose I agree with you that its institutional and regulatory failures in the most general of ways, similar to how Enron would have been considered "a breakdown in internal controls". And those responsible should go to prison and have civil penalties inflicted on them. Has that happened? I don't know.
    - malandrew 10y ago
      Everything is a financial decision at the end of the day. You can't just wish away the laws of economics. Let's say that regulations dictated that they had to spend this money and they didn't have it. Add enough of such regulations and a shrinking tax base and eventually you have an insolvent city. What do you propose we do then? Near as I can tell, it's reasonable to have such regulations so people don't get hurt by people making decisions with consequences they don't understand, but eventually this will lead to insolvency and we need to have a plan to shut down cities that become insolvent and support relocation efforts when that happens.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        It would have been better to shut the water off.
      - scythe 10y ago
        Saving $140/day at the risk of $100M damage to infrastructure is not good financial sense. It's the financial sense exercised by the kind of person who expects someone else to pay for the mess, i.e. a government official. A private corporation which was exposed to the liability would have likely chosen to raise the price of water to pay for the corrosion inhibitor, but someone whose job is to manipulate the balance sheet for political gain has a different utility function. We handle this with rules.
        macawfish 10y ago
        Funny how this discussion is happening just as Trump proposes to cut things like Meals on Wheels and PBS.
        orasis 10y ago
        If that private corporation were a mining company in Montana they would choose to take the profits, go bankrupt, and again have the people pay to clean up the mess.
        LoonyBalloony 10y ago
  - ozi 10y ago
    At what point does it become cheaper to relocate everyone in Flint to a new city?
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      We're already at that point financially, although we haven't quite acquired the political will yet.
      - LoonyBalloony 10y ago
        And if we are taking this long to fix Flint's problem, imagine how long it will take for the rest of the nation to realize housing first initiatives are a better solution to homelessness then the justice system?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- diogenescynic 10y ago
  You're acting like this was forced on them from budget cuts. The city manager was warned about exactly this happening and still went ahead and did it because it was the city manager is appointed by their corrupt Republican governor [1]. The city manager should not have been able to make those decisions without a much more thorough vetting process. 1: http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2016/02/flint_water_supervisor_warned.html http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2016/02/flint_wate...
  - bpodgursky 10y ago
    The city manager was only appointed after Flint became effectively a failed city, and the state took over management. In the US, cities manage their own municipal services including water supplies. The state only intervenes when the city runs out of money to provide basic services to their inhabitants -- and this happens very rarely. If Flint had had a functioning government, the state appointees would have had nothing to do with the water supply. It's a tragedy what happened, but at the point a city is unable to provide the most basic of services to its citizens like clean water, I think we need to consider whether it is worth pumping money into a city, or just call it quits and provide relocation funds to the remaining inhabitants, to get them to a region with actual economic activity.
    - macawfish 10y ago
      Relocated like cattle to another pasture? I can't for the life of me understand this philosophy that financial economy under-girds life.
      - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
        Finance, in this case, is a way of framing sustainability. If your city puts out less than what it brings in, it's not sustainable.
        macawfish 10y ago
        I agree, finance is being used here as a way of framing sustainability. But it's obscuring and distorting the entire basis of economy altogether, which is living ecology. If people are denied the basic ability to improve the livability of their communities because of allegiance to global market tab sheets, then money has replaced the very thing it is meant to serve: human beings. All this talk of there not being any jobs is hypocritical balogne. There's clearly plenty of infrastructure work to do, not to mention basic life stuff, like raising and teaching kids, growing food, building community... But the global market has stripped life itself of its value for these people. Your community and mine aren't far behind, from the looks of things!
- rayiner 10y ago
  It's even bigger than that. Detroit had to raise rates on Flint because a combination of depopulation and terrible management left its water system in dire straits.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    The article I link in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13899164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13899164 makes the case that it was more complicated than that, with Detroit making a long term offer at least competitive with the new water system Flint was going to participate in.
  - analog31 10y ago
    Something worth mentioning is that when we talk about "Detroit" we're talking about a system that provides water to nearly half of Michigan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Water_and_Sewerage_Department https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Water_and_Sewerage_Dep... I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, and we got Detroit water. This is no accident -- Lake Huron is some of the cleanest water in the world. Had my town even considered switching from Detroit water, there would have been an uproar. This is a resource that has no reason other than historical accident, for being a responsibility of the City of Detroit. It looks like it was mainly a way to burden Detroit with more debt.
civilian 10y ago
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/20/465545378/lead-laced-water-in-flint-a-step-by-step-look-at-the-makings-of-a-crisis http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/20/465545378/... > That option was projected to save the region $200 million over 25 years, according to City Council meeting minutes. Flint has already taken $250mil in state funding, and it will be taking another $120mil in fed+state funds now. So I guess that this whole thing will break even in 45 years?
- maxerickson 10y ago
  That $200 million is only vaguely related to the situation, there isn't any technical reason that the long term plan to switch to the Karegnondi Water Authority supply required the short term switch to the river water. It's not even clear it represented real savings. This article is written sort of after the fact, but it sounds reasonable to me. http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/02/02/late-bid-failed-avert-flint-detroit-water-deal/79735848/ http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-c...
timmaxw 10y ago
I suspect the primary cause was engineering incompetence rather than a desire to save money. The water quality problems were caused by a lack of corrosion inhibitors; corrosion inhibitors would have cost $140/day, which is cheap compared to the $4 million that Flint spent upgrading the water treatment plant. It seems most plausible to me that the Flint engineers simply weren't thinking about the need for corrosion inhibitors.

And how much did the city originally "save"? This affair should be poster child for being pennywise and pound foolish with our infrastructure.

by pstuart 10y ago

And how much did the city originally "save"? This affair should be poster child for being pennywise and pound foolish with our infrastructure.

maxerickson 10y ago

Framing it that way misses an important part of the story. It was the institutional and regulatory failure during the switch away from Detroit city water that made the lead an emergency. Part of the reason that happened is that Flint had depopulated and was basically a failed city. It's not acceptable that it happened, but it didn't happen just because Flint was trying to skimp on infrastructure 40,50,60 years ago.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
They skimped (ie entirely did not use) on corrosion inhibitors when the water supply was switched. I believe those are the "savings" OP was referring to. "By not adding a corrosion inhibitor, Flint was going to save about $140 per day. " http://theconversation.com/the-science-behind-the-flint-water-crisis-corrosion-of-pipes-erosion-of-trust-53776 http://theconversation.com/the-science-behind-the-flint-wate... "Replacement of Flint’s lead service lines, which is the only permanent solution to address its lead vulnerability, is estimated to cost up to $1.5 billion, according to Flint’s mayor, Karen Weaver."
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Yeah, that it was a financial decision is an institutional and regulatory failure. It shouldn't have even been on the table to switch without properly treating the different source water.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Well, when your state is broke, you try to cut corners. You cut the wrong corners, people are maimed or are killed. So, I suppose I agree with you that its institutional and regulatory failures in the most general of ways, similar to how Enron would have been considered "a breakdown in internal controls". And those responsible should go to prison and have civil penalties inflicted on them. Has that happened? I don't know.
  - malandrew 10y ago
    Everything is a financial decision at the end of the day. You can't just wish away the laws of economics. Let's say that regulations dictated that they had to spend this money and they didn't have it. Add enough of such regulations and a shrinking tax base and eventually you have an insolvent city. What do you propose we do then? Near as I can tell, it's reasonable to have such regulations so people don't get hurt by people making decisions with consequences they don't understand, but eventually this will lead to insolvency and we need to have a plan to shut down cities that become insolvent and support relocation efforts when that happens.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      It would have been better to shut the water off.
    - scythe 10y ago
      Saving $140/day at the risk of $100M damage to infrastructure is not good financial sense. It's the financial sense exercised by the kind of person who expects someone else to pay for the mess, i.e. a government official. A private corporation which was exposed to the liability would have likely chosen to raise the price of water to pay for the corrosion inhibitor, but someone whose job is to manipulate the balance sheet for political gain has a different utility function. We handle this with rules.
      - macawfish 10y ago
        Funny how this discussion is happening just as Trump proposes to cut things like Meals on Wheels and PBS.
      - orasis 10y ago
        If that private corporation were a mining company in Montana they would choose to take the profits, go bankrupt, and again have the people pay to clean up the mess.
        LoonyBalloony 10y ago
- ozi 10y ago
  At what point does it become cheaper to relocate everyone in Flint to a new city?
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    We're already at that point financially, although we haven't quite acquired the political will yet.
    - LoonyBalloony 10y ago
      And if we are taking this long to fix Flint's problem, imagine how long it will take for the rest of the nation to realize housing first initiatives are a better solution to homelessness then the justice system?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
diogenescynic 10y ago
You're acting like this was forced on them from budget cuts. The city manager was warned about exactly this happening and still went ahead and did it because it was the city manager is appointed by their corrupt Republican governor [1]. The city manager should not have been able to make those decisions without a much more thorough vetting process. 1: http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2016/02/flint_water_supervisor_warned.html http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2016/02/flint_wate...
- bpodgursky 10y ago
  The city manager was only appointed after Flint became effectively a failed city, and the state took over management. In the US, cities manage their own municipal services including water supplies. The state only intervenes when the city runs out of money to provide basic services to their inhabitants -- and this happens very rarely. If Flint had had a functioning government, the state appointees would have had nothing to do with the water supply. It's a tragedy what happened, but at the point a city is unable to provide the most basic of services to its citizens like clean water, I think we need to consider whether it is worth pumping money into a city, or just call it quits and provide relocation funds to the remaining inhabitants, to get them to a region with actual economic activity.
  - macawfish 10y ago
    Relocated like cattle to another pasture? I can't for the life of me understand this philosophy that financial economy under-girds life.
    - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
      Finance, in this case, is a way of framing sustainability. If your city puts out less than what it brings in, it's not sustainable.
      - macawfish 10y ago
        I agree, finance is being used here as a way of framing sustainability. But it's obscuring and distorting the entire basis of economy altogether, which is living ecology. If people are denied the basic ability to improve the livability of their communities because of allegiance to global market tab sheets, then money has replaced the very thing it is meant to serve: human beings. All this talk of there not being any jobs is hypocritical balogne. There's clearly plenty of infrastructure work to do, not to mention basic life stuff, like raising and teaching kids, growing food, building community... But the global market has stripped life itself of its value for these people. Your community and mine aren't far behind, from the looks of things!
rayiner 10y ago
It's even bigger than that. Detroit had to raise rates on Flint because a combination of depopulation and terrible management left its water system in dire straits.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  The article I link in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13899164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13899164 makes the case that it was more complicated than that, with Detroit making a long term offer at least competitive with the new water system Flint was going to participate in.
- analog31 10y ago
  Something worth mentioning is that when we talk about "Detroit" we're talking about a system that provides water to nearly half of Michigan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Water_and_Sewerage_Department https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Water_and_Sewerage_Dep... I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, and we got Detroit water. This is no accident -- Lake Huron is some of the cleanest water in the world. Had my town even considered switching from Detroit water, there would have been an uproar. This is a resource that has no reason other than historical accident, for being a responsibility of the City of Detroit. It looks like it was mainly a way to burden Detroit with more debt.

civilian 10y ago

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/20/465545378/lead-laced-water-in-flint-a-step-by-step-look-at-the-makings-of-a-crisis http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/20/465545378/... > That option was projected to save the region $200 million over 25 years, according to City Council meeting minutes. Flint has already taken $250mil in state funding, and it will be taking another $120mil in fed+state funds now. So I guess that this whole thing will break even in 45 years?

maxerickson 10y ago
That $200 million is only vaguely related to the situation, there isn't any technical reason that the long term plan to switch to the Karegnondi Water Authority supply required the short term switch to the river water. It's not even clear it represented real savings. This article is written sort of after the fact, but it sounds reasonable to me. http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/02/02/late-bid-failed-avert-flint-detroit-water-deal/79735848/ http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-c...

timmaxw 10y ago

I suspect the primary cause was engineering incompetence rather than a desire to save money. The water quality problems were caused by a lack of corrosion inhibitors; corrosion inhibitors would have cost $140/day, which is cheap compared to the $4 million that Flint spent upgrading the water treatment plant. It seems most plausible to me that the Flint engineers simply weren't thinking about the need for corrosion inhibitors.