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From the article: "Thanks to a vigilant operator and several redundancies, the heightened level of sodium hydroxide never caused a public threat." I have a pro
by DevX101 6y ago
From the article: "Thanks to a vigilant operator and several redundancies, the heightened level of sodium hydroxide never caused a public threat."
I have a problem with the language here. This was absolutely a public threat. The attacker demonstrated intent and capability to inflict public harm. That's the definition of a threat.
But the language downplaying the severity will mean this all blows over in a couple of months, without the actual mobilization/funds to properly secure not just this one site, but any similarly affected plants.
I've come to the conclusion that humans in general aren't very good at preventing catastrophic events we haven't seen before (see climate change). We'll need to see n=1 disasters with this first, before there's public outcry to fix it.
- psadauskas 6y agoEven once isn't enough, or we learn the wrong lesson. Ask Flint, MI how well we've done fixing that catastrophic event.
- WillPostForFood 6y agoFor Americans who stopped following the Flint water crisis after its first few gritty chapters, it might come as a surprise how far the city has come: Today, after nearly $400 million in state and federal spending, Flint has secured a clean water source, distributed filters to all residents who want them, and laid modern, safe copper pipes to nearly every home in the city that needed them. Its water is as good as any city’s in Michigan. Sounds like they did a great job fixing it. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/23/flint-water-crisis-2020-post-coronavirus-america-445459 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/23/flint-wate...
- psadauskas 6y agoOnly took, what, 6 years? And still nobody has been held accountable?
- mc32 6y agoCurrently the case is ongoing and up to 9 face charges: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956924155/ex-michigan-gov-rick-snyder-and-8-others-criminally-charged-in-flint-water-crisi https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956924155/ex-michigan-gov-ric...
- dave5104 6y ago6 years does feel too long, but it does seem like a case is still making its way through the courts. The former governor (and other officials) just had charges against them announced a few weeks ago: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/14/us/michigan-flint-water-former-governor-charges-thursday/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/14/us/michigan-flint-water-forme...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- HDMI_Cable 6y agoTo be fair, public works projects (especially replacing pipes and water treatment facilities) takes a long time.
- hanniabu 6y agoAlso other cities won't upgrade their infrastructure until they have an equally public event, at which point it'd be too late.
- fredgrott 6y agoformer governor goes to trial this year
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoThe government drags it's feet as much as possible when it comes to holding the government accountable. I think it's surprising it's even going to trial.
- WillPostForFood 6y agoAre you moving the goalposts here? You seemed to be bemoaning that things don’t get fixed after a single crisis (n=1), not that fixes are good but move slowly. Flint got fixed.
- elliekelly 6y agoA “great job fixing it” is an exceedingly generous characterization. And the link you’ve provided makes it clear the issue hasn’t been “fixed” just by replacing the pipes. The people of Flint don’t trust their drinking water. (With good reason!) As long as these (predominantly low-income) people feel the need to spend money on bottled drinking the water the issue isn’t fixed just because a lab has determined the water is safe to drink again.
- throwawayboise 6y agoSo with the weight of contrary scientific evidence, the people still don't believe the water is safe? This sounds like the same arguments about climate change and election fraud that get dismissed out of hand.
- hanniabu 6y agoThat's not at all equivalent. The issue is they were lead (heh) to believe the water was safe before. So when you're told the water is safe, but then it isn't why would you believe them next time?
- jancsika 6y ago> So with the weight of contrary scientific evidence, the people still don't believe the water is safe? That is what a reasonable human would expect "the people" to do when multiple agencies overseeing the utilities were initially so irresponsible/incompetent/negligent that water superheroes from three states over had to swoop in to warn residents their fucking pipes are poisoned[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#Virginia_Tech_water_study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#Virginia_Te... Edit: clarification
- pvaldes 6y agosafe -copper- pipes? LOL, copper is poisonous in presence of corrosives. They are just replacing a poison with other.
- SigmundA 6y agoNot even in the same ballpark. Humans actually need trace amounts of copper. Regulations for safe copper levels are almost 100 times that of lead. All pipe materials are poison if enough is ingested, lead is however is toxic in extremely low amounts, while copper is actually needed in low amounts. You think PVC is better?
- pvaldes 6y agoLead is the worst by a mile, but If you expect to have water in the very low or very high PH rank, or water with a lot of chemical activity or too hot, copper is not totally safe either. We, mammals, are relatively well protected to deal with it, but the real problem here is in the long term exposure. Can produce several forms of inner bleeding in the gut, and harm permanently the liver and kidneys. There is a lot of copper messing around for some reason in Alzheimer's patients also. Moreover copper is particularly toxic for all aquatic life and invertebrates also causing an acute poisoning. I would not use that water in an aquarium for example. I had seen the stuff in action and is devastating for fishes.
- genewitch 6y agoFish tanks require copper to maintain proper levels of nitrifying bacteria, the first two nitrifying stages require copper to convert stuff to the "safe" nitrogen that requires flushing to remove (unless you have real plants in the aquarium, then you rarely need water changes) - furthermore, copper is used to cure several fish diseases[0], so it it's impossible to be as bad as you claim. [0]https://smile.amazon.com/Seachem-67105650-Cupramine-Copper-100ml/dp/B00025K0QC/ https://smile.amazon.com/Seachem-67105650-Cupramine-Copper-1... for example
- pvaldes 6y ago
- JacksonGariety 6y agoOn second thought let's not go to planet Earth. Tis a silly place.
- orblivion 6y agoI agree with your level of alarm in principle. I'm curious whether the "several redundancies" are generally sufficient, and pervasive across plants.
- krisoft 6y agoSome system has redundancies and some system doesn’t. Here is an article where plant operators accidentaly left a sodium hydroxid pump in manual mode. Dumpibg way too much of it in one go causing chemical burns to the customers. There were Ph alarms but nobody heard them. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegram.com/article/20070503/NEWS/705030754%3ftemplate=ampart https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegram.com/article/2007... This is the website of an other water treatment company explaining what processes they have in place to prevent an issue like the above: https://www.mwra.com/01news/2007/042507nosodiumhydroxide.htm https://www.mwra.com/01news/2007/042507nosodiumhydroxide.htm
- projectileboy 6y agoI am so glad to see this is the top comment. Hacks on public infrastructure feel to me like one very small step away from actual military actions. I don’t understand why they never seem to be reported with the gravity they deserve.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoFor all we know, this is the 100th such attack on US infrastructure and this is just the first one reported in recent memory. A successful attack is much less likely to be made public, for obvious reasons. We may have suffered from successful attacks and not know it (small enough concentrations of contaminants can’t be tasted) Install water filters, HN. Use them. We have AquaSana under-the-sink in several locations through the house... no pitchers. Whole-house filters do not filter nearly the same variety of crap that under-the-sink and PUR pitchers do. Say no to Brita. Learn your NSF ratings and choose wisely. You’re only paranoid if you’re wrong.
- aerostable_slug 6y agoA chemist may be able to correct me, but I'm pretty sure an AquaSana filter will do nothing to remove excess sodium hydroxide.
- jaggederest 6y agoIt will if it's reverse osmosis (RO), but not all filters do that. That particular brand sells both RO and non-RO units. If it's a vast excess of NaOH, you'll have other problems besides your water filter failing, like chemical burns. Most US tapwater is fantastically clean and drinkable, and doesn't generally need a filter. The Safe Drinking Water Act is pretty powerful stuff. https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/public/regulations.html https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/public/regulations...
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago> Most US tapwater is fantastically clean and drinkable, and doesn't generally need a filter. It is my understanding that most municipal water utilities only test water quality every 3 months. A problem can come and go between testing cycles. Even with weekly testing, I’d expect the same risk (there’s still a window between tests). Basically you’re only going to know about a problem when it’s too late.
- say_it_as_it_is 6y agoCall them. Someone may be willing to listen.
- downrightmike 6y agoSodium hydroxide, also known as lye and caustic soda,[1][2] is an inorganic compound with the formula NaOH. It is a white solid ionic compound consisting of sodium cations Na+ and hydroxide anions OH− . Sodium hydroxide is a highly caustic base and alkali that decomposes proteins at ordinary ambient temperatures and may cause severe chemical burns. It is highly soluble in water, and readily absorbs moisture and carbon dioxide from the air. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hydroxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hydroxide
- wahern 6y agoLye is actually a very common household chemical. It's used in cooking and even grooming products--quality shaving creams have sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide. You can easily buy large containers of the stuff everywhere, including your local hardware store and, traditionally, grocery store. (These days you may need to go to a speciality grocer to find food-grade lye in bulk.) The nice thing about lye is that it's typically sold in solid form, excepting in one of the most common household products, drain cleaner. Drano is sodium hydroxide in solution with aluminum, with which reacts in the presence of water, presumably to help mechanically break up clogs. Solid lye tends to be safer as there's less chance of ingestion, and less chance of it lingering on your skin--it turns your skin to soap. Much more dangerous is stuff like sulphuric acid, which you can buy (at least in California) in concentrations of over 95% at the hardware store as Rooto and similar drain cleaners. That stuff is nasty as its in liquid form, easy to spill and even inhale as an aerosol. Also not a good idea for pipes despite how they're sold because such acids are hell on cast iron--i.e. what main sewage drains are made out of in older buildings and in jurisdictions that aren't favorable to PVC. There are so many ways for evil people to do evil things it's amazing (and, frankly, fascinating and even instructive) that it doesn't happen more often. I'm curious to see how the situation will change as it becomes easier to be evil while remaining anonymous and remote. Still, I imagine it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to actually cause significant harm by changing the concentration of lye in the water suppler. For example, I'm skeptical that there would be enough lye in the dispenser at the treatment facility to cause serious harm. The worst effect would probably be disrupting the pH of the water system and possibly causing other ill effects, such as by leeching lead or rendering antimicrobials less effective.
- christophilus 6y agoIt’s incredible that anyone thought it was a good idea to connect this kind of infrastructure to the internet.
- moksly 6y agoIt’s new public management. Why have a hundred people maintaining these things when you can just have 1 person do it remotely. I don’t think it’s a good idea either, but it’s exactly why it happens. While I said it’s new public management, it’s also a common management style in any form of private sector enterprise.
- hanniabu 6y agoI mean, you can still have one person control it without connecting to the outside world...
- credit_guy 6y ago> The attacker demonstrated intent and capability to inflict public harm. This is if you take the facts in this story at face value. In my mind, if someone can raise the level of a chemical to become dangerous, you already have a problem. 11000 ppm sounds huge to me (1.1%). What if instead of an external hacker you had an internal disgruntled employee. What if you had a leaky gasket. The system should have some multiple redundancies to not allow a dangerous level of a chemical to end up in the water supply.
- enraged_camel 6y agoIt's easy to say that, of course, but the fact of the matter is that designing systems with multiple redundancies is difficult and expensive.
- __blockcipher__ 6y agoYeah, and it’s not like a city water supply is the type of thing where such expenditure would be justified! (I recognize you also mentioned the difficulty, I just wanted to poke some fun :P)
- mypalmike 6y agoThe reports on this incident have all stated that there were indeed multiple redundancies that helped prevent the high level from being actualized.
- skybrian 6y agoI think you’re misinterpreting that remark? Probably their main point is that the water was always okay. That’s what the people who live there are going to want to know about first.
- tambourine_man 6y agoEven n=1 is not enough if Covid is any evidence of a pattern.
- a_bonobo 6y agoSeveso - Bhopal - Chernobyl - Fukushima is n > 1, but most people forgot Seveso and Bhopal. n=1 needs to occur every ~10 years.
- justin66 6y ago> But the language downplaying the severity will mean this all blows over in a couple of months, without the actual mobilization/funds to properly secure not just this one site, but any similarly affected plants. Our society’s inability to prioritize the solving of obvious problems is pervasive enough that it’s probably due to more than some badly chosen verbiage. > We'll need to see n=1 disasters with this first, before there's public outcry to fix it. It’s worse than that. It would have to be a really awful disaster, people would need to understand the causes and effects, and the prevention of future disasters would need to not threaten established businesses and political interests.
- aspaceman 6y agoYeah I totally agree here. This is a public official saying "Alright folks nothing to see here", and the reporters walking away writing down "nothing to see here" in their notebooks. They got their quote.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoThey specifically said "the heightened level of sodium hydroxide never caused a public threat," not the attack. The most important thing he had to do was inform the public that had been drinking their water all day that they were not in any danger. This isn't downplaying the potential risk, basically every other thing said highlighted the risk.
- lupire 6y agoThere's no downplaying. A vulnerability was identified and system with multiple levels of protection worked.