5 ms·

> * crumbling infrastructure in rural areas, from closing supermarkets and schools to deficient roads and services I expect many the shine of many of the "pand

by dwater 5y ago

> * crumbling infrastructure in rural areas, from closing supermarkets and schools to deficient roads and services I expect many the shine of many of the "pandemic homesteader" stories we've seen will tarnish pretty quickly as a result of this. How much of a discount are you willing to accept on the cost of living at the expense of safe drinking water? Are you old enough to be concerned about reliable emergency services, or access to a hospital? You're not getting a bargain by living in a rural area, you're getting the market price.

pwthornton 5y ago
In rural areas, safe drinking whatever is often up to you. You’ll have a well, and ideally you’ll get it inspected regularly. You should be able to control this, unless there is something fouling all the water in the immediate area. But many people never inspect their wells, and there are way too many pathogens in their water. I agree up with well water, a septic field, and no sidewalks. Never doing that again. I want to be apart of human progress and have modern infrastructure. The septic field was probably the worst.
- dwater 5y ago
  I agree. I didn’t want to go to in depth, but I imagine many people who grew up in the suburbs wouldn’t consider the quality of well water when looking at a rural home. How many would research nearby industry to see what might be polluting the groundwater? The mines and factories don’t put up signs saying “Our coal ash pond is leaking into the water table”. There is a lot of work in the modern world to minimize your exposure to environmental toxins and it’s not something we are taught or told we need to know.
  - etempleton 5y ago
    I suppose it is something you just need to know. If you are looking at purchasing a home with a well have it inspected. Depending on where you live this may be a requirement for the sale of any home.
etempleton 5y ago
Safe drinking water is not really much of an issue in the United States outside of lead pipes in mostly urban areas. If you have a well you know to get it checked every few years. Sometimes it needs to be treated. If you are really concerned you run your drinking water through a water filter. I grew up on a well that was hundreds of years old and only about 15 feet deep. And it is still a good well to this day. Modern wells are hundreds of feet deep and are sealed. They are very safe. Access to healthcare is an issue depending on the area. There is zero financial incentive for healthcare workers to be in poor rural America. Really, though, it is a poverty issue. Rural areas, particularly those that were built around a specific and now defunct industry, such as coal mining, have a lack of available jobs and they are now unwilling to leave a town that no longer has a purpose to exist.
- bradlys 5y ago
  > There is zero financial incentive for healthcare workers to be in poor rural America. I've heard the opposite but it was all anecdotal. I heard surgeons and other doctors actually get paid a lot more to live in more rural areas because doctors generally don't want to live there so they have to do something to attract them.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    It depends on the particular area and specialty. Surgeons are paid top dollar everywhere. Physicians aren't generally paid well outside of major hospital systems. And psychologists are still viewed suspiciously in many parts of the country. As far as location is concerned, plenty of areas that are just 10 miles from a major metropolitan area are considered rural for census purposes. Owning a practice in a bucolic part of southern Connecticut is different from owning one in a Gold Rush ghost town. Population density is a still important, even if it matters less than it would for a major hospital system. Not to mention there's the dating factor. While this may not be an issue for late-career/semi-retired doctors, the younger or divorced ones will face an ethical and professional dilemma regarding dating patients in a small town on top of the usual stressors in being a doctor.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
There's an awful lot of ground between "unsafe drinking water" and "megacity". Take Ault, Colorado, just for instance. Google says the population is 1,947. It declined from 2018 to 2019. (Not sure how Google knows that, when there wasn't a yearly census. Maybe better not to ask - Google's surveillance powers aren't the point here.) Ault is this little small town. It's on a US highway. It's 17 minutes off of an interstate. It's 27 minutes to Fort Collins, a town of 100,000 people with a state university. It's 1:17 to Denver, a city of 4 million people. So if you need a hospital, there's one 30 minutes away. If you absolutely need a big city hospital, it's an hour away. That's inconvenient, but you (hopefully) won't need it very often. Need an InstaCare type facility? There's probably one 20 minutes away, and almost certainly one 30 minutes away. Need an appliance store? It's maybe 25 minutes away. Well, mine is 15 minutes away, and I'm in a big city. Need a non-remote job? There's a fair amount of tech in Fort Collins. I've had worse commutes. (I didn't like them, but I've had them.) So I'm not seeing the hard dichotomy between "big city" and "completely out in the sticks". It's a continuum.

by dwater 5y ago

pwthornton 5y ago

In rural areas, safe drinking whatever is often up to you. You’ll have a well, and ideally you’ll get it inspected regularly. You should be able to control this, unless there is something fouling all the water in the immediate area. But many people never inspect their wells, and there are way too many pathogens in their water. I agree up with well water, a septic field, and no sidewalks. Never doing that again. I want to be apart of human progress and have modern infrastructure. The septic field was probably the worst.

dwater 5y ago
I agree. I didn’t want to go to in depth, but I imagine many people who grew up in the suburbs wouldn’t consider the quality of well water when looking at a rural home. How many would research nearby industry to see what might be polluting the groundwater? The mines and factories don’t put up signs saying “Our coal ash pond is leaking into the water table”. There is a lot of work in the modern world to minimize your exposure to environmental toxins and it’s not something we are taught or told we need to know.
- etempleton 5y ago
  I suppose it is something you just need to know. If you are looking at purchasing a home with a well have it inspected. Depending on where you live this may be a requirement for the sale of any home.

etempleton 5y ago

Safe drinking water is not really much of an issue in the United States outside of lead pipes in mostly urban areas. If you have a well you know to get it checked every few years. Sometimes it needs to be treated. If you are really concerned you run your drinking water through a water filter. I grew up on a well that was hundreds of years old and only about 15 feet deep. And it is still a good well to this day. Modern wells are hundreds of feet deep and are sealed. They are very safe. Access to healthcare is an issue depending on the area. There is zero financial incentive for healthcare workers to be in poor rural America. Really, though, it is a poverty issue. Rural areas, particularly those that were built around a specific and now defunct industry, such as coal mining, have a lack of available jobs and they are now unwilling to leave a town that no longer has a purpose to exist.

bradlys 5y ago
> There is zero financial incentive for healthcare workers to be in poor rural America. I've heard the opposite but it was all anecdotal. I heard surgeons and other doctors actually get paid a lot more to live in more rural areas because doctors generally don't want to live there so they have to do something to attract them.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  It depends on the particular area and specialty. Surgeons are paid top dollar everywhere. Physicians aren't generally paid well outside of major hospital systems. And psychologists are still viewed suspiciously in many parts of the country. As far as location is concerned, plenty of areas that are just 10 miles from a major metropolitan area are considered rural for census purposes. Owning a practice in a bucolic part of southern Connecticut is different from owning one in a Gold Rush ghost town. Population density is a still important, even if it matters less than it would for a major hospital system. Not to mention there's the dating factor. While this may not be an issue for late-career/semi-retired doctors, the younger or divorced ones will face an ethical and professional dilemma regarding dating patients in a small town on top of the usual stressors in being a doctor.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

There's an awful lot of ground between "unsafe drinking water" and "megacity". Take Ault, Colorado, just for instance. Google says the population is 1,947. It declined from 2018 to 2019. (Not sure how Google knows that, when there wasn't a yearly census. Maybe better not to ask - Google's surveillance powers aren't the point here.) Ault is this little small town. It's on a US highway. It's 17 minutes off of an interstate. It's 27 minutes to Fort Collins, a town of 100,000 people with a state university. It's 1:17 to Denver, a city of 4 million people. So if you need a hospital, there's one 30 minutes away. If you absolutely need a big city hospital, it's an hour away. That's inconvenient, but you (hopefully) won't need it very often. Need an InstaCare type facility? There's probably one 20 minutes away, and almost certainly one 30 minutes away. Need an appliance store? It's maybe 25 minutes away. Well, mine is 15 minutes away, and I'm in a big city. Need a non-remote job? There's a fair amount of tech in Fort Collins. I've had worse commutes. (I didn't like them, but I've had them.) So I'm not seeing the hard dichotomy between "big city" and "completely out in the sticks". It's a continuum.