[magellan]

Originally Posted by Coldjensens

the switch actually was not the wrong move. Detroit water (from the Detroit River and lake St. Clair), actually does not start out significantly cleaner than Flint river water. The mistake was deciding not to treat the water properly, not switching.

As someone finally realized in this investigation, Mayors and Governors do not make those kinds of decisions. they do not know about those kind of decisions. That is done by scientist types that people who work for the Water Commissioner (or whomever is in charge) hire to ensure the public is properly protected. There are always people claiming water (including Detroit Water) is unsafe. The politicians have to rely on the water commissioner (or other title) to employ staff to hire the appropriate consultants to make sure the water is in fact reasonably safe. They cannot chase down every allegation of a problem. They can only relay on their science types to consider any such allegations and ensure there is not problem. When the science guys screw up or lie, it does not matter who is mayor, or governor, or even water commissioner - they are going to follow the determinations of their hired science guys. What party the politicians are makes no difference. Every single person in the governor or mayor position and probably in the water commissioner position would have made the same decisions. People who have any understanding of how water systems management works are well aware of this. The politicians are pretty irrelevant. They set general policy emphasis (like opposing fracking), but they really have little input into the day to day operations decisions. Staff tells them what should be done and they nod. They have to trust their staff. It does not work any other way. If they spent the time and money necessary to chase down and get multiple opinions on every single complaint of allegation, our water would cost ten times what it does. if someone says "this water is bad" and the staff people say "we checked it out it is fine" That is it. The politician nods and they move on. The party the politician identifies with is irrelevant. It is always addressed the same way.

I have been involved with water boards all over the place for over 25 years. The politicos at the top are essentially irrelevant. Sometimes they change deputies and upper level staff, some micromanage businessl issues but nothing changes. Decisions are made the same way. The myriad of complaints and allegations about problems with the water are handled the same way. A politician cannot determine which scientist is correct and there are always conflicting assertions. They have to rely on their staff/hired scientists.

You would be surprised if you knew what is in your water (tap or bottled). There are lots of things that some people claim are bad for us, but it has not been proven (high levels of estrogen, psychoteraputic drugs, traces of other drugs like heroine, antibiotics - anything people ingest in large quantities and ten pee out ends up in our water and we lack the technology and funding to remove most of it), and/or things that are known to be bad for us, but are believed to be a low enough levels to be safe (lead, mercury, oil based chemicals, etc.). They do a good job removing organic pollutants like bacteria, parasites, algae and viruses, but even that does not get removed entirely or successfully at all times. Then you have the pollutants added to the water by ancient pipes in the city systems and in homes (many of which were not built to the code of their times to begin with and have not been updated in decades).

The beef with politicians in this is not in the switch or the failure to treat the water, that is not in their area of decision making. Those decisions are happening all over right now without their knowledge and some of those decisions will prove to be mistakes. The beef with the politicians is how quickly they reacted once they learned the hired scientists were wrong. It is not clear to me when they knew the hired scientists were wrong (or were lying) in relation to when and how they reacted. It seems that our government at all levels always reacts too slowly to emergencies like this whether it is hurricanes, earthquakes, lead in water, flooding, burst oil lines. . . whatever it is they seem to react slowly and insufficiently at first every single time.

I've been following this story pretty closely and this description is not at all what happened in the Flint situation. Switching primary water sources for a municipality is VERY VERY rare, according to the Virginia Tech team. It's not done at some low level scientist/municipal water manager level. In fact, the discussions to switch goes way back years ago, before Flint had an EM.

This was a HUGE series of decisions that involved not just Flint but Detroit and several other Eastern Michigan cities and Genesee County. If you read any of the large cache of emails released by the Governor's office, it was regularly talked about at the highest levels of the State (Snyder's then chief of staff), and many many concerns were raised for over a year by the county, the city, environmental officials, scores of people about not treating the water. Many of those concerns were brushed aside or were put way down on priority lists.