What's the deal with the water in Flint?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > What's the deal with the water in Flint?

TROIKA CURES GREEK: Jun 30, 2015; by R. Guyovich

Cugel the Clever posted:

While the austerity measures implemented by the EM are the direct cause, this is a problem of government corruption and incompetence at every level—check out flintwaterstudy.org/.

Essentially, once the decision was made to switch, successive levels of bureaucrats not only failed to verify that the switch would be safe, but actively suppressed all information to the contrary until the truth broke into the national news media:

Local city civil engineers/inspectors failed to conduct a comprehensive testing regimen (partially at the behest of pressure from above).

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, rather than reacting with concern to reports, tried to sweep things under the rug. A FOIA request dug up their emails since the first EPA inspector leaked a report of improper procedure and high lead content back in June—their correspondence suggests complete disregard for the health and safety of the people of Flint. There's also decades of history that suggests they should have been well aware of the risk going into it.

The region's EPA director, a political appointee of the Obama administration (read: big donor to Obama's campaign and the Democratic Party), went out of her way to silence dissent and to empower local bad actors.

Don't want this happening to you? Pay attention to local politics and make sure that psychopathic, cronyistic shitbags aren't running things. loving call your current representatives and let them know your vote depends on their ability to put safety and progress over bullshit politicking.

If you live in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, or Wisconsin, call your representatives at every level and demand they publicly call for the removal of EPA Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman.

Huh, this is the first I'm hearing about this being a semi-bipartisan affair, is there any reason why the EPA director played ball?

Yoshifan823 posted:

I feel like it has to be pointed out that, in the WP article here, Darnell Earley is apparently now the Emergency Manager of Detroit Public Schools, which are also in the news as of late because teachers have staged multiple sickouts over the last few months due to the absolutely atrocious conditions of the buildings they work in.

In short, this dude is, at best, tremendously terrible at his job, and at worse, a horribly corrupt shithead who loves to make life harder for children.

Well one issue is that the money simply isn't there; they are trying to get cash from the state but other districts have little interest in more bailouts and everyone is also trying to find hundreds of millions of dollars for the crumbling roads at the same time. The sad fact of the matter is that Detroit is just starting to recover from decades of decline and it will still be some time before there's a solid tax base to solve these problems with.

Incompenent or corrupt officials are part of the blame (and unforuntatly there's lots on both sides when it comes to that) but the real issue is that:

rscott posted:

This is all continuing fallout from GMs decision to abandon the town back in the 70s and 80s, the resulting collapse of the tax base and the slow decay of the infrastructure in the city. The city has had emergency managers off and on since 2002 and efforts to spin the city into a college town have largely failed for a lack of investment.

And a similar story played out across the state and in Detroit.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2016 16:57

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 05:59

TROIKA CURES GREEK: Jun 30, 2015; by R. Guyovich

Oracle posted:

Yup, they're gonna throw one poor schmuck from the plant under the bus and a few MDEQ engineers. Good job Bill Schutte I'm sure that'll help your upcoming gubinatorial campaign as being TOUGH ON CRIME you loving rear end.

Edited to add: the three stooges who don't have enough clout to avoid being thrown under the bus:
You can apparently be thrown in jail for not answering an email. Don't think they're gonna be able to make that one stick.

Eh I'm much more in the wait and lets see camp, flipping low level schmucks to get the bigger fish is hardly unusual in these sorts of cases. Though I will say it's funny how they portrayed the arrests to be brilliant policework considering the shits been reported on for months and in one of the cases the dude admitted to the crime during a taped interview on the record. woops!

# ¿ Apr 24, 2016 23:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > What's the deal with the water in Flint?